dlemas lines may be
recalled:--

"Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunne-set let it burne;
Which quencht, then lay it up agen,
Till Christmas next returne.

Part must be kept wherewith to teend
The Christmas Log next yeare;
And where 'tis safely kept, the Fiend
Can do no mischiefe there."{73}

|355| Candlemas Eve was the moment for the last farewells to Christmas;
Herrick sings:--

"End now the White Loafe and the Pye,
And let all sports with Christmas dye,"

and

"Down with the Rosemary and Bayes,
Down with the Misleto;
Instead of Holly, now up-raise
The greener Box for show.

The Holly hitherto did sway;
Let Box now domineere
Until the dancing Easter Day,
Or Easter's Eve appeare."{74}

An old Shropshire servant, Miss Burne tells us, was wont, when she took
down the holly and ivy on Candlemas Eve, to put snow-drops in their
place.{75} We may see in this replacing of the winter evergreens by the
delicate white flowers a hint that by Candlemas the worst of the winter
is over and gone; Earth has begun to deck herself with blossoms, and
spring, however feebly, has begun. With Candlemas we, like the older
English countryfolk, may take our leave of Christmas.

|356| |357|

CONCLUSION

The reader who has had patience to persevere will by now have gained some
idea of the manner in which Christmas is, and has been, kept throughout
Europe. We have traced the evolution of the festival, seen it take its
rise soon after the victory of the Catholic doctrine of Christ's person
at Nicea, and spread from Rome to every quarter of the Empire, not as a
folk-festival but as an ecclesiastical holy-day. We have seen the Church
condemn with horror the relics of pagan feasts which clung round the same
season of the year; then, as time went on, we have found the two
elements, pagan and Christian, mingling in some degree, the pagan losing
most of its serious meaning, and continuing mainly as ritual performed
for the sake of use and wont or as a jovial tradition, the Christian
becoming humanized, the skeleton of dogma clothed with warm flesh and
blood.

We have considered, as represented in poetry and liturgy, the strictly
ecclesiastical festival, the commemoration of the Nativity as the
beginning of man's redemption. We have seen how in the carols, the cult
of the _presepio_, and the religious drama, the Birth of t