Custom survived: Waltham Cross Bakers and Sweeps Flour and Soot Boxing Day Football Massacre

“numbers are a bit down this year we usually like to have all around the pitch covered. Its because Tottenham are playing at home. I tried to get Pochettino to make sure they weren’t but he could manage it.”

So spoke one of the organisers wryly as I surveyed the pitch at this most bizarre seasonal custom. Football is long associated with Boxing Day, more of which in a future blog post perhaps, but this was something else. The crowds were indeed down but this would stop the enthusiasm for this bonkers boxing day bonanza!

Self raisin

The custom begun as an amusing way to raise money for Cheshunt Cottage hospital. Although there appears to be no record of when exactly begun or who thought to establish it; the earliest date being 1905, however it is generally agreed that it begun in 1909. It soon became established as a popular event and in 1910 a souvenir postcard was even produced with all the players named and the score sweeps 2 bakers 1. An early account appear no different from the normal sports fixtures it would appear suggesting the distinctive craziness had not yet developed on the pitch but had on the run up to it as recorded in Andrea Gilbey and Les Wells’ excellent and much recommended history of the custom The Bakers and Sweeps Flour Soot and Mayhem:

“Football charity match – Bakers vs Sweeps – The annual interesting encounter took place on Boxing Day morning at Cheshunt recreation ground. The respective teams dressed at the Falcon Hotel and marched to the field of battle with brushes (Sweeps) flying; headed by the Temperance Band. The Bakers in their spotless whites, were a distinct contrast to the sweeps, who were indeed a motley crowd, with their tattered and torn garments and dirty shoes….the popular captain of the Sweeps caused endless amounts of fun on the march to the ground.”

Indeed, special silver medals were made. One such in 1928 showed a football between the feet or a short, fat baker, holding a baker’s peel, who’s head and body are made from a cob loaf and a tall, skinny chimney sweep, holding a dustpan and brush and who’s body is made from a bundle of chimney rods and brush.

The band was a regular part of the procession and whilst a procession before the match still occurs when the team members collect money from local businesses, houses and passers by the band has gone.

So did the custom nearly as the second world war caused an unwanted hiatus and it did not return until 1951 however by then the comedy was fully developed:

“when the play begun the fun started in earnest. All the rules of soccer were discarded and the game developed into a free for all catch as you can encounter with a mixture of rugger, hockey and football. In fact it was one of the funniest slapstick encounters we have ever witnessed since the game was first conceived….there were of course interventions of course when the players set off a smokescreen on the field, while the bursting of fireworks gave one impression that the somehow Boxing Day had got mixed up with November 5^th.”

Flour up

Like all great sporting fixtures the two teams lined up for the traditional meet the dignitary, not a member of the royalty but the town’s mayor. However this was a meet the team with a difference as one by one soot and flour was deposited on the head of the mayor.

Indeed, this barrage of soot and flour is as much a tradition as the game itself and the team members took great pride in getting the Mayor dirtier and dirtier with one of the team captains gently guiding her to each assailant. A great article in Gilbey and Wells book states:

“Gangs of black and white hooligans posing as footballers savagely attacked the mayor of Broxbourne Cllr Gerald Cookson and his Mayoress wife Sadie as they went for a boxing day stroll over Waltham Cross playing fields. They pelted the Mayor with soot and flour and smothered the Mayor with shaving cream but nobody came to the rescue.”

This was all tongue and cheek of course!

Sooty and Sweep

The teams was made up of a wide range of bizarre customs – a carrot, an elf and bizarrely a blind baker complete with white stick and glasses – no one said this was going to PC! It was worse in 1977 with Bunny girls being made available to provide half time drinks…

After the line-up, the game appeared to start without even a ball, the participants simply enjoying covering each over with flour and soot. Then a rugby ball was tossed in, to0 much confusion considering this was supposedly a football game, but it was kicked causing it to spin around uncontrollably and at one point the ball disappeared under a scrum of every single member baker and sweep and a few bystanders as well by the look of it too!

But of course one ball wasn’t enough and soon two, three, four, five, six and seven balls of differing sizes were thrown onto the pitch, causing considerable confusion. But soon some goals were scored and cheers came from the crowd.

At one point cling film being wrapped around one goal to add comedy value as one if the participants surged into it and bounced back, but still scored a goal. At one point there appeared to be a foul and one of the bakers was then taken to the stocks, although for pedantry sake it was really a pillory. He was then ceremonially covered with as much soot and flour as remained.

Half baked ideas

At some point the tricks and pranks became one of the central tenants of the custom. Over the years Gilbey and Wells tell us that they ranged from exploding tanks, cannons, Daleks to a Pantomime horse scoring a penalty. Finally in a concern that the game was becoming a bit too unruly (never) and attempt to orchestrate came about, especially as there might have been some concern, especially as fireworks might be used, that it might become unsafe and the pranks derail the game as such a script was written! Whether this idea stuck is unclear, but in 1983 a list of pranks was made including:

“smelly loo, Andrew Clayden running amok with an emu, A guillotine to cut off players heads and this to be used as a football (!)..obtain a grocer’s bike to ride the length of the pitch and score a goal.”

Then it was half time. No oranges (from the bottom of the stocking or not) this time but beers. It was a brief break and soon the game was on again. This second half being dominated by a space hopper used as the ball, which was kicked and rose into the air some considerable height considerably, but rather than being kicked was hopped over the line! At one point a member of the Sweeps caused the goalie to fall over and so this was a good enough excuse to have him gunged! Sadly the giant ball much beloved of the game did not appear. Apparently despite sitting deflated at the touchline it was so beaten and broken that it could now no longer be inflated I was told.

A clean sweep

At the end the two teams were invited to a traditional tug of war which ended up with a rather uneven Bakers side loosing and being dragged across the mud. Then it was over for another year. This year it was a draw – not by my reckoning it was but I don’t anyone was really taking score.

 

With the sounds of Yakety sax blaring out the speaker appropriately I did feel I’d been dragged back to a more innocent time the 1970s; this was a very Tiswaz like event resplendent with gunge tanks and its mirth making mess makers. However, despite its 20^th century nature it is difficult not to think that this has an even older origin. It is possibly that the custom was a resurrected earlier one which had been forgotten, a type of mob football often seen on holidays such as Boxing Day, which may have existed in the area and not been recorded by any local antiquarians. Indeed, even the procession beforehand has the feel of a mummers tour for largess. Whatever the true origins of the custom it is one to be cherished in this day of overproduced fare. Simple knockabout humour and great fundraising too. A local event indeed, but one which deserves to be better known.

Custom demised: Cattle kneeling on Christmas Eve

“The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”

Isaiah Chapter 1, verse 3

It was once believed that at the bells rang at midnight, the cattle in their barns would kneel in honour of the occasion. The belief would appear to be an extrapolation of the account in Isaiah as neither St Matthew’s and St Luke’s gospel mention it and from this slight on how the people of Israel disregard Christ compared to the animals, grew into the belief immortalized in paints and illustrations. It became such a widespread belief that Thomas Hardy’s 1895 Tess of the d’Urbervilles:

 “Well, then he called to mind how he’d seen the cattle kneel o’ Christmas Eves in the dead o’ night. It was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into his head to play a trick upon the bull. So he broke into the ‘Tivity Hymm, just as at Christmas carol-singing; when, lo and behold, down went the bull on his bended knees, in his ignorance, just as if ’twere the true ‘Tivity night and hour. As soon as his horned friend were down, William turned, clinked off like a long-dog, and jumped safe over hedge, before the praying bull had got on his feet again to take after him. William used to say that he’d seen a man look a fool a good many times, but never such a fool as that bull looked when he found his pious feelings had been played upon, and ’twas not Christmas Eve. …”

Indeed, Hardy was so interested in the custom that he celebrated it again in poetry in 1915 for The Times on Christmas Eve:

“Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. ‘Now they are all on their knees,’ An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen; Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. 

So fair a fancy few would weave  In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, ‘Come; see the oxen kneel

‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb, Our childhood used to know,’ I should go with him in the gloom,  Hoping it might be so.”

 John Brand in his 1849 Observations of popular antiquities of Great Britain was the first to record the folk custom, although as Steve Roud in his 2008 The English year states that it was extremely well-known in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Brand states:

“An honest countryman, living on the edge of St. Stephen’s Down, near Launceston, Cornwall informed me, October 28^th 1790, that he once, with some others, made trial of the truth of the above and watching several oxen in the stalls at the above time, at twelve midnight, they observed the two eldest oxen only fall on their knees, and as he expressed it, in the idiom of the country, make ‘a cruel moan like Christian creatures’

Testing the belief

Of course, the first test of this belief would come when in 1752 the calendar was changed from Julian to Gregorian, but a contributor to Bentley’s Magazine in 1847 had a way of explaining it:

“It is said as the morning of the day on which Christ was born, the cattle in the stalls kneel down; and I have heard it confidently asserted that when the new style came in, the younger cattle only knelt on December 25^th while the older bullocks preserved their genuflections fir old Christmas Day, January 6^th

Despite this explanation many thought the event implausible, even Brand himself:

“I could not but with great difficulty keep my countenance; he saw this, and seemed angry that I gave so little credit to his tale, and walking off in a pettish humour seemed to marvel at my unbelief.”

Despite these early scoffs there may well indeed be people who believe this happens as Roud (2008) states and it is interesting to note perhaps that the belief was strongest in the USA.

Custom transcribed: Christingle

Around 20 years ago I started noticing reference to Christingle service back in the late 80s as a I travelled around visiting churches. There did not seem any pattern to when they were done. Some were done on the first Sunday in December, others at a random Sunday in the run up to Christmas, some Christmas eve. All of them in advent. So I tried to delve deeper. These were the days before internet and my searches failed. Unfortunately, I was not living near a church which had such a service at the right time.

Then finally I discovered that the Christingle was a curious structure used to represent Jesus consisting of an Orange as the base, a ribbon, sweets and most importantly a candle. But where did this custom come from?

The orangins of the custom

Marienborn, Germany, 20th December, 1747 is the birth date of the Christingle. The creator, the minister, John de Watteville. At a children’s service he explained to the children that Jesus was he:

“who has kindled in each little heart a flame which keeps burning to their joy and our happiness”.

To emphasis he gave them a little lighted wax candle, tied round with a red ribbon. He ended the service with a prayer:

“Lord Jesus, kindle a flame in these children’s hearts, that theirs like Thine become”.

Interestingly it is recorded that Marienborn Diary stated:

“hereupon the children went full of joy with their lighted candles to their rooms and so went glad and happy to bed”.

This was of course just a candle and ribbon. Over the years it appears that the Christingle developed. Now the central object is the orange which represents the world, the lighted candle Christ, the Light of the World and the ribbon the blood he shed. The addition of nuts, raisins and sweets on cocktail sticks around the candle represent God’s bounty and goodness in providing the fruits of the earth. Red paper, forming a frill around the base of the candle, reminds us of the blood of Christ shed for all people on the cross at Calvary.

The name itself is a curious one. According to the Moravians no one knows when it was first used or from where it is derived. Some believe it comes from German engle meaning angel, or the German for child, remembering the importance of the Christ child, ‘kindle’ or more likely perhaps the Saxon word ‘Ingle’ for fire!

A wide a-peel!

“The services are suitable for all the family. They include Advent hymns and carols, prayers for our work, and a purse presentation by children of the diocese. Children go forward to receive Christingle oranges and the Christingle hymn or carol is sung by the light of these alone.”

Gateway, Children’s society magazine 1970

So how did a custom associated with a fairly obscure Christian group get to be in so many churches? The reason comes back to The Children’s Society and a man called John Pensom. He saw in 1968 the Christingle as way to involve children and introduced it to the church of England. It soon grew, by 1969 seven churches adopted it, by 1970 around 18 were held. Then in 1989, Coventry Cathedral and York Minster had special Christingle services to celebrate 21 years of the adoption. A giant Christingle was lit and like the Olympic flame, this was used to light another and then another. I should add this giant Christingle did not use an orange. In 1997, Liverpool Cathedral was the place to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Christingle This prominence may have again helped its’ spread, for by the 1990s, thousands of such services were held. Today virtually every Anglican church has adopted it, from Cornwall to Northumberland and it has spread to the Church of Scotland and Catholic churches. Not bad for a custom whose membership is only just a million compared to the 85 million Anglicans!

One could cynically easily see the adoption of the Christingle as a clever awe and wonder fun device to get families back to church but it is evident that it is beyond that. The Christingle in this world of abbreviations and acronyms is a clever metaphor and symbol, not too preachy but fun, a way to get the message across in this world of quick messages. Long may in spread and bright light to those cold December evenings.