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The main Christmas customs were those that were common throughout

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the country and which came from a time when farm labourers worked most days of the year, and often on Christmas Day morning. Mummers plays were a favourite and would normally be performed in the evenings in the big houses and farmhouses of the area. The performers would be rewarded with food and drink and, sometimes, with money. Most villages had a group of men who were the mummers and both words and actions of the play and costumes and props would be handed down from one generation to the next. Places from which mummers’ plays are remembered include, Stourton, Cricklade, Limpley Stoke, Amesbury, Maiden Bradley, Horningsham, Wootton Rivers, Woodford, Quidhampton, Stockton and Winterslow. Around Swindon in the 1830s, when it was still a small market town, they are recorded as going from door to door and, more especially, from pub to pub.

Carol singers were often groups of boys, or sometimes the church choir, who would visit the big houses of the neighbourhood collecting money. As with carol singers until the 1970s, these always gave good value by singing the full carol. At the larger houses they might sing two or three. There were some local carols, most of which have been lost, and some of these were original while others were adaptations of well known carols. At Berwick St. James it was the custom to wake up householders on Christmas morn by singing carols, which were learned by one generation from the preceding one.

An earlier tradition was wassail. Originally a fertility rite with live animals this later degenerated into processing around the streets, singing and collecting money in the wassail bowl. This happened at Cricklade where a live ox was once involved; by the 19yth century this had become a withey frame covered with a cured ox hide. In a few parts of the county, such as Everleigh, the parson organised a Christmas Ale for his parishioners, where instead of money being raised for the church the participants were provided with bread, cheese and beer. These seem to have died out in the early 17th century.

(Source: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getfaq.php?id=194 and http://www.wiltshirefolkarts.org.uk/wfmummers.htm, A Wiltshire Christmas, by John Chandler. Alan Sutton, The Folklore of Wiltshire, by Ralph Whitlock. Batsford)

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