Christmas and Camelot—not the most natural pairing in the modern mind. Through much of British history, however, King Arthur’s feasts, which contained “all the bliss of this world,” were the paradigms for aristocratic Christmas celebration. Some Scottish sources—including the preface to the first printing of John Knox’s famous History of the Reformation in Scotland—even claim Arthur invented Christmas! The 14th-century chivalric romance “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” which is set during the 12-day celebration from Christmas on December 25th to Epiphany on January 6th, allows us to hear, for a fleeting moment, the distant strains of merry song and solemn bells that once marked the Medieval Christmas-tide. All quotations are from the Tolkien translation of the poem.
The opening scene is of a resplendent Camelot, bedecked in green, red, and gold. The ladies and lords of Arthur’s court, which was “under heaven first in fame,” feast and play light-hearted games with “merriment unmatched and mirth without care.” Notably absent, however, is mention of worship, or recognition of the reason that Christmas is celebrated.
Into this festive hall thunders the Green Knight, an enormous otherworldly figure, “all of green…both garments and man” astride a massive emerald stallion, clasping a holly branch in one hand and burnished bronze battle-axe in the other. He suggests a new game, which “well becomes the Christmas tide,” very different from Arthur’s games, which were played “with the moods of a boy.” The Green Knight will give his great gleaming axe to any man of the court fierce enough to strike him: “I will stand a stroke from him, stock-still on this floor, provided thou’lt lay down this law: that I may deliver him another” a year and a day later. Met with silence, the Green Knight laughs at the empty boasting of the Round Table; “Where now is your haughtiness, and your high conquests, your fierceness and fell mood, and your fine boasting? Now are the revels and the royalty of the Round Table overwhelmed by a word by one man spoken, for all blench now abashed ’ere a blow is offered!”
And here we meet our hero—the noble Sir Gawain steps forward, offering himself as representative of the court. The concern raised by the Green Knight—that the court is false—is scarcely allayed, however, by Gawain’s first speech, a spate of what is clearly false humility. “I am the weakest, I am aware, and in wit feeblest, and the least loss, if I live not—” says the knight who has taken for his symbol the pentagram, medieval symbol of perfect virtue! Gawain lifts the glinting green axe—the blade flashes—the head of the Green Knight rolls on the floor. In an eerie scene, the headless trunk of the body strides, stately and slow, across the court, lifts his head, and holds it aloft, where it announces that it will expect Gawain at the Green Chapel in a year and a day. At this point, it is scarcely possible to imagine a game which less “well-becomes Christmas-tide”—except, perhaps, that the knights have been forced, by the entrance of an inhuman figure, who cannot die, to face the very real consequences of human mortality, the same mortality the Word willingly assumed when He “took on flesh and dwelt among us.”
The seasons pass, and Sir Gawain departs to seek the Green Knight, leaving the court of Camelot with “sighing hearts,” that their most honorable knight might be “beheaded by an elvish man for an arrogant vaunt.” Wandering far in pursuit of the unknown Green Chapel, he defeats a host of monsters but is almost felled by the driving sleet and cold tumbling brooks of English winter. This is a sincerely human moment in the otherworldly Romance—Gawain, the perfect knight, almost succumbs to an inglorious death beneath the smothering hand of winter. On Christmas eve, he cries out to the Lord, praying for “some harbor where with honor I might hear the Mass and thy Matins tomorrow.” He suddenly spies through the oaks a shimmering castle, radiant white, whose painted pinnacles were “clustered so thickly that all pared out of paper it appeared to have been.” (An interesting medieval detail—paper cut-outs were common in medieval Christmas celebrations, meaning this metaphor carries with it some of the whimsical charm that coming upon a gingerbread house might for us.)
Within the castle, a feast is taking place, as joyous and luminous as Arthur’s, but with one notable difference—the primary festivities relate to the birth of Christ. The lord and lady of the castle, after greeting Gawain hospitably, lead the way into the chapel. The celebrations are in honor of Christ’s sacrifice in coming to earth; happiness “wakes on earth for His sake.” The generous lord informs Gawain that the Green Chapel is less than two miles away—the knight, who “would fainer fall dead than fail in [his] errand,” is delighted, and agrees to pass the twelve days of Christmas-tide in the castle. The lord suggests a final Christmas game—he plans to hunt every day, and what he wins in the wood will belong to Gawain. Anything the knight receives in the castle will belong to the lord, and in this way, they will test who has the greater luck. Easy enough—until the lady of the castle begins to woo Gawain. Caught between his honor, which obviously demands he doesn’t sleep with the wife of his host, and the chivalric tradition of courtly love, which doesn’t allow him to ignore the lady, he eventually allows her to give him a kiss. Abiding by the rules of the game, he gives a kiss to the lord of the castle that night. The same thing happens on the second day, but on the third, the last before he ventures to the Green Chapel, the lady gifts him a shimmering green silk belt enchanted to grant him invulnerability. Gawain keeps the belt to save his life, breaking his word to the lord and giving him three kisses instead.
The fateful day arrives. Gawain rides to the Green Chapel, a strange and haunting hollow hill, and is met by the Green Knight. Twice, the Green Knight swings at Gawain and diverts his blade at the last moment, testing his bravery. On the final swing, he barely nicks his neck. Furious, and tired of being made sport of, Gawain springs up and draws his sword, demanding an explanation. Laughing, the Green Knight reveals that he was given his magical strength and green color by enchantment, and that his true form is the lord of the white castle, Gawain’s host for the past three days. The small cut of the axe was because Gawain broke his troth; though he found Gawain “the most faultless knight on earth,” he nonetheless declares, “you lacked, sir, a little, and of loyalty came short. But that was for no artful wickedness, nor for wooing either, but because you loved your own life: the less do I blame you.” Despite the Green Knight’s light-hearted forgiveness, Gawain is destroyed when confronted with the fact that has broken his troth. “I confess, sir, here to you,” he cries, throwing the belt onto the ground, “all faulty has been my fare.” Gawain’s reaction appears extreme, even to the Green Knight, who laughs at the violence of his reaction—unless we realize that Gawain really believed in his own perfect virtue, now proven to be a farce. Breaking his troth, “lacking a little,” also broke his image of himself as the perfect knight representing the perfect court—broke his faith in human perfectibility. Gawain is forced to confront that the human institution of chivalry is flawed, and ask the Green Knight if he might “gain [his] grace anew.” Finally, we understand why the Green Knight’s game is fitted for Christmas—it reveals Gawain’s need for grace. A humbled Gawain returns home with a new defining symbol— the belt, tied around his arm. “And thus,” he explains, “when pride my heart pricks for prowess in arms, one look at this love-lace shall lowlier make it.” The pentagram, human arrogance pretending to perfect virtue, has been replaced by the belt, humility which opens the door to grace.
It is rare that Christmas celebrations focus on the ugly, awkward subject of human sin, preferring to focus on the sanctity of that holy night, the infinitely miraculous collision of heaven and earth. This medieval Christmas poem, however, reminds us that, just as recognition of his fallibility made Gawain more honorable, the recognition of the dark shadow of sin in which our world is cloaked makes the piercing radiance of Christmas even sharper. Let us celebrate in a way that proves the poem true: “In the morn when every man remembers the time that our dear Lord for our doom to die was born, in every home wakes happiness on earth for His sake.”
