Note 808 — Chapter XI · THE BEGINNING OF WINTER

Mogk, iii. 391. Tille, Y. and C. 152, gives some earlier explanations, criticizes that of Mogk, and offers as his own a reference to a custom of baking a cake (placenta) to represent the physical motherhood of the Virgin. The practice doubtless existed and was condemned by Pope Hormisdas (514-23), by the Lateran Council of 649, the Council of Hatfield (680), and the Trullan Council (692). But Bede must have known this as a Christian abuse, and he is quite plainly speaking of a pre-Christian custom. J. M. Neale, Essays in Liturgiology (1867), 511, says, ‘In most Celtic languages Christmas eve is called the night of Mary,’ the Virgin, here as elsewhere, taking over the cult of the mother-goddesses.