FIFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
Bring in the Boar
Soon after I first started making letterpress printed limited edition books in 1994, I named my press Red Wagon Press, and that was good, but it turned out there were other Red Wagon Presses out there, so by the early oughts Seth and I were on the lookout for a new press name. We tried a few on for size, but ultimately it was Convivio Bookworks that won out. We began using that name in 2003, and it seemed a good fit, for the name suggested celebration and festivity and an honoring of heritage: all things that we have come to love and try to honor in our little Lake Worth home.
The Convivio name comes directly from an ancient Christmas Carol, the Boar’s Head Carol. Do you know it? It is a Macaronic carol, meaning it contains both Latin and another language, in this case English.
The Boar’s head in hand bear I
Bedecked with bays and rosemary
And I pray you, my masters, be merry
Quot estis in convivio! [So many as are at the feast!]
The Boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all the land
When thus bedecked with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico! [Serve with a song!]
Caput apri defero,
Reddens laudes Domino! [The Boar’s head I bring, giving praises to God!]
Our steward hath provided this
In honor of the King of bliss,
Which on this day to be served is.
In Reginensi atrio! [In the Queen’s Hall!]
Caput apri defero,
Reddens laudes Domino!
It is a carol connected directly to Queen’s College, Oxford. As the story goes, a young student of the university many centuries ago was out in the surrounding woods when he was charged by a wild boar. The student saved himself with the only weapon he had upon him: a dusty old volume of Aristotle, which he shoved down the throat of the charging beast and which did the beast in. He then brought the boar’s head back to the college and had it for dinner, to much fanfare… and so the tradition goes. The tradition persists despite wild boar being virtually extinct from Britain since at least the 12th century.
To the Celts, the boar was sacred, a gift from the Otherworld, ferocious, feared, respected, and the provider of the great feasts of midwinter. And so on this day, we are to bring in a great feast: the theme of yuletide through the ages. Back in more celebratory times, folks would not work at all through the Twelve Days of Christmas. Nowadays, however, most of us return to work soon after Christmas Day. My recommendation? Whatever feast you can conjure for tonight is a good one. It need not be as elaborate as a boar’s head. Whatever it is, do it with fanfare and celebration and you will be honoring the spirit of this Fifth Day of Christmas.
Here’s something else you might enjoy: One of our readers, Melissa Wibom in Sunnyvale, California, sent me a link to a BBC Radio 4 program about Christmas carols. She had sent a link to one part of the series, one that mentioned our Boar’s Head Carol. Seth and I listened just yesterday… and in the process got hooked, enough that we wanted to listen to the entire ten part series. Each part is only about ten minutes long. It’s extremely entertaining and informative. Seth and I are not a “Here Comes Santa Claus” or “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” kind of people. Songs like that are all well and good, but they’re not very complex and they don’t have staying power. When we speak about Christmas lasting Twelve Days in this house, our house is filled with the kind of music you’ll hear in this program. It’s called A Cause for Caroling. The first part is at the bottom of the webpage, so start there. You will hear old old carols you may never have heard before, or carols that have some resonance of memory for you, songs you know in your bones and heart if not in your ear.
So go, feast and be merry. Listen and enjoy. You, too, will shout with the likes of Seth and me and all through the ages hailing this dark and mysterious midwinter time: “Welcome, Yule!”
Image: “Sentimental Ballad” by Grant Wood, 1940, oil on masonite, 24 x 50 inches, New Britain Museum of American Art. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. As the image may suggest, there’s always someone who doesn’t like Christmas carols. We, however, do. The image also follows something you’ll learn listening to the BBC program: Christmas carols are, by and large, things that came out of pubs, not churches… which may explain why Christmas was banned in Puritan England. Music of the people, earthbound hymns. Cheers!