Author Archives: John Cutrone

Dec 10 2020
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Hanukkah

Chanukah

The eight days of Hanukkah begin tonight, with this evening’s setting sun. Every time I write about Hanukkah, I feel a bit like I shouldn’t, for it’s always the same: I write about the latkes and the jelly doughnuts. What can I say? I like good food, and the things I can taste are the things I understand. I write, too, about light in dark times: eight nights of ever increasing light surely must be placed near the darkest time of the year for good purpose.

Be that as it may, I asked my good friend Judith Klau if she would be a guest blogger tonight for the Convivio Book of Days. To give us fresh perspective. But also because I love Judith and you would, too, if you knew her. She was a friend to Arthur Jaffe, whose collection of books evolved into the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, which I now direct. Judith volunteers there whenever she visits from Boston. Some of my favorite times at work are when I get to pair up with Judith to talk book arts with visitors. I’ve got the charm, somehow, but Judith’s got that plus the brains. We’ve shared this bookish connexion together for years. We’ve shared each other’s joys, and we’ve shared each other’s sorrows. When her partner Robert passed, Seth and I went to sit shiva with her. And last December, when we lost our pal Mike, who lived a rather solitary life, she was one of the few to come honor him and to spend time with us. I don’t think the wake and our Catholic ways were quite what she expected, but seeing Judith walk in warmed my heart.

When I asked her if she’d write some personal memory for Hanukkah, Judith got to work immediately and sent this. She apologized for not sending a memory but rather a screed. I had to pull down the dictionary to look up screed, which is how it goes sometimes when I chat with Judith. Already I had learnt something new, and I hadn’t even read her screed yet. Folks like Judith help make us better versions of ourselves. Ladies and gentlemen: I give you the thoughts of Judith Klau (who has me wondering now about the choice of spelling I’ve been using for Hanukkah all these years). –– John

 

CHANUKAH
by Judith Klau

Chanukah. Ok, let’s start with the spelling. I like this one because it tries to replicate the Hebrew orthography, the “ch” at the beginning (that my Yiddish teacher says is like the “ch” in the Scottish “Loch,” which is like substituting one unknown algebraic equation for another unknown algebraic equation) and the unvoiced “h” at the end. Well, do with it what you will.

But that does lead me into the conundrum of Chanukah, which is that the best part of the story (and the worst part) is that the story probably isn’t true. Is Santa real? Was there a Christmas tree in Bethlehem? What’s your definition of “true”?

The story that I learned in Sunday school was that Bad Greeks desecrated the Holy Temple by bringing in pigs. (That was the unholiest thing anyone could think of for people deprived of bacon.) When a brave band of brothers [sic], led by the oldest, Judah Maccabee, vanquished said Greeks, they found that the eternal light had gone out with only one small cruet [sic] of oil for it remaining. Now the commandment for this light is one of the facets of this post-biblical holiday that is in fact found in the Hebrew Bible. So its importance at least is “true.”

The story continues that it was determined that the nearest source for holy oil was eight days away. The cruet, however, held enough oil for only one day. And the crux (a Christian word if ever there was one) of the story is that that tiny remnant of oil lasted for eight days, hence the Chanukah Miracle, hence the eight lights, the eight nights, the oil, etc.

I was in my 70’s before I heard anyone say different. Here’s a precis of one scholarly interpretation: during the historical period of hostilities between Greeks and Jews, there was no access to the Temple; the people therefore couldn’t observe one of the Biblical holidays, Sukkot, a harvest festival that lasts eight days. It may later have become conflated with Chanukah, and the new holiday took on the numerology of the old. The whole Chanukah megillah, a term from yet another holiday, is beautifully explained here, at Haaretz.com. Even though, by my lights, they use that funny spelling with all the k’s. There’s probably a website about that and another one about why Sukkot is eight days.

So here’s your choice: Chanukah without the story, or Christmas without the tree. Be a kid, which is when the eternal light of our best delight learns to shine, and make your own memories.

Sad but realistic P.S.: Embedded in this history is another eternal light: that Jews are always in danger of being absorbed into the majority culture. That to me is the essence of the historical Chanukah story, the scary part. So seeing Chanukah lights, hearing that Sunday school story repeated, even tacky Chanukah displays and simple-minded songs (etching themselves into my brain as if they had a red-light at the end of their nose) help to dissipate that particular scariness at this darkest time of the year.

Image courtesy of Judith Klau, who writes: “Here are my children eating the traditional food of the holiday, potato latkes (pancakes). They are purists and choose sour cream as a topping. Some people choose apple sauce, and this year I am SHOCKED to hear that people are putting ketchup on latkes. In Yiddish we call that a ‘shandeh,’ a disgrace!”

Opening image: Chanukah Candles photographed by Breslevmeir, 2020 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

In lieu of a brief bio of Judith Klau, here’s a brief video. It’s an excerpt from an oral history project about her time at the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts, where Judith was the English Department Head. It’s got a little bit of all I love about Judith.

 

Dec 05 2020
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Krampus, St. Nicholas, The Gift Bearers

Greetings from Krampus & St. Nicholas

The 6th of December brings St. Nicholas’ Day, but the 5th brings the Eve of St. Nicholas, the traditional night when St. Nick delivers presents to children in the lands where he is loved… especially Germany, Austria, Northern Italy, and the Netherlands. He is the first of the midwinter gift bearers, wending his way through these darkest nights.

On the Eve of St. Nicholas, the old bishop will make his rounds. Wise children will place their shoes by the chimney before going to bed in hopes that St. Nicholas will fill them with gifts. They’ll set out carrots and hay for his donkey. If they’ve been good, they might wake up on St. Nicholas’ Day to find their shoes filled with fruits and nuts and sweets and small toys. But St. Nicholas does not wander alone; he travels tonight with a dark companion. The companion goes by many names, depending on the region––Knecht Ruprecht, Black Peter, Pelznickel… but he is best known as Krampus: half man, half goat, horned and furry, with an astonishingly long tongue. St. Nicholas, dressed in his bishop’s robes and hat, concerns himself with the good children. Krampus deals with the naughty ones. He carries chains or birch switches and oftentimes a sack, in which he gathers up the bad children who deserve nothing more than to be carried away. It’s a bit terrifying, but also good fun––especially in the Krampusnacht parades that feature both St. Nick and Krampus.

I love the time of the Midwinter gift bearers. Such a beautiful way to make these darkest nights somewhat less dark (despite Krampus). St. Nicholas will be followed over the next few weeks by the Christkindl, by Santa Lucia, by Father Christmas and Santa Claus, by los Tres Reyes (the Three Kings) and a kind old witch named Befana who will sweep away the remnants of the Christmas season in early January.

But that’s all a long ways away. For us tonight here in this little old house in Lake Worth, we will leave our shoes by the bed, which we always do. Our small old home has small old closets, and so we almost always have a couple of pairs of shoes outside the closet––there’s just no place in the closet to put them. I don’t know if St. Nicholas and Krampus will make their way this far from Europe, but chances are good that once we go to bed, Haden the Convivio shop cat will spend some time hunting down her little stuffed animal toys––in particular, Cat in the Hat––carrying them about and making the odd cries that cats make once they have caught their quarry, and maybe tonight she will drop one of them into someone’s shoe, as she is wont to do so many nights. But before those magic overnight hours, we will brew ourselves some tea, or maybe some mulled wine, and we will for sure open a package of Steenstra’s St. Claus cookies, like we do each year on this night. The cookies are speculaas, a type of Dutch cookie made for St. Nicholas’ Eve. They sell them all year long at the Publix bakery in a small cellophane-wrapped package. The cellophane is clear and the box inside is bright orange. The Steenstra family emigrated from the Netherlands to Michigan in 1926, and that’s where the cookies are still made, as they have been for about 90 years now. They taste of almond and warm spices like ginger and clove, and they depict five different scenes about St. Claus (more correctly about St. Nicholas of Myra, the kind fourth century bishop who gave gifts to the poor while they slept). There is St. Claus on a horse (a derivation of that donkey), a boy and a girl (because they like to receive presents from St. Claus), a rooster (because St. Claus starts his day at sunup), an owl (because St. Claus works til sundown), and a windmill (because St. Claus lives in a windmill).

So whether you be visited by St. Nicholas or by Krampus, or by a cat that drops presents in your shoes, tonight something special is bound to happen. Enter the gift bearers onto the midwinter stage––there is good reason to celebrate this night.

Today’s chapter is a reprint of one published on December 5, 2019. It’s been a heck of a week here and the Eve of St. Nicholas has completely snuck up on me. It’s ok; these things happen. I did, however, just check the Publix delivery option for Steenstra’s St. Claus cookies and they did not come up… and so I may have to venture into the store myself to see if they are there. We do have wine, though, and we are stocked up with mulling spices. In fact, we use mulling spices so often during these midwinter nights, you may want to be stocked up with them, too. Here’s a direct link to the Shaker Mulling Spices we sell at our catalog. If you’re local and need some, order using the discount code PICKUP at checkout, which will deduct the $8.50 shipping charge, and I will bring them by to you if you live in the 33460 zip code, or you can come by here for a front porch pick up.

Images: Steenstra’s St. Claus cookies. At the top, a late 19th century or early 20th century Krampusnacht postcard from Germany.

 

Dec 01 2020
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Book of Days Calendar

Dispel the Night, or Your December Book of Days

And now it is December. The nights grow long, and dark. We are taught to fear the darkness, and yet such gorgeousness emerges from it: the twinkling of stars in the distant sky, and the sparkling lights that we toss upon trees and rooflines this time of year to call those stars down here on earth.

Symbolically, we counter the darkness in our ceremonies. Advent begins now with a single illuminated candle in a ring of four; by the Sunday before Christmas, all four candles will be lit. Hanukkah will soon come, too: eight nights, and again, more and more light as we go deeper through those dark nights. Sankta Lucia on the 13th and the brightly burning candles of Christmas Eve, that silent, holy night. Candlelight continues through the Twelve Days of Christmas that follow Christmas Day, and with each night of Kwanzaa, too: each candle representing a principle of heritage. Each candle adding its light to the sum of light.

In this spirit of light comes your Convivio Book of Days calendar for December. It is a printable PDF, and we welcome you to print it, pin it, keep it as a companion to this Book of Days blog. As the month goes on, I will be writing about most of the days listed on the calendar, and then some: each day that follows Christmas Day, for twelve days, has some particular traditional connexion to Christmas. I’ve not yet decided if I’ll be writing a new post each day, as I’ve done in the past, or if I’ll write about several days at a time, for less frequent posts. If any of you have input or suggestions, I’m open. I worry sometimes that twelve posts over twelve days is too much for many folks to take in, but I worry, too, that the significance of days gets forgotten when I write about so many at one time. Whichever way it goes, my wish remains the same: that we each will hide not our light.

Our big Christmas Stock-Up Sale continues at our online catalog. $10 off your purchase of $75 across the catalog, plus free domestic shipping. Or just good old free domestic shipping with your purchase of $50.

 

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