Author Archives: John Cutrone

Jan 25 2024
Burns' Night, Literary Holidays

Old Long Since

We began the month singing “Auld Lang Syne” as New Year’s Eve welcomed in a new year, and now, close to January’s close, we get to sing it again. It is Burns Night: the night we celebrate the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Rabbie Burns wrote many songs, and there is nothing in particular about “Auld Lang Syne” that makes it a New Year’s song, and yet it has fallen into place there at the start of the year. And as much as we tend to think of the new year as a time to look ahead, January, named for the Roman god Janus, who looks both forward and backward, has long been seen as a time for remembering. This is what Rabbie Burns’ song is all about, for the words auld lang syne translate essentially to old long since, or old times.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

And it is right, I think, and it is good, to spend some of our time in this act of remembering: of putting things back together (re-membering: re-connecting). Especially tonight, when we remember Robert Burns and all those who love him. He was a sentimental poet, Robert Burns, and for those of us who love poetry, or who love Rabbie Burns, or even those of us who love Christmas, for soon the Yuletide greenery and lights must come down as we approach Candlemas Eve and St. Brigid’s Day… we come to a time in the Wheel of the Year where we might get a bit sentimental ourselves. But we need this on occasion: a cup o’ kindness, and the laughter and the tears that come with remembering.

And so it was the 25th of January in 1759 at Burns Cottage at Alloway in Scotland that Robert Burns was born. He did not live a long life, alas, but in 1801, five years after the poet’s death, the first recorded Burns Night supper was celebrated. It’s been celebrated around the world all these years since: people gathered ’round a table for a meal and for drinks (sometimes many drinks) and for readings and recitations of the Bard of Scotland’s poetry, and yes, to remember. And as each Burns Night supper concludes, with one more toast of whisky, all join hands and sing “Auld Lang Syne.” To be sure, there are worse ways one might spend a cold winter’s night.

A word to the wise: One week from tonight, from Burns Night, it will be Candlemas Eve, and if you have been joining us in celebrating a Slow Christmas, Candlemas Eve is the night when, traditionally, all vestiges of the Yuletide greenery are to be removed. Candlemas Eve comes at the close of St. Brigid’s Day, and it is Brigid who bridges us from winter toward spring. Plan accordingly!

 

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Image: “Robert Burns” by Peter Taylor. Oil on panel, circa 1787, National Galleries Scotland [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Jan 20 2024
2 Comments
St. Agnes Eve

Agnes Sweet & Agnes Fair

Last March, we lost a wonderful writer called Helen Barolini. I never knew of her work until I accidentally stumbled upon one of her books, Festa: Recipes and Recollections of Italian Holidays (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988) at a library book sale. I was drawn immediately to the title and the cover, as you might expect, and I spent a dollar on that book, one of my better investments. What a treasure it is. The book covers Italian celebrations throughout the year, another Book of Days of sorts. And though I will go long spells without pulling it off my bookshelf, I always think of Helen Barolini on this night, this 20th of January, because of something she wrote in that book about this night, St. Agnes Eve, the night before the Feast of St. Agnes of Rome, patron saint of young girls and Girl Scouts.

A bit about St. Agnes Eve customs first: tradition tells us that this is a night for romantic divination. I think of it as our first step toward the romance of St. Valentine’s Day. It has long been held as a night when young girls might expect to see visions of their future loves. In Italy, they might go to bed tonight without supper, quite voluntarily, so that they might dream of their future husbands. In Scotland, where Agnes is a common name (as is its reverse version, Segna), they will go to bed sated, but may stay up later than usual. There, the custom is to throw grain onto the soil of a field at midnight while reciting the following spell:

Agnes sweet and Agnes fair,
Hither, hither, now repair;
Bonny Agnes, let me see
The lad who is to marry me.

In other places, young girls will be baking cakes with the hope that their future husbands will come and turn them, or they will be walking to bed backwards with the hope that their future husbands will come to them in their dreams, or they will be eating a hard boiled egg before bed, yolk removed, the cavity filled with salt. The hope there, too, is to see their future husband. (With any luck, he’ll be carrying a pitcher of water, as well.)

Helen Barolini’s touching passage about St. Agnes Eve in her book Festa is about meeting, and losing, the love of her life, the writer Antonio Barolini: And though I fasted and hoped to see my intended as I slept on that eve, I never did picture Antonio Barolini in my imagination or in my dreams. But now I think how strange it is that his death came on January 21, Saint Agnes Eve.

She made an error in the day (January 21 is St. Agnes Day, not St. Agnes Eve), but still, that passage remains for me a poignant one. Our joys, our sorrows, intertwined, like the intimate dance of saints’ days and old customs that, in most cases, predate those days. These are the old stories that fascinate me.

For us English Majors, perhaps the first thing we think of most when we hear the words St. Agnes Eve is the Romantic narrative poem written by John Keats in 1820. It makes for fine reading this night, full, as it is, with the romance and ghostly apparitions one expects from a poem of that era, perfect for a cold wintry night like St. Agnes Eve. But it is a commitment, for it is a very long poem, indeed. Here, if you can’t read the poem in its entirety, is the sixth stanza:

They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adorings from their loves receive
Upon the honey’d middle of the night.
If ceremonies due they did aright,
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

And though I’ve hundreds of books in my bookcase that I’ve purchased over the years and not yet read, I am once again reading Helen Barolini’s Festa. Her book begins in December, which is not at all a bad place to begin a year, as so much of January is wrapped up still in the celebrations of midwinter. Christmas songs are still in my head as I go about my days, and I am still at work on this year’s Copperman’s Day print. I may very well be working on it tonight, this wintry St. Agnes Eve… perhaps even upon the honey’d middle of the night.

 

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At our online catalog right now use discount code LOVEHANDMADE to save $10 on your $85 purchase, plus get free domestic shipping, too. Spend less and our flat rate shipping fee of $9.50 applies. If you’ve not taken a look lately at what Convivio Bookworks has to offer, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you’ll find here… plus you know we appreciate your support immensely. CLICK HERE to shop.

 

My apologies to subscribers: This was meant to be published before I went to bed on Friday night, but I was so tired, I forgot to do so. As a result, subscribers will receive notice of this newest chapter of the Convivio Book of Days on January 21. Perhaps I am just tuning into the spirit of Helen Barolini, who had confused the date of St. Agnes Eve in her book. At any rate: my apologies if you’ve missed a chance at romantic divination for St. Agnes Eve, and if perchance you were not planning on divination, then that’s fine: just enjoy the read.

Our image today is an illustration for another poem called “St. Agnes Eve,” this one by Tennyson: more religious, less romantic, but just as cold and snowy. Wood engraving by the Dalziel Brothers after a design by Sir John Everett Millais. Published in Some Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edward Moxon Edition, 1857. Royal Academy Collection, London, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Jan 13 2024
Christmas, St. Knut's Day, Yule

Plunder the Tree! It’s St. Knut’s Day

In Sweden, the Christmas season began last month with Sankta Lucia’s Day on the 13th of December, and now, one month later, on this 13th of January, comes St. Knut’s Day: it is the day there when Christmas ends. And it ends with a plundering: All the cookies and candies that decorated the tree get eaten up! The Swedes like to dance around their Christmas trees with simple arm-linked rounds and skips, and this, too, will happen today, as it did on Christmas Eve… and then, finally, the tree is taken down (and sometimes tossed out the window).

I love things like this… and this, no doubt, is because I am a follower of rules. I stop at every stop sign I encounter on the road, I do every single push-up and jumping jack I’m told to do by my trainer, I do not cut corners. In Sweden, we know: Christmas begins now! (Sankta Lucia says so.) Christmas now is done! (Sankt Knut says so.) Organized rules! How grand is that?

Here in the States, we have no clear rules for these things. There was a time not all that long ago––in my grandparents’ day, when my mom was a kid––when folks got their Christmas trees on or near Christmas Eve and it was considered bad luck to remove Christmas decorations before Epiphany. But no one cares about luck these days and the rules have all been tossed out the window (along with the tree, perhaps). And though outwardly I am not a terribly organized person––my boss stepped into my office doorway earlier this week and, with widened eyes, said, “Whoa, I thought my office was messy”)––I do, in fact, love order. As Björk sings in one of her songs (a song called “Hunter”): I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me. I like knowing the rules and that’s probably my incentive in writing this Book of Days. I like knowing what’s expected of me each day.

And so while we here in the States never know, once Christmas Day has passed, when we might see a Christmas tree tossed curbside, it seems that in Sweden everyone knows that the tree comes down on St. Knut’s Day, for it, apparently, has always been thus. And how wonderful, too, that it’s done in a celebratory way: plundering the tree, smashing the gingerbread houses, gobbling up every last cookie and cake, and dancing rounds ’round the tree to songs with lines like Tjugondag Knut dansas julen ut och då plundras och kasseras granen!: “The 20th of Knut dances Christmas away and then the tree is plundered and thrown away!”

So we are, according to the Swedes, at the 20th Day of Christmas. Just enough days to count on all our fingers and toes. And certainly now a bit of clarity from this rule-follower is in order: Several weeks ago I told you there are two ways of counting the Twelve Days of Christmas and that the version I like best holds six days in the old year and six days in the new. I stand by that system, for I love the symmetry as Christmastide spans the ages. It is mostly churches that count the days differently, with the First Day of Christmas being Christmas Day (giving us seven days in the old year and five in the new)… and this is how the Swedes reckon things, too. For Sinkt Knut’s Day is widely known as Tjugondag and that word Tjugondag means “twentieth day.”

Aside from the plundering and the dancing, there are some regions of Sweden where folks would open their doors to all the neighbors in an effort to rid the home of all leftover Christmas treats… and once that was accomplished, the woman of the house would, armed with her broom but all in good fun, run through the house, sweeping under sofas, tables, and chairs, and then shooing all the guests out with blows of her broom, shouting, “Out Knut! Now Christmas is over!”

Here’s another end-to-Christmas song for dancing ’round the tree and smashing the gingerbread houses on this Tjugondag; it’s called “Nu är Glada Julen Slut, Slut, Slut”:

Snart är glada julen slut, slut, slut.
Julegranen bäres ut, ut, ut.
Men till nästa år igen
kommer han vår gamle vän,
ty det har han lovat.

Or, in English:

Soon merry Christmas is over, over, over.
The Christmas tree is carried out, out, out.
But until next year again
comes he our old friend,
for he has promised.

And good old Father Christmas does promise just this. I love the directness of Swedish Christmas songs. The most famous of them is the song that’s in the image at the top of this post: “Nu är det Jul Igen”. But that’s for the start of Christmas, at Christmas Eve, when folks first dance around the tree. It’s a centuries-old nonsense song whose lyric translates to, Now it is Christmas again and it will be Christmas until Easter. No! That isn’t true, for in between comes Lent. And so it does. Lent will come, Easter will come, Midsommar will come and the sun will never set, and then it will be harvest time and it will grow dark and Sankta Lucia will come and then it will be Christmas again.

Our image for today is from a print I purchased two Christmases ago at our local Swedish Julmarknad, or Christmas Market, which comes each November or December (depending on the year) at the First United Methodist Church in Boca Raton, Florida. Convivio Bookworks has a pop-up shop at the Julmarknad each year. It’s always a delightful afternoon!

Did you know we sell some truly delightful Scandinavian specialty foods at our shop? Just last weekend, my sister made homemade riskrem, the wonderful traditional Norwegian rice pudding. To make it, she cooked our Scandinavian Porridge Rice in milk, then added freshly whipped cream, and served it with our Wild Swedish Lingonberries and Vanilla Powdered Sugar. I added cinnamon and cardamom to the leftover riskrem with some additional vanilla powdered sugar and it was truly sublime. Oh, I wish I had more right now! Our Löfbergs Coffee from Sweden is also so good. It’s our favorite coffee in this house. I like the medium roast, but there is also a dark roast. Each bag contains over a pound of ground coffee.

 

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