Category Archives: Advent

Dec 05 2016
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Advent, Krampus, St. Nicholas, The Gift Bearers

On Advent, St. Nicholas, and Speculaas

stclaus

Holiday confession time: When the Advent season arrives as early as it did this year, which basically stems from Christmas itself falling on a Sunday, I have a harder time than usual transitioning into the Christmas spirit. We’re already past the Second Sunday of Advent (it was yesterday) and still you’ll find dried corn hanging on our front door and orange lights strung on our bookcase. Though we’ve been opening the windows on our advent calendar, we had to catch up the first couple of days because we didn’t have a calendar chosen on the First. And life’s been so busy, Seth and I have ourselves quite a lot of catching up to do on our advent candles.

Ah, but tonight comes St. Nicholas’ Eve, and with this night, we welcome the first of the Midwinter gift bearers, wending his way through the midwinter darkness. Advent and Christmas suddenly seem more tangible, more real. On years like this, St. Nicholas serves as my reality check.

Although Santa Claus is a super big deal here in the States, and though we often call him Old St. Nick, the real St. Nicholas barely earns a blink of anyone’s eyes here. But there are other parts of the world, especially throughout Europe, where this is a very important night indeed. It is the Eve of St. Nicholas (St. Nicholas’s Day being tomorrow, the 6th of December), and children there 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.

In these overnight hours, the old bishop will make his rounds. Good children 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, a bit terrifying… the punisher of children who have been naughty. These two are not as secretive as our American Santa. There are parades this time of year throughout Europe for St. Nicholas’ Day and Krampus pretty much steals the show at some of these parades, especially in parts of Germany, where tonight is known as Krampusnacht.

I love the time of the Midwinter gift bearers. Such a beautiful way to make the Midwinter darkness 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, 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. 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). The first of the gift bearers gives us reason to celebrate tonight; we hope you’ll join us in that.

Image: Our Steenstra’s speculaas, ready to go. Just have to mull that wine now.

 

Dec 02 2016
Advent, Book of Days Calendar

Your December Book of Days

followthatstar

Now it is December, and here is your Convivio Book of Days calendar for the new month. It is a month of increasing darkness on the way toward old Midwinter, the longest night of the year. It is a month of preparation, of making our homes as fair as we are able, for Old Father Christmas is on the approach. We would do well to take our time, to appreciate each day of this last “ember” month of the year rather than rush headlong into the celebration on the horizon. Seth and I think of this as the Slow Christmas movement: appreciating the approach, the anticipation, the preparation, setting the stage for joy. This is what Advent is all about. Christmas will be here in due time and will bring with it twelve days of celebration, days that stand outside ordinary time in the wheel of the year. The ceremony of each day is what this blog, this story, is all about. This becomes especially true at this time of year.

Friday night, the Second of December, come see us at Social House in Downtown Lake Worth. It’s their 2nd Annual Holiday Maker Meet, and we’ll be there with our traditional handmade Christmas ornaments from Germany and Mexico, as well as our German Christmas pyramids and handmade daily Advent candles from England. It’s also the night of Lake Worth’s Christmas tree lighting, on the cultural plaza at the City Hall Annex, in view of Social House. It should be a lovely night. Please come by Social House and say hello! We’ll be there with many of our favorite local makers. 6:30 to 10 PM.

 

Dec 21 2015
8 Comments
Advent, Christmas, Solstice, Yule

Receiving Radiance

solstice

Since the midsummer solstice in June, we have been gradually losing daylight here in the planet’s Northern Hemisphere. Just a bit each day. By the autumnal equinox in September, day and night were equal. And now, here at the midwinter solstice, we reach the end of that cycle: It is the longest night of the year. Tomorrow, the pendulum begins its shift to the opposite and light will once again begin to increase. It is the clockwork of our planet, the constant rearrange, each day slightly different from the one before it and the one that follows.

For those of us who keep the traditional ways, the revels of midwinter are just now getting underway. We’ve been preparing all these weeks––last night, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we lit the fourth candle in the advent wreath, completing the circle: four purple candles and one rose. The daily advent candle is burning down, too: just four nights from now, the candle will be gone. Our time of preparation is coming to a close and the real festivity is about to begin with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the Twelve Days of Christmas that follow: six of which are in the old year, six in the new––twelve days that stand outside of ordinary time.

But that is still ahead of us. For tonight, we celebrate the planet’s reaching its wintertime zenith in its constant shift, like an old man in his rocking chair on the porch. On this longest night of the year, Seth and I will head out into that midwinter darkness, and in the copper fire bowl in the back yard we will light a fire made from the wood of last year’s Christmas tree, which has been resting quietly in a corner of the yard all year long. It is our own little tradition but one that we feel honors best the spirit of the tree that brought us so much joy last yuletide. This year, the actual moment of solstice––of sun standing still (from the Latin sol stetit, “sun stands still”) is 11:49 PM here in Lake Worth, which is Eastern Daylight Time. You can count on us being out there at our fire at that moment (and for a good while before and after, as well), probably with a bottle of St. Bernardus Christmas Ale.

Will you join us in spirit? We’ve been talking about our solstice tradition for years now, so maybe there are some among you who also save last year’s tree for this night. Or maybe this is your year to begin doing so. Or maybe the best you can do is to light a candle with us tonight at 11:49. Wherever you are and however you join in, we are here as light bearers ourselves, receiving radiance from others: from sun, from flame, from the kindness we send out into the world reflected upon us. We bid you peace. Welcome yule.

Here’s a yuletide gift for you, from us: it is Björk’s song Solstice. You will most likely have to endure a brief advertisement before the video, but once that part is done, I’d suggest viewing it full screen and turning up the volume a bit. It is a simple and beautiful song, just Björk’s odd and powerful voice accompanied by the gravity harp, a musical instrument created especially for the songs on her 2011 record Biophilia. This song and its accompanying video remind me of the great immensity of things, of things much larger than my self and my concerns. Sometimes seeing the bigger picture is very comforting.

 

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