Category Archives: Christmas

Jan 13 2025
1 Comment
Christmas, Copperman's Day, Plough Monday, St. Knut's Day

Plunder the Tree!

In Sweden, the twentieth day after Christmas is a significant one: January 13 brings St. Knut’s Day, and for Swedes, this is the day to toss out the Christmas tree. First, it must be plundered: if there are cookies and foil wrapped chocolate ornaments still on the tree, this is the day they get gobbled up! Gingerbread houses get smashed and eaten! Every last candy cane is consumed! It is a proper and festive end to the Yuletide season.

The Swedes, who like to sing and dance around their trees when Christmas Eve comes (have you seen the 1982 Ingmar Bergman film Fanny and Alexander?) will be singing and dancing around their trees again today before the tree is plundered and tossed. The tossing, traditionally, was out the window, though these days that practice is frowned upon; it’s more common nowadays for clubs and civic organizations to collect the discarded trees. They stow them away for Walpurgis Night bonfires at the end of April. All of these things––the dancing, the singing, the bonfires––suggest to me that Sweden is a pretty decent place to live. Plus, how nice to have a proper and widely acknowledged Close to Christmas day? Here in the States, where it’s not unusual to see a tree tossed sadly on the curbside as early as the 26th of December, I’d say we could use a bit of guidance like this (not to mention a bit of celebration, too, to close the season).

This year, the 13th of January also brings Plough Monday and Copperman’s Day. Both of these obscure holidays fall each year on the Monday after Epiphany, and here we are today at that Monday. Copperman’s Day is the more obscure of the two: It is an old Dutch printer’s holiday, and on this day, the print apprentices would get the day off to do what they wished in the print shop. The resulting prints they made, of their own design and creation, they’d sell for a copper. Plough Monday relates to St. Distaff’s Day, which was last week, on the day after Epiphany. St. Distaff brings the traditional Back to Work day for the women (back to their spinning), while Plough Monday brings the traditional Back to Work Day for the men (back to the plough).

As for us in this house, we’ll be ignoring these things, for the most part. Our tree, which is still lovely and thirsty and thriving and beautiful, will remain standing in the living room, where we intend to keep it, along with all the other Christmas greenery, until Candlemas Eve on the First of February. This is a tradition just as old, I imagine, or perhaps even older than the St. Knut’s tradition in Sweden. And we’ve been back to work since last week (employers these days don’t want us taking off all the days ’til Plough Monday). And whilst I do make a Copperman’s Day print each year, it’s a rare event indeed when it actually is done on Copperman’s Day. If I get to organize my print shop tonight and set some type, that alone will be a miraculous thing. Expect the newest Convivio Bookworks Copperman’s Day print by early February (if all goes well).

However, I can tell you what we do plan on for tonight: an illuminated Christmas tree, and delightful Swedish Christmas music in the house on this long winter’s night. The songs (like “Nu är det Jul Igen,” a 500-year old Dancing Around the Tree song whose lyrics essentially translate to Now it is Christmas again and it will be Christmas until Easter –– no, that isn’t true, for in between comes Lent) are full of wonder and joy, which is perhaps not what one would expect from a land so dark and cold at this time of year. Or perhaps it is just what you’d expect. I can’t say. All I know is we intend to make it a fun night here in our home, and I encourage you to do the same.

 

Today’s chapter of the Convivio Book of Days comes to us thanks to the suggestion of Convivio friend Rachel Kopel in San Diego. We spend most Friday afternoons together on Real Mail Fridays, the letter writing social I host on Zoom most Fridays for the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Rachel joins us, leaves sometimes for ukulele practice, then joins us again before the social is done. We’d love to have you join us, too. We meet the most interesting people at Real Mail Fridays!

Image: A Swedish penny postcard for Christmas, printed in the early 1900s. The artist is Jenny Nyström. The characters in the truck are called Tomten: Swedish elves who live in barns. God Jul (Happy Christmas).

 

Jan 06 2025
6 Comments
Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night, Twelve Days of Christmas

Our Epiphany

The Sixth of January brings Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas by our method of counting six days in the old year and six in the new, with Yuletide in its constant role, bridging us across the years: ending our years, starting our years. No wonder, then, Christmas is such an extraordinary time.

For most, Epiphany is the close of the Christmas season. It is said the Magi, who had been following the star through the desert land for twelve days, finally reached the child in the barn on this day. Seeing the child was their great epiphany, and in turn, ours. Epiphany is a celebration even older than Christmas itself. The Church early on recognized that Epiphany holds the great symbolism that this news of the savior’s birth was for all people. The Magi are not from Judea. They are from distant lands. By journeying for twelve days and paying homage to the child, the Magi show that the message is universal.

In our home, we close the main celebration of Christmas on Epiphany night with a simple ceremony at the front door, outside on the front porch. We will gather up all who are in attendance (which very often is just Seth and me)  and we will each take turns writing with chalk on the lintel above the front door the numbers and letters and symbols of a traditional inscription. This year, it will read as follows: 20+C+M+B+25. These are the initials of each of the Three Kings (C for Caspar, M for Melchior, B for Balthasar), punctuated by crosses, blanketed on either side by the year. I tell you this each and every year: For me, the inscribing is always accompanied by a silent prayer that no one will be missing when we gather next to write the inscription again. Depending on the weather, the inscription may be there above the door for a month or it may be there all the year through. And though Christmas be gone, still the inscription reminds us of its presence as we pass each day through that portal. The inscription is a magic charm of sorts, protecting the house and those who pass through the doorway, harboring the goodwill and spirit of the Christ Child, and of the Three Kings, and of Old Father Christmas, too.

It is those Three Kings, the Magi, who bring presents to children in Spain and Latin America. This, done in the overnight hours of Twelfth Night, or Epiphany Eve, which comes upon us as the Fifth of January becomes the Sixth. The Magi are some of the last of the Midwinter gift bearers, but they are not alone, for in Italy, on this same night, la Befana, the kindly old witch, makes her rounds on her broomstick delivering her presents. La Befana is tied to the Three Kings story, for, as the legend goes, the Magi and their grand procession happened to stop by her house as they set out on their journey that first starry night. They asked her to accompany them, but she said, “No, I can’t; I have far too much housework to do.” And I have known so many Befanas in my day: Italian women who are busy, busy, with no time to do anything else but keep the house clean and keep their families fed. It’s a tough job. My family is full of women who would probably say no to the Magi, too, if they were to knock on the door.

And so Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar went on their way, with their retinue and with their camels and with their gifts for the child of frankincense, gold, and myrrh. And as they went on their way, processing forth, la Befana picked up her broom, and began sweeping her home. She swept all the corners of all the rooms, and she swept her pathway, too, to the road. And as she swept and swept, she grew remorseful for not accepting the invitation of the Magi, and so, she decided, she would go and join them after all. But by the time she left her home, the Magi and their retinue were no where to be found. She got on her broom and flew here and flew there, and she searched and searched, but la Befana never found the Magi, and she never found the child. And each year now, on the Eve of the Epiphany, she searches again, in hopes of finding the Christ child. As she searches, la Befana brings presents for the children who have been good, and coal for the children who were not so good in the past year. But even her coal is not so bad a present, for it is usually sweet candy shaped like coal. (La Befana, is, after all, a kindly old witch.)

It is la Befana’s job, too, to sweep away Christmas for another year, and as she does, we return to ordinary time and the workaday world. But if you love Christmas as much as we do in this house, I bring you tidings of good news: your celebration need not necessarily end here with the close of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Though the major part of the celebration is done, the poet Robert Herrick reminds us that it is fine and good, too, to keep the Christmas greenery in your home for the rest of the month of January. This practice follows the ancient customs of his day, and we, here, each year follow Herrick’s lead. It is good at this point to put away many of the more contemporary decorations for the season, but it is perfectly fine, by this custom, to keep the greenery, to keep the candles and the stars and the lights on the tree. As long as the greenery is gone by Candlemas Eve, Herrick says, all is well. Candlemas Eve: the First of February, the Eve of St. Brigid’s Day, honoring Brigid, who bridges us from winter to spring. Robert Herrick’s approach is, we feel, a most sensible approach to Christmastide and the wheel of the year (especially if you, like we, are in love with Christmas).

 

TWELVE DAYS of CHRISTMAS SALE
At the shop, we are back to our regular hours: Saturdays from 11 AM to 4 PM, with occasional special events as well as hours by appointment. We absolutely loved seeing you at all of our Christmas Markets this past December, and we look forward to seeing you more in 2025. This Saturday at the shop (as well as online), our Twelve Days of Christmas Sale continues (a little longer than planned), with rare temporary markdowns on many of our Christmas items, as well as clearance prices on Christmas specialty foods, chocolates, and cookies. CLICK HERE to shop, or come see us this Saturday from 11 to 4 at the shop. The address is 1110 North G Street, Lake Worth Beach, FL 33460.

 

Twelfth Night fire in the chilly Lake Worth January air with roasted chestnuts and Rhineland steins of St. Bernardus Christmas Ale: It was a fine night.

 

Feb 01 2024
4 Comments
Book of Days Calendar, Candlemas, Christmas, Imbolc, St. Brigid's Day

Oranges, or Your February Book of Days

Welcome to February. Here is your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month, and we begin straightaway this February First with the celebration of Imbolc and St. Brigid’s Day, both of them signs of spring, for even in the dead of winter, we find ourselves here in the Northern Hemisphere just about forty days past the Midwinter solstice. It is a cross quarter day: in the wheel of the year, the cross quarter days mark the midpoints between solstices and equinoxes, and so yes: not only are we about forty days past the Midwinter solstice, but we are also forty days, more or less, away from the vernal equinox. Slowly, light has been increasing, and it will continue to do so all the way to the Midsummer solstice in June. It is the constant rearrange of this old earth, and Brigid is our bridge from winter to spring. She bids us welcome, though the steps be tentative, for the bridge may yet be icy and treacherous. So be it. We take that step, for there is no other choice. Our planet, on its course around the sun, dictates our path.

And tonight, St. Brigid’s Day becomes Candlemas Eve, and this is an important night if you have been following along on our Slow Christmas journey. If you have, you’d have used the Advent season to prepare for Christmas, and you would have certainly celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the Twelve Days of Christmas and Epiphany. And if you, like us, still have the Christmas tree and garland in your home, tonight is the night it should be removed. You may do what you wish, of course, but Robert Herrick, our old reliable 17th century Book of Days poet, reminds us of the consequences of not removing these last vestiges of Christmas greenery tonight in his poem “Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve”:

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe ;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall :
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind :
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)
So many goblins you shall see.

I, for one, need no goblins running amuck in my home, so here, we pay heed to Mr. Herrick’s advice. Aside from the goblins, though, leaving Christmas greenery up beyond this date comes with the risk of setting us out of step with the tides of the year. You might replace the garland and the tree with new greenery, for this is the day to fashion a St. Brigid’s cross, which looks a bit like a four-spoked wheel, of rushes or reeds. All signs now point toward spring, toward increasing light, toward rebirth.

Even the Church acknowledges this: Candlemas on the Second of February (tomorrow) is the day that candles are blessed in the church, but it is also known as Purification Day, which harkens back to an old Hebrew tradition: forty days after the birth of a son, women would go to the temple to be purified. And there it is again: renewal. And so Mary did this, for it was her tradition, and when she did, it was there at the temple that she and her infant child ran into the elders Simeon and Anna, who recognized the child as “the Light of the World.” This is the basis for the blessing of candles on this day, and the day’s lovely name, which is even more beautiful in other languages: la Candelaria in Spanish, la Chandeleur in French. In France, the traditional evening meal for la Chandeleur is crêpes. In Mexico, la Candelaria is a night for tamales and hot chocolate, while the procession and celebration in Puno, Peru, is typically so big, it rivals that of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. And while the First of February is the night that all remaining Yuletide greenery is removed from the home, tradition would have us keep nativity scenes up through Candlemas, the Second of February. And at sunset on Candlemas, we’ll go through the house, through every room, lighting every lamp, even for just a few minutes. My favorite song for the day is an old carol called “Jesus, the Light of the World.” Is it a carol for Candlemas? Who knows. Certainly the words echo those of Simeon and Anna, the elders in the temple, so as for me, I say it is.

And so tonight we will thank our Christmas tree and garland for their presence with us all through Christmas, and then quietly carry them out the back door and into a quiet corner of the backyard, returning to nature what is hers. We’ll store these things there, and they will become part of the habitat that is our yard, a bit of fir and cedar amongst the bamboo and the palms and grasses… and then when December comes around again, on the longest night, we will use what is left of the tree as fuel for our Midwinter solstice fire as we welcome down the stars and welcome back the light. I love this bit of ceremony. For us, it connects one Christmas to the next, as it sends Father Christmas off each year with respect and dignity.

SHOP OUR VALENTINE SALE!
At our online catalog right now use discount code LOVEHANDMADE to save $10 on your $85 purchase, plus get free domestic shipping, too. That’s a total savings of $19.50. Spend less than $85 and our flat rate shipping fee of $9.50 applies. Newest arrivals: Letterpress printed Valentine cards in the Valentine section, and check our Specialty Foods section for some incredibly delicious chocolate we found from Iceland, including a particularly Icelandic blend of milk chocolate and licorice. If you love both these things, well… Icelanders long ago discovered that covering black licorice in milk chocolate, then dusting the result in licorice powder, is just amazing. (Trust me: we’ve gone through two bags so far.)  CLICK HERE to shop; you know we appreciate your support immensely.

 

Our cover star for this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar is an 1889 painting that is officially untitled, but known also as “Oranges in Tissue with Vase.” It’s orange harvest season here in Florida. The painting, which is oil on canvas, is by Alberta Binford McCloskey, and comes to us via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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