Category Archives: Christmas

Dec 30 2017
4 Comments
Christmas

There Was a Pig Went Out to Dig, Again

FIFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Bring in the Boar

It’s been an incredibly busy Christmas week for us, and yesterday, as Seth and I were driving home through Downtown Lake Worth from some errand or other, we passed by a house that had a rather large animal grazing in the front yard garden beds. I did a double take because at first sight I thought it was a small bear. But we both came to the realization a moment later that it was, in fact, a big pig. It was the first time either of us had seen a pig that size in Lake Worth, but we were not terribly surprised, for our longtime motto has been “Keep Lake Worth Quirky,” and the sight of a big bristly pig grazing unattended in a front yard is just part of what makes Lake Worth, well… Lake Worth.

The timing was spot on for our first urban pig sighting, for today, this Fifth Day of Christmas, is all about the boar, which is a pretty much just a wild version of the domesticated pig. The boar has also got a deep connection to Convivio Bookworks. Please read on to learn more; it’s all in this reprint of last year’s Convivio Book of Days chapter for the Fifth Day of Christmas, which I don’t think I can improve upon this year… so enjoy all of you: “Quot estis in Convivio!”

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On this Fifth Day of Christmas, tradition for an old English Christmas would have us focus on feasting. In particular, we would “bring in the boar.” We tend to remind you here at the Convivio Book of Days blog each Fifth Day of Christmas about the Boar’s Head Carol… mainly because our Convivio Bookworks name comes from that same carol. It is an ancient carol that comes out of 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… with the fanfare of this carol:

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!

We have never served a boar’s head and don’t ever plan on doing so, but we have served other feasts during Christmases past. It is appropriate, I think, to sing the boar’s head song while serving up any great feast… you might just change the words a bit. (“The crown roast in hand bear I,” for instance, works really well.)

Aside from the Queen’s College story and our old Boar’s Head Carol, there are other associations between the boar and these darkest nights of midwinter. Pigs were especially sacred to the Celts, for they provided the winter’s meat and the belief was that pigs were a gift from the underworld. And in the Scandinavian countries, Frey, the sun god, rode across the sky on a boar with golden bristles that shone like rays of the sun.

There is, as well, a fun old carol that is sung by the Revels children’s chorus. It’s all about animals, but it begins with a pig. Seth and I were singing it just last night, in fact. I don’t even know why. Perhaps it is just the persistence of memory and the timely reminder that the focus for this next day of Christmas would be on the boar.

There was a pig went out to dig
Chris-i-mas Day, Chris-i-mas Day,
There was a pig went out to dig
On Chris-i-mas Day in the morning.

There was a cow, went out to plow,
Chris-i-mas Day, Chris-i-mas Day,
There was a cow went out to plow
On Chris-i-mas Day in the morning.

There was a sparrow, went out to harrow,
Chris-i-mas Day, Chris-i-mas Day,
There was a sparrow, went out to harrow
On Chris-i-mas Day in the morning.

And so on it goes with crows and sheep and drakes and minnows. But it is the pig this Fifth Day of Christmas that steals the show. Whatever your feast may be this day, I pray you, my masters, be merry, quot estis in convivio!

 

Image: Seth discovered this image of a wild boar depicted in one of the stained glass windows at Bethesda by the Sea Episcopal Church on Palm Beach. We don’t go there very often, but we do make it one of our stops on our annual Maundy Thursday pilgrimage to three churches. Each year we visit this boar, like an old bristly friend.

 

Dec 29 2017
6 Comments
Christmas

Surely You Jest

FOURTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
The Feast of Fools

On this Fourth Day of Christmas, the normal order of things is ceremoniously reversed. It is the Feast of Fools. There are many who would say that this is the normal order of things lately, and I’d have a hard time disagreeing with them. But hopefully your home is in a better state than the world at large, and for today’s Feast of Fools, you might put the children in charge of things. Let them decide what the day’s activities are, let them decide what’s for dinner. Allow yourself to be a little foolish for the day. There’s no harm in that.

The Feast of Fools traditions descend directly from the Roman midwinter festival of Saturnalia that informs most of our Christmas traditions. They come out of chaos and entropy: the chaos of the old year dying, unraveling at the seams. A new year is about to be born. As the year goes, so have gone other things through this Yuletide: the sun must die at the solstice to rise again, the son born at Christmas must die to rise again at Easter. The story is an ancient one, told over and over again, in many guises. The story never grows old, and it is the story even of our Convivio Book of Days: it is the wheel of the year, turning always, renewing always. The times and players change and yet the story is essentially the same. It is, to me, both comforting and perplexing. And if today it helps us all to laugh at our ways, all the better.

Image: “The Laughing Jester” by an anonymous painter, c. 15th century, Netherlands. Located at the Art Museum of Stockholm [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons. At the Feast of Fools in olden times, the jester would rule the Court and could speak truths without repercussion, truths that no one else would dare say out loud.

 

Dec 28 2017
3 Comments
Christmas, St. Nicholas

Unless Ye Become As Little Children

THIRD DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Holy Innocents’ Day, Childremas

Pure and simple: Today, this Third Day of Christmas, is all about kids. If you have children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren or nieces or nephews, celebrate them today. But don’t forget as well to celebrate the child you once were. That kid is in there somewhere, and so is that sense of wonder, and it is good sometimes to check at the door all the weight we carry of the world and just be a bit like that old self. 

In that same spirit, I’m going to check out slightly tonight and give you for this Third Day of Christmas a reprint of the Convivio Book of Days chapter for the day, one first published on December 28, 2013. I’d write a fresh post, but we are trying to get our winter greetings out in the morning mail, and, well… there is only so much I can do in a day (or a late night). I will mention one thing that I’ve learnt about Childremas since last Christmas: The day was viewed with such great superstition that it was considered unlucky even to put on a new suit on the Third Day of Christmas, or to clip your fingernails, or to flat out begin any project at all. It is the day we remember the innocents slaughtered by order of King Herod after he heard of the Christ child’s birth. Not everything about the Christmas story is good; the story of the Holy Innocents is one that is truly disturbing. Our lesson, perhaps? Never underestimate the threat of an insecure, self-centered man in a position of power.

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The 28th of December has long been considered the unluckiest day of the year. It is the Third Day of Christmas, Holy Innocents’ Day, and it gets its name from the slaughter of the children of Judea at the order of King Herod after the birth of Jesus, who feared losing his earthly throne to the child. Commencing any undertaking on the 28th of December was to be avoided, especially a marriage or a business venture, for anything begun on this day, it was thought, would certainly fail to prosper.

Be that as it may, the Third Day of Christmas has always been focused on children, and it is a good day to honor not only the children in your life, but also the children we once were: to reconnect with a time when we were more willing to suspend disbelief, more willing to be fully immersed in things, as children are wont to be. The child you were has certainly informed the adult you’ve become, so there is a thread that resonates across the years. This, we feel, is something worth nurturing.

One of the oldest midwinter traditions in the Church is the election of a Boy Bishop each St. Nicholas’s Day on the Sixth of December. He would be chosen from the choirboys, and he would rule until Childremas, this Third Day of Christmas. The office was serious business. The Boy Bishop wore full vestments and mitre, and he would perform all the duties of a bishop, save for celebrating mass, although he did often deliver the sermons. The actual bishop would, in some places, have to follow the orders of the Boy Bishop. These traditions tap into the ideas of the Feast of Fools, as well, where the normal order of things is ceremoniously reversed (which blends into the customs for the Fourth Day of Christmas, tomorrow), and perhaps relates to the words of the Magnificat: God has put down the mighty from their throne and has exalted the humble and the meek.

In medieval times, the Boy Bishop could be found in most every cathedral in France, Britain and Germany during the Yuletide season. The custom was treated with such seriousness that if he should die while in office, the Boy Bishop received the same burial honors as a real bishop. The 1869 Chambers Brothers’ Book of Days gives mention to one unfortunate Boy Bishop who did come to his end while in office, telling us that a monument to his memory may be found on the north side of the nave at Salisbury Cathedral.

In Spain and Latin America, the Third Day of Christmas is a day for practical jokes, the victims of which being called inocentes, although sometimes it is the prankster that gets that name in a plea for forgiveness. No matter how you spend the day, the theme, it seems, is universal: celebrating and honoring children.

Image: A scene from one of the Advent calendars I had as a boy. I saved every one of them. I think traditional German Advent calendars are a sure path back to the language we once spoke as children… and that’s pretty much the reason why we sell them at our website.

 

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