Category Archives: Christmas

Dec 20 2016
8 Comments
Advent, Christmas, Solstice, Yule

Darkest Night

And once again the solstice is upon us: winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. We here in Lake Worth are in the Northern, where the nights have been growing longer and longer since our summer solstice in June. Each day a bit more daylight has been shaved off our allotment, and sent to the opposite hemisphere. The great mechanical balance of this, all its immensity: so beautiful, so constant. I am reassured always by this. No matter what is going on in our lives––all our triumphs and our hardships, too––no matter what we do to each other, or how we disrespect this planet we live upon, still it rocks back and forth, still this motion continues. This shifting of the Earth in its cosmic rocking chair is what creates our seasons. It goes on with or without us, as it has since it began and will until it ends.

Here in the North it is the start of winter by the almanac. By traditional reckoning of time, though, winter began with Halloween and with the Days of the Dead and we find ourselves now at the height of winter, it’s midpoint: This is old Midwinter. This is why, in so many churches and in so many homes this time of year, we sing a beautiful old song called “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

The moment of solstice, for those of you who like precision, is 5:44 AM on December 21 here in Lake Worth, which is Eastern Standard Time. The Eastern Time Zone is pretty large, though, and there are ways of determining the solstice moment––of “sun standing still”––with even greater precision should you wish it. In this house, we take a more roundabout approach. Plus 5:44 in the morning is an admittedly odd time of day to celebrate anything. So we will save our celebration for the night of the 21st, with a ceremony small and simple. We’ve been saving last year’s Christmas tree in a corner of the yard all year. It’s been there since we brought it out after Twelfth Night last year, after the Christmastide festivities came to a close. It’s been drying since then, as the days grew longer through spring and summer, and still as the days grew shorter again through fall and the start of winter. Every now and again throughout this past year, we would be blessed with a whiff of pine, a reminder of Christmas, as we passed by or worked near the old tree. That scent an instant portal to memory. On solstice night, we will use wood from that tree to fuel our midwinter fire. For us, it will be in the copper fire bowl outside in the back yard.

Perhaps you, too, have been following our ways and saving your old Christmas tree each year for this purpose. I like to sit there by the fire and imagine our sparks and woodsmoke rising into the air to meet yours, carrying all our wishes and blessings. But maybe you don’t have your old tree, or perhaps you live in a place where a fire is just not possible. Or maybe you simply don’t have it in you to build a fire. It’s okay. My suggestion always is to simply light a candle to mark the night and to take in its blessings. Light it for just a few minutes and then put it out, if you wish. And if you can’t do that, even if you illuminate a lightbulb somewhere and do it in a spirit of connexion with the mechanical clockwork of our immense planet, that, too, is a wonderful thing. Part of the Convivio approach is to not fret over things but to find ceremony where we can. This is what we mean by “the ceremony of a day,” and what better time to put that into practice than this, the shortest day, the longest, darkest night?

 

Image: “Earth at Night.” Released by NASA December 5, 2012, this photo was assembled from multiple shots taken by the Suomi NPP satellite during April and October 2012. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jan 06 2016
2 Comments
Christmas, Epiphany

Brightest and Best

FatherChristmas

TWELFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
Epiphany

Do you know the old hymn “Brightest and Best?” I think it’s sometimes called “Star in the East.” No matter what you call it, it is a good song to sing for today, Epiphany: Brightest and best of the sons of the morning; Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid; Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

That star of the east guided the Magi, and Epiphany marks the day they arrived at the stable in Bethlehem and first beheld the divine child born at Christmas. Tradition tells us the Magi were three wise men: Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. They each brought a gift to the child, gifts rich with symbolism: Gold for kingship, frankincense for the priesthood, myrrh for death and burial. The manifestation of the child to the Magi represented his manifestation to the broader world: it was no longer a local event.

When I was a boy, Mom would sometimes refer to Epiphany as “Little Christmas,” and this is certainly one good way to look at this unassuming holiday/holyday. It holds a special place in my heart because the passing of Christmas Day always made me a bit melancholy, even as a boy. Epiphany, or Little Christmas, gave me a bit of Christmas to hold on to all the way to the sixth day of January.

Over the years, our traditions for the day have grown to include a bit of practical magic. Some of you may do this, too, and if you don’t, perhaps you should, for magic is powerful stuff, and here is magic anyone can conjure: It is a simple ceremony at the front door, outside on the front porch, to close the celebration of Christmas on Epiphany night. We gather up all who are in the house and we 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+16. These are the initials of each of the Magi, punctuated by crosses, blanketed on either side by the year. For me, the inscribing is always accompanied by a silent prayer that no one will be missing when we gather next to write this same inscription.

There are some years where the inscription is quickly weathered and by the following Christmas it is there only as a faint ghost of itself. Other years it remains clear as day throughout the year. All the year through, though Christmas be gone, still the inscription is there to remind us of Christmas’s 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 that doorway, harboring the goodwill and spirit of Old Father Christmas.

Tradition tells us that this is the day to take down the Christmas tree. Some, in fact, think it bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up longer than Epiphany, though we don’t subscribe to this notion. We like to return all natural greenery back to nature. Wreaths and garlands can be composted for the garden, and the tree itself we set in a quiet corner of the garden to be saved as the fuel for our Midwinter Solstice fire come next year. It is a ceremonial and respectful way to honor the tree that has been the centerpiece of your Yuletide festivities all these days. So much more honorable than putting it on the trash heap. The pine boughs also make good compostable ground cover around roses (or so I learned from the Sabbathday Lake Shakers, and their gardens are worth emulating). In some circles, folks keep their greenery as cheerful decorations to their homes all the way through Candlemas on the Second of February, when Yule gives way to Imbolc and winter begins its shift to the earliest stirrings of spring.

In early December, before Christmas began, during Advent, we prepared our houses for the guest to come. The guest is the child, but also it is Old Father Christmas: all the traditions of thousands of years, through all the snow white ages. He comes to stay with us for a few short weeks each year, welcome or welcome not. It is right and good that we welcome the guest and when his time with us is done, to send him off into the cold dark night with warmth and kindness and respect. What we send out to the world so returns to us. This I believe and this is at the heart of my respect for the ways of the seasonal round, so as to more firmly connect us to earth and heavens. And each other.

Our Yuletide journey is near complete. Thank you for coming along with me. A few surprises still await: small and quirky celebrations, vestiges of Christmas that will remain for days to come. The first one is tomorrow. I suppose some things never quite end, and this, too, is right and good.

 

Image: “Old Father Christmas,” an illustration from Forrester’s Pictorial Miscellany for the Family Circle, 1855. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Jan 05 2016
10 Comments
Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night

ELEVENTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Twelfth Night, Eve of the Epiphany

The close of the Christmas season begins here, and just as our Christmas celebration began in the nighttime hours of Christmas Eve, so the same comes Twelfth Night. If this is confusing (that Twelfth Night should come on the Eleventh Day), remember that even today, much of the way we celebrate holidays is based on traditional reckoning of time, in which a new day begins at sunset. This is why the nights before holidays are so important: Consider Christmas Eve, of course, but other nighttime events, as well, like Hallowe’en (the Eve of All Hallow’s) and at Easter, Holy Saturday, with its vigil Mass that begins only with the setting sun. And so Epiphany Eve, which is tonight, ushers in Epiphany the next day. The night is best known, though, as Twelfth Night, and it has long been a night of great festivity. When it comes to Twelfth Night, the more raucous the celebration, the better. It is a true vestige of the Roman Saturnalia festival of ancient midwinters, right down to one of the most common Twelfth Night customs: the baking of a cake that contains a hidden bean. In some places, it’s a bean and a pea. He who finds the bean is crowned King of the Bean; she who finds the pea, Queen of the Pea. These folks get places of honor at the revels. In the old engraving above, which pictures a grand old Twelfth Night gathering, you can be sure there is a King of the Bean somewhere amongst those folks, and maybe even a Queen of the Pea.

I am always fascinated by images of rousing old parties like this. I think it’s because I am the most awkward person at parties; and yet I picture the Van Tassels’ Quilting and Merrymaking Frolic in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or the Fezziwiggs’ Christmas Eve party in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and I am pretty confident I’d have a blast at either one. There would be fiddler and a caller and an abundance of food and steaming punch and, well… if you have a party like this, I hope you’ll send me an invitation. I’ll be there with bells on.

There is very little of this Twelfth Night festivity nowadays, especially here in the States where the colonial Puritans did a very good job of setting the pace for work, work, work… not to mention putting the cabbash on Christmas in general. But Christmas survived in this country despite their best efforts. Twelfth Night, however, might be considered a casualty. But I think we need Twelfth Night. Old Father Christmas comes to be with us each year for a visit that lasts but a couple of weeks. It’s only right to send him on his way again in proper fashion, and in our house, that means a celebration––even a small one if that is all we have left in us––is in order. Dinner should be a good one, and a festive Christmas punch is a nice accompaniment, as would be the same wassail we drank on New Year’s Day. Friends and family would be a great addition, as well as good music and an old game or two, like Snapdragon: Fill a shallow bowl with golden raisins and pour a bit of brandy over them. Darken the room (like the darkness of midwinter) and carefully set light to the brandy. Play the game while the brandy is aflame: Each person in the room snatches a raisin from the bowl and makes a wish upon the raisin before popping it into his or her mouth. This old game from Scotland may sound dangerous, but it’s less so than it would seem. Be careful all the same, of course. Each person’s wish should be granted before the next Twelfth Night… or so the story goes.

Christmas ends each year with Epiphany, which will come tomorrow. New things, meanwhile, are just stirring. Twelfth Night and Epiphany usher in the Carnival season. In place like Acadiana, tonight’s revels roll over into the parades and balls hosted by the local krewes that culminate with Mardi Gras, which this year falls on February 9. But again, I’m getting ahead of myself. As for Epiphany, it marks the day the Magi arrived at the stable in Bethlehem after nights of following the star that announced the birth of the Christ child. One of the most endearing figures in the story is an old Italian woman who is known as la befana. She and the Magi are the last of the midwinter gift bearers. Those three kings (los tres reyes) are the ones who bring presents tonight in Spain and Latin America, but in Italy, this is the job of la befana. As the story goes, at that first Christmas oh so long ago, the Magi stopped at la befana’s house and asked her to join them on their journey, but she declined the invitation. “I have so much housework to do!” she told them. And so the Magi left her home and continued on their way.

But as she swept her floors, la befana began to feel a bit remorseful, and once she finished her sweeping, she set out to find the Magi. But she never did find them, nor the child they had told her about. She searched and searched but to no avail. Still, to this day, on each Twelfth Night, la befana sets out upon her broom to seek them. As she makes her rounds, searching high and low for the child and the three kings, la befana leaves small presents for all the sleeping children. Even the ones who were naughty: they get coal, but la befana’s coal is sweet as candy, so even her coal is a nice present to receive.

It is la befana’s job to sweep away Christmas, and so she does this each year. She sweeps and sweeps, and by the time she’s done with her sweeping tomorrow at Epiphany, Christmas will be done. The Magi will return to their distant countries, and Old Father Christmas, whether he was welcome or welcome not, will be on his way back to the Northland. But the wheel of the seasonal round will continue to turn and new days of wonder will be upon us, even as we just begin to miss the Yuletide visitors who came to spend these dark midwinter nights in our company.

 

Image: “Twelfth Night Merry-Making in Farmer Shakeshaft’s Barn,” an engraving by Hablot Knight Brown (better known as “Phiz”) from the book Mervyn Clitheroe by William Harrison Ainsworth, c.1850. Today’s chapter of the Convivio Book of Days is a slightly moderated version of last year’s chapter for Twelfth Night. Like a visit from an old friend, or from old Father Christmas, slightly older, slightly wiser.

 

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