Category Archives: Christmas

Jan 04 2016
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Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night

Following that Star

Stella

TENTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
St. Titus’s and St. Gregory’s Day

If you were lucky enough to have time off from work for Christmas, it is probably over by now. Many of us, myself included, are back to work today, this Monday after New Year’s. The immersion into ordinary time begins again. Christmas, however, is not quite over. There are still two more days besides this one. To end it properly, you would do well to mark its close on Tuesday night with Twelfth Night and on Wednesday with Epiphany. For today, this Tenth Day of Christmas, we have one last contemplative day. It is the feast day of a number of saints in the church calendar: St. Titus and St. Gregory, and also St. Rigobert and St. Ramon.

There are no traditional customs for this day. So aside from returning to work, it seems to me a good day (or evening, in our case) to prepare for the festivities to come. For two years now on this day we’ve been sharing with you our recipe for Three Kings Cakes, which we make most years in these waning days of Christmas. Sharing it with you today gives you time to bake the cakes so they are ready for Twelfth Night or Epiphany. The recipe yields three cakes, cakes you will prepare in three loaf pans, so gathering three pans is a good place to begin. You will end up with one cake for each of the Magi, who have traditionally been called Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, though no one knows who they were really. As the story goes, it took the Magi all this time to travel through the desert, and seeing the child lying in the straw was their great epiphany. The cakes we make in their honor are distinctly not modern. Their flavors are flavors of the ancient world, flavors the Magi would have known well: honey and rose water. We happen to sell a wonderful rose water, made at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine. If you’re local and you need some to bake these cakes, let me know and together we’ll find a way to get you a bottle in time.

Come tomorrow night, the last players in our Yuletide tale, all of them gift bearers, will make their entry onto the stage: those three kings, and also la Befana, the good Italian witch who is so busy at her housework each year, just like most of the Italian women I have known in my life, and I have known so very many. Grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, cummaras (cummari, to be proper), all of them busy at their work. And all of us, too: so busy, we don’t take time for what’s truly important. When la Befana realized she really did want to go with the Magi to see the child, it was too late. And still she wanders, searching for the child. Keep in mind we will not be remembered for our efficiency once we are gone. We will, however, be remembered for what kindness and happiness we have bestowed. These cakes proffer both.

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THREE KINGS CAKES
makes three cakes

For the Batter
1 cup butter
generous 3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups currants
3 cups applesauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
4 cups flour

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Cream together the butter and the sugar, then add the eggs and vanilla. Beat smooth before adding the remaining ingredients. Grease 3 loaf pans (about 8″ x 4″ x 3″ or so) and divide the batter amongst the pans. Bake for one hour, or until a toothpick poked into the center of each cake comes out dry. Let the cakes cool in their pans on a rack.

For the Syrup
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
2 tablespoons rose water

Once the cakes are baked, combine the syrup ingredients, except for the rose water, in a saucepan over medium heat. Once the sugar dissolves, add the rose water. Remove the cinnamon stick and the cloves and then pour the hot syrup over the cakes in their pans, divided equally amongst the three cakes. The syrup will soak into the cakes. Allow to cool completely before unmolding from the pans. Serving the three cakes on three platters makes for a nice presentation on Epiphany Day or on Twelfth Night.

 

Image: The star upon our Christmas tree. Seth & I discovered just last night a really lovely illuminated star high above a home near to Lake Avenue on our street, but alas, tonight when I went to photograph it, it was gone. Be that as it may, this star does the job nicely.

 

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Jan 03 2016
8 Comments
Christmas, Solstice

There is a Light That Never Goes Out

St Genevieve

NINTH DAY of CHRISTMAS
St. Genevieve’s Day

We’re getting to the home stretch. Many people by now are a little sick of Christmas and it’s not unusual, especially this weekend, to see spent Christmas trees tossed out unceremoniously on the side of the road. Our neighbor Old Mr. Solderholm, a staunch yet grumpy traditionalist, once punched another neighbor of ours square in the nose for setting his tree out at the curb too soon. Granted it was only the day after Christmas and there were, to be sure, other things going on between them, but punching a man in the nose is a bit further than I care to go for my traditions. Still, though Mr. Solderholm and I rarely see things the same way, I do feel a certain kinship with him at times. It is a sad sight to see a Christmas tree on the curb like rubbish, but even more so when the yuletide season is not yet over.

Whether your Christmas celebration is a religious or a secular one, there is a traditional ending to both: the sixth day of January. The odd thing about all this is that if you are amongst those who celebrate through that date, you are in the minority. So if you are still celebrating, as we in this house are still celebrating, well… welcome to the counter culture.

Even here in the Christmas counter culture there are many matters of debate. This, I think, is because Christmas has such a long history and is connected to customs both religious and secular (and indeed customs that predate Christianity itself). It is a bit of a paradox. One of the things I’d like to address here is that I have given you one system of counting these Twelve Days of Christmas, but ask other people and you will get other systems. The fact is that there is more than one way to count the Twelve Days of Christmas. To be sure, over the centuries it’s become a muddled mess. Ask people in the Church, and you will probably find their days one off from the version you’re reading here. To them, Christmas Day is the First Day of Christmas, and Epiphany on the Sixth of January begins a new season. But so much about a church Christmas is derived from a more earthly approach––a more pagan Christmas––that Christmas is truly like a plum pudding or a steaming punch: many varied ingredients, many methods of concocting. For those of us who love Christmas, what is sure is that it is important to us to keep it and keep it well, and that means keeping it for its traditional season of Twelve Days. It matters not where you begin counting. What matters is the spirit in which you keep the season. On this, Old Mr. Solderholm and I can agree, and so can most everyone who loves Christmas.

As I grow older, and as Christmas flies more and more quickly each year, the more interested I become in yet another of the more pagan traditions: the one that suggests Christmas begins with the Midwinter Solstice and continues on all the way to the cross quarter day that marks, more or less, the halfway point between the Midwinter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. In this tradition, Christmas ends on the Second of February, which is Imbolc, the start of spring in the traditional round of the year, and, in the Church, Candlemas. Here in the States, we mark that date most famously with Groundhog Day. But check with the 17th century British poet Robert Herrick and in his works you will find very specific instructions about the ending of Christmas. This is what he writes about Candlemas Day, that February 2nd celebration:

Down with the rosemary and so
Down with the baies and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivie, all
Wherewith ye drest 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.

If you love Christmas, Robert Herrick may be your man. And if you are slow to take down your Christmas greenery, remember you are part of an ancient practice, no matter what your friends and neighbors think. Just so long as you have it down by Candlemas (no one wants goblins underfoot).

But with all of this, I am getting far, far ahead of myself, for here we are today, the Ninth Day of Christmas. It is St. Genevieve’s Day. I knew a Genevieve when I was a boy. She was an old friend of the family and she was feisty and independent and she often wore a bandana on her head. Even in her old age, she would go up on the roof of her house and fix things that needed fixing. St. Genevieve strikes me as feisty and independent, too, and certainly someone who was not afraid to fix things that needed fixing. She is sacred to Paris, where she lived in the fifth century as a nun. She saved the city from an attack by Attila and his Huns in 451. This she did through fasting and prayer, encouraging the residents of the city to join her. And around 475, she founded Saint-Denys de la Chapelle in Paris, which stands today as part of the Basilica of St. Denis.

Today, for this Ninth Day of Christmas, we remember St. Genevieve, and perhaps with a bit more affection this St. Genevieve’s Day than last year as she watches over the City of Light. We are in the midst now of a more contemplative period within the Twelve Days of Christmas. Yesterday we remembered St. Macarius, or St. Macaroon the Confectioner, and tomorrow we remember a few other saints (four of them, to be exact). There are no particular customs associated with the Feast Day of St. Genevieve, nor this Ninth Day of Christmas (as well as the day that follows) and my theory is that this more contemplative time within the Christmas revels is here by design. We need some time for quiet and for reflection, and to catch our breath. The most proper way to celebrate this Ninth Day of Christmas, if you ask me, is with stillness and candlelight. St. Genevieve is another of the midwinter saints typically associated with light: she is often depicted holding a candle, and the story goes that the devil time and again would blow out her candle as she went to pray at night, so as to thwart her. Genevieve, however, was able to relight her candle without need of flint or fire. And so she is another of the light bearers in midwinter’s darkness. Thirteen days on the other side of the solstice, already light is increasing as we begin the journey toward summer’s warmth once more in the Northern Hemisphere. The light of St. Genevieve promises to never be snuffed by the darkness.

 

Image: St. Genevieve by an unknown artist, 17th century. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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Jan 02 2016
2 Comments
Christmas

St. Macaroon? St. Macaron?

Macaron

EIGHTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
St. Macarius’s Day

I have known of macaroons––the chewy, delectable treat made from shredded cocoanut––for as long as I can remember. Only in the last couple of years have I learnt of the macaron––the small French confection made in lovely pastel shades, typically sandwiched together with a filling inside of ganache or jam. They are both very different and yet somewhat the same: they both contain almonds, whether in ground or paste form, and little or no flour. Both are delicious. And both, I would think, have a similar etymological background… and quite a long history in the foodways of old cultures.

On this Eighth Day of Christmas I often think of macaroons (and now macarons) even though I’m not necessarily eating them, for there are still plenty of Christmas cookies to eat. The day is given to the Feast of St. Macarius of Egypt, a fourth century saint from Alexandria who lived the latter part of his life as a hermit in the desert, eating only raw vegetables on most days. On special days, he ate a bit of bread dipped in oil. He was an ascetic and, by the sound of things, not all that much fun. However, before choosing his more extreme lifestyle, Macarius had been a confectioner in Alexandria. For this reason he is known as a patron saint of cooks, confectioners and pastry chefs. This, as you might guess, is the St. Macarius we are most interested in on this Eighth Day of Christmas.

Some people have a hard time saying St. Macarius, and so he has also been known over the ages as St. Macaroon (perhaps St. Macaron in France?)––fitting enough for a confectioner, I’d say. And so for this Eighth Day of Christmas we are encouraged to enjoy the sweet things in life. So go on, have a macaroon. Or a macaron. Or anything that sweetens your day. Macarius the Confectioner would smile upon this. Just don’t tell Macarius the Ascetic.

 

Image: Set a piece of paper or a letter or a magazine on the floor, and Haden the Convivio Shopcat will, sooner or later, sit upon it. You can bet your bottom dollar. Those are her two orange paws atop the magazine that first introduced me to macarons: Martha Stewart Living, March 2014.

 

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