Category Archives: Christmas

Jan 11 2015
Christmas, Copperman's Day, Epiphany, Plough Monday, St. Distaff's Day

Plough Monday & Copperman’s Day

PloughMonday

With the Christmas season’s end last week, the women had their “official” and traditional Back to Work day last Wednesday, on the 7th of January, with St. Distaff’s Day. But tomorrow, the first Monday after Epiphany, it’s time for the men to have their own version of this. It’s Plough Monday, and there may be some ceremonial ploughing of the frozen ground on this day, but mostly it is the last of the Christmas ceremonies in this period of shifting out of Christmastide and into ordinary time.

Of course today we welcome a more egalitarian approach: why shouldn’t the men be at the spindle and distaff, if they so wish, and the women at the plough? Nonetheless, these are traditions that come out of a time of more traditional division of labor between the sexes, and we heartily encourage you to mix things up to your liking. Our goal, simply, is to help you be aware of days worth celebrating, of course.

And so on Plough Monday it would be not at all unusual to see a gaggle of men parading through the village with a plough, finely decorated. The men themselves would be finely decorated, too, in all manner of foolish costumes, hearkening the Feast of Fools aspect of the Twelve Days of Christmas that have just passed. One man will be dressed as the Bessy, an old woman, and whether he realizes it or not, she is the personification of the old hag of winter or the goddess in her crone stage. And the ploughmen may perform an old mummers play, filled with images of death and rebirth. Soon, of course, winter will pass and it will be time to plough the earth in earnest and these things all relate to each other. With the spring, the young goddess will be born again. Though all seems cold now, and dead, life will return.

There will be mysterious old dances and a good deal of noise in the banging of drums and the blowing of horns, and there will most likely be a collection box passed around to help pay for the sport (as well as a few rounds at the tavern).

A lesser known celebration on this same day is Copperman’s Day, particular to Holland, and known especially in the print trade. And since Convivio Bookworks is a place that is a printshop at heart, it is a day we hold in high esteem. On the first Monday after Epiphany each year, print apprentices would be given the day off to work on their own projects, which they would later sell for a copper.

Last year, we printed an inaugural Convivio Bookworks Copperman’s Day print, and we’re planning one for this year, too. This year’s is a continuation of last year’s theme, inspired by a Christmas Revels reading first penned by Fra Giovanni Giocondo. It is said to have been written on Christmas Eve, 1513, and in his letter, Fra Giovanni encourages us to take heaven, to take peace, and to take joy. Because when you get right down to it, life deals us what it will and it is up to each of us to decide how we respond. Even in times of darkness, we can choose to take joy, and so last year’s print was just that message: Take Joy. This year, we’re working on Take Peace. I’m working in historic wood type, though, and so far I’m having a devil of a time finding the two Es I need to spell “peace,” at least if I want to stick to my original design plan. On top of that, I do not have the day off from work tomorrow, as the old Dutch coppermen of yore did on the Monday after Epiphany.

So be patient, our annual Copperman’s Day print may take a few extra days this year. Be that as it may, we do encourage other letterpress printers around the globe to take part in this old tradition that we see fit for revival. It’s all about loving what you do, and sharing it with others. It’s all about taking joy.

 

Image: Procession of the Plough on Plough Monday, an engraving from The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities by the Chambers Bros., Edinburgh, 1869.

 

Jan 07 2015
1 Comment
Christmas, Epiphany, St. Distaff's Day

St. Distaff’s Day

Distaff Women

Partly work and partly play
Ye must on St. Distaff’s Day.

The days of Christmastide stood outside of ordinary time, from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and clear through the Twelve Days of Christmas that followed, and now that Epiphany has passed, it is back to the humdrum workaday world. But we’ve been celebrating for two weeks now, and it’s not easy to shift gears so rapidly. This is where St. Distaff comes in.

Back when spinning occupied a great deal of time for most women, the distaff was no stranger to any of them. The distaff is a tool that is part of the process of spinning wool or flax into thread, and that is the first step toward weaving cloth and making clothing for the family. We tend to think of spinning wheels when we picture someone spinning, but the spinning wheel was a later invention; it is the distaff and spindle that were the necessary tools prior to the spinning wheel.

As for St. Distaff? Well, the odd thing about St. Distaff’s Day is that saints are people but there is no St. Distaff. The day’s name just comes out of centuries of tradition, and it has one purpose: to mark the beginning of getting back to work after Christmas. Not that much work got done on St. Distaff’s Day. Quite the contrary. What typically happened was this: Women would get to work at their spindle and distaff, and the men would sneak up and make a valiant attempt at lighting the flax on fire. But the women were smart and kept buckets of water nearby. The flax set aflame was usually quickly extinguished (and more often than not, the men got a good soaking, too). This was the fun and mischief of St. Distaff’s Day.

If it seems unfair that the women had to get to work the day after Epiphany but not the men, worry not, for the men have their time with the first Monday after Epiphany, for then comes Plough Monday, their traditional return to work and to ordinary time. Plough Monday has its own fun and traditions.

And so let this day mark your return to ordinary time now that Christmastide has passed. If you can do something silly alongside the serious business of the day, all the better.

 

Image: Two fine women with distaffs in hand. A lithograph by Edouard Pingret from the book Pyrénées: Paysannes de la Vallé de Campan by René Ancely, 1834. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Jan 06 2015
2 Comments
Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, Solstice, Twelfth Night

An Epiphany

TWELFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Epiphany

E l’epifania tutte le feste porta via! This is an old Italian saying that translates to “And with Epiphany all the holidays are over.” And so they are…until the next one, of course (and you can be sure I’ll have something interesting for you tomorrow).

But with Epiphany, the Christmas festivities come to an end. Epiphany marks the day the Magi arrived at the Bethlehem stable to see the child that was born. Their journey, following that star, is said to have taken twelve days…the same as our journey through the Christmas season. They sought the child of wonder and so have we. They crossed the desert land and we crossed from one year to another.

We know very little about the three kings we celebrate today. We don’t even know if there actually were three; three, nonetheless, is a solid, stable, number. Most of what we know is handed down through tradition, which tells us that the Magi were three wise men from the East, named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, and that they brought three gifts to the child: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, all of which have rich and varied symbolic meaning. These were gifts fit for royalty, but also refer to the child’s future roles: Gold for kingship, frankincense for the priesthood, myrrh for death and burial.

While Twelfth Night generally is the last of the raucous Christmas revels, often with a Lord of Misrule and a King of the Bean and a Queen of the Pea and all of the ensuing fun madness, Epiphany, today, is generally a quieter time. I think this is because we are actually saying goodbye to an old friend: Christmas has come to stay with us these two weeks past, and now the guest must be on his way. For some of us, Christmas is a guest we look forward to showing the door early on in the visit, but for others, like those in this house, the closing of Christmastide is full of mixed emotions. Yes, it’s nice to get back to order and routine, but we know we’re going to miss what sets Christmas outside of ordinary time. Once Epiphany is done and la befana has swept the remnants of Christmas away, there will be considerably less magic present. We have to wait another year for the twinkling lights of the winter solstice to return, along with the intoxicating scent of balsam and cloves and the wonderful tastes of Yule and the songs we get to hear and sing just at this time of year.

In some traditions, Christmas continues all the way to Candlemas Eve, the First of February. There is some strong basis for this in the Pagan tradition, as it is on the First of February that Yule gives way to Imbolc in the wheel of the seasonal round: it is a cross-quarter day, the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

But for most of us, Christmas ends now, and the greenery and decorations are supposed to come down with Epiphany, too. There is old belief that for as much greenery that remains in your home after Epiphany, you will have that many goblins move in to your home to spend the next year with you. Whether you believe in that or not, most people will remove the Christmas decorations tonight or soon thereafter. Greenery from nature should be returned to nature. If you have room in your garden to keep the old Christmas tree for a year, do so. We tuck ours in a quiet corner, near the bamboo and the mango tree, and come next Winter Solstice, the tree will fuel our celebratory fire for that darkest night of the year as we welcome Yule once again. This act, which has become our tradition, is so much more respectful to your tree than tossing it out at the curb for trash.

We close the 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 the home 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+15. 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. In some places, or in earlier times, the inscription might be written by the Star Boys, like those pictured in the old postcard above. Here in Lake Worth, we haven’t many Star Boys, and all the same, I’m happier that we get to write it ourselves, each letter and number in handwriting I recognize, the hands of the people in this house. 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.

 

Image: A postcard depicting the Star Boys’ Singing Procession, an Epiphany tradition in Russia, Scandinavia, and Central Europe, c.1916. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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