Category Archives: The Gift Bearers

Jan 04 2015
Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night

Following that Star

Cappella_dei_magi_paesaggio

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

Again today, like yesterday, there are no particular customs associated with this, the Tenth Day of Christmas. It is the Feast Day of St. Titus and St. Gregory. Titus was a disciple of St. Paul in the first century, and St. Gregory was a bishop in the sixth century. It’s also St. Rigobert’s Day and St. Ramon’s Day. But not much is done to celebrate these good guys, and in this house, the Tenth Day of Christmas is typically a day of preparation for the bigger festivities that come next over the two days that follow: Twelfth Night and Epiphany, the celebrations that close the Christmas season.

The celebration of Epiphany on January 6 rivals that of Christmas Day in some countries. It’s the big day for gift giving, and we see the last of the wintertime gift bearers in Italy with la befana and throughout Spain and Latin America, the three kings themselves bringing presents. As for Twelfth Night, well, this is a celebration that has fallen a bit out of favor here in the States, and this is too bad. We think of Twelfth Night and Epiphany as a proper close to the Christmas season. For those of you who feel a bit let down after Christmas, these are especially important celebrations, for they help give Christmas its full life and scope.

Last year I shared with you a recipe for one of the Epiphany traditions in our house: Three Kings Cakes. I’ll share it with you again today, for if you bake them today or tomorrow morning, they’ll be ready in plenty of time for Twelfth Night or for Epiphany. You will need three loaf pans because the recipe yields three cakes, one for each of the Magi: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The Magi will arrive on the Sixth of January, just in time for these delightful cakes that are flavored with honey and rose water, flavors of the ancient Mediterranean world, flavors they certainly knew well in their day.

*

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.

If you have trouble finding good rose water, we happen to sell an excellent one at our website, in the Inspired Living for Everyday pages of our online catalog. Our rose water is made by the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine, from their line of culinary herbs and herbal teas that we’ve been selling at conviviobookworks.com for years now. It’s one of the most delightful flavorings you’ll bake with, adding a mysterious and delicate flavor not just to these cakes, but also to apple pie, cookies, and even French toast. It’s pretty wonderful stuff.

Christmas, meanwhile, is soon coming to a close. Somewhere on the horizon there are three old men following that star, nearing their destination, and in Italy, la befana is at her cleaning; she has her broom in hand, and she’s preparing to sweep away the festivities.

 

Image: Detail from a fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Cappella dei Magi (Chapel of the Magi) at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, Italy, 15th century. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Tagged ,
Dec 13 2014
Santa Lucia, The Gift Bearers

The Night Walks with Heavy Steps

SantaLuciaCard

Have you ever spent a summer in Maine? I’ve spent many summers there, whether to be with family or, back when I was in graduate school, for a series of letterpress internships I did there in Portland and at the Shaker Community at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester. When it is summer in Maine, the days seem to last forever, with the sun rising early and setting late, well past the bedtime hour for many children.

Of course there must be balance to that, and now, as we approach midwinter, it’s quite a different story in Maine, and darkness falls early at this time of year and lingers long. The shift of darkness and light is even more extreme, though, in a place like Sweden, up near the Arctic Circle. The land of the midnight sun is, at this time of year, spending an awful lot of time cloaked in darkness.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the people of Sweden would open their arms and hearts to a saint from Sicily whose feast day comes in with the longest nights of the year. She is Santa Lucia, Saint Lucy, another of our wintertime gift bearers. The gifts she bears are simple but just what is needed about now: hot coffee and warm baked goods, heady with the scent of saffron and ginger. And light. Lucia brings light in the darkness. Of course we “see the light” and Lucia is a patron saint of those with maladies of the eyes, for she herself plucked out her own eyeballs in response to the unwelcome advances of a potential suitor. He loved her eyes, they captivated him. And so she put an end to that right then and there. This was under Roman rule in the fourth century and it wasn’t long after the eyeball incident that Lucia was martyred for her Christian faith. And while she plunged herself into darkness in her act of defiance, Lucia the saint became a light bearer.

And it is the Lucia who carries light with her in the early morning darkness, entering the rooms of the household with lussekatter (saffron buns) and coffee. She is usually the oldest girl in the house, and she is usually dressed in white with a red sash, donning a wreath of illuminated candles upon her head. There are processions throughout Sweden celebrating Santa Lucia, in churches, in schools, in city streets, on national television. The processions can get quite large, with scores of attendants to the Lucia, each bearing a candle, and also a large number of “star boys” donning huge white conical caps. Everyone is dressed in white, and the procession always centers around the Neapolitan melody “Santa Lucia,” but with Swedish lyrics, my favorite part being Natten går tunga fjät, which translates to “The night walks with heavy steps.” Such a beautiful image, and such a beautiful song. You can feel it warming the air, you can feel it bearing light in the darkness.

Image: An early 20th century Swedish Christmas penny postcard designed by Adèle Söderberg (1880-1915).

 

Dec 05 2014
Krampus, St. Nicholas, The Gift Bearers

Light & Darkness: Eve of St. Nicholas

Klausjagen-Küssnacht2011

I have long suspected that Americans just don’t have as much fun as folks in other countries. It’s that Puritan Work Ethic. We work and work and work and this is what the Puritans wanted us to do and we’re still doing it. The Puritans worked even on Christmas; they hated the idea of Christmas so much, they actually banned it. But that’s a story for another time. Or maybe not. We’ll let the Puritans be: both them and their austere ways.

Amongst more jovial people, there is a lot more celebration, and tonight is a wonderful example of that, wonderful as in wonder-full, full of wonder. It’s the Eve of St. Nicholas, a night belonging to mystery, for St. Nicholas is the first of the traditional wintertime gift bearers. He is the older cousin to the American Santa Claus. St. Nicholas the gift bearer comes from an historical person: St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in the fourth century, who became known far and wide for his acts of generosity… not the least of which was his hiding bags of coins in the shoes of poor girls who were without dowries. The legend grew from there and now St. Nicholas is sacred to countries throughout Europe.

Tonight’s gift bearer is not all happy and light, though; he has a dark side, as we all do. Actually, a dark companion. Perhaps this comes out of the humanity St. Nicholas is rooted in. His dark companion goes by many names depending on the country, but he is most commonly known as Black Peter or as Krampus, a sort of half human, half goat figure whose job it is to punish badly behaved children.

And while Santa Claus tries his best to operate under secrecy and dark of night, St. Nicholas and Krampus are often found parading through cities and villages on this night. One of the parades for St. Nicholas’ Eve include the Klausjagen parade, or “Nicholas chase,” pictured above. It’s part of an annual festival in Küssnacht, Switzerland, this eve of St. Nicholas’ Day. Many marchers in the parade will be wearing Iffelen––enormous, ornate hats that are made of paper and wood, meant to evoke the mitre hat of a bishop but also the stained glass windows of churches. They are lit from within by candles, and are upwards of seven feet tall.

Now that’s a sight to see. Surely there is good ale to be had, too, and perhaps some delicious cookies just for St. Nicholas’ Day. There’s plenty of time for work. A little celebration will probably do you good, no matter what those stern Puritanical ancestors thought. Anyway, St. Nicholas probably thinks so, and I bet even Krampus does, too. Krampus knows it’s all about balance.

 

Image: A photograph of the Klausjagen parade, December 5, 2011, by Matthias Zepper (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

← Older posts
Newer posts →