Category Archives: The Gift Bearers

Jan 05 2014
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Christmas, Epiphany, La Befana, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night

LaBefana

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

The daylight hours of this Eleventh Day of Christmas offer us another day of preparation, which will be needed, for the setting sun brings us the great festivity of Twelfth Night, a night of eating, drinking, games and music to rival that with which we began at the start of the Christmas season. Christmas deserves as much, no? We rearrange our furniture for Christmas, we bring in a tree, we bake special treats… it’s such a big presence in our lives while it’s with us that it’s only proper to send Old Father Christmas on his way with the festive spirit he deserves.

Twelfth Night and Epiphany center on the Magi and their arrival at Bethlehem to see the child. Tradition tells us that their journey took them across the desert and their arrival was not until the Sixth of January. There are many traditions surrounding Twelfth Night, and as with most things Christmas, they are a mysterious blend of Christian customs and earlier pagan ones. There is, for instance, the tradition of the King of the Bean: a bean is baked into the Twelfth Night cake, and the person who finds it in his plate is crowned King of the Bean, and he becomes the Lord of the Feast for Twelfth Night, leading the company in games and song. In Italy, the bean is a fava bean. In France, there often is not just a bean but also a pea, and the person who finds the pea is the queen. These are traditions that go back directly to the ancient Roman solstice celebration of Saturnalia, where the very same thing was done. To think that people have been performing this same ritual at this dark time of year for so many centuries is, to me, fascinating.

In Italy, this Eve of the Epiphany is the night of la befana. The legend tells us that 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 turned them down, for she had too much housework to do, and so they went on their way. But la befana had a change of heart as she swept the floors, and once she was done sweeping, she set out to find the Magi. But she never did find them, nor the child… and to this day, on each Twelfth Night, she sets out upon her broom to seek them.

La befana is also one of the last of the Yuletide gift bearers, for as she makes her way across the country, she delivers small presents to the children. For those that were not so good, she might leave a lump of coal, but even that is not so bad, because la befana’s coal is sweet as sugar.

Epiphany on the 6th of January is still a major day for gift-giving in Italy (as well as in Latin America, where the festival of los Tres Reyes, the Three Kings, is celebrated… and they also are gift-bearers). If la befana riding the night on her broom sounds a bit like a witch to you, that would be a fairly accurate description, and so here again we have a bit of paganness, in la befana as a personification of the pagan earth goddess as the wise old hag, giving way to the child, just as the old year passes into the new. Her name, befana, is thought to be a corruption of the Italian name for Epiphany: Epifania.

At this time of year my cousins in New York and New England gather together for a Christmastime dinner and la befana always comes to pay a visit. It’s often my cousin Cammie that plays the part. For us here in Lake Worth, Twelfth Night will be a night for a sparkling Christmas punch and a festive dinner with family. It’s usually something grand and this year it’s something we’ve never made before: a standing rib roast. Usually there are small presents to exchange in a game we call Yankee Swap, but this year, it’ll be more like a second Christmas, as my nephew and his family from the Gulf Coast come to spend Twelfth Night with us, and so the gifts given this night will be more in the spirit of the gifts the Magi brought to Bethlehem.

La befana, meanwhile, will begin the process of sweeping away the Christmas festivities for one more year. By the time she’s done with her sweeping tomorrow, Christmas will be done.

Image: My cousin Marietta was kind enough to send me this photo of a recent Cutrone cousins party, which takes place around Twelfth Night every year. That’s my cousin Cammie as la befana, backed up by our own three kings.

 

 

Dec 24 2013
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Christmas, The Gift Bearers

Like Comets Through the Sky

Creche

In Italy, there is a common saying, a bit of yuletide advice: Natale con i tuoi; Pasqua con chi vuoi: “Christmas with your family; Easter with whomever you like.” This saying sailed across the Atlantic with my grandparents and is even heard amongst my English-speaking family. It’s spoken in Italian, perhaps to stress its importance and wisdom.

I understood its wisdom only by disregarding it. One Christmas, influenced by the romance of Washington Irving’s writings about Old Christmas, I decided to spend Christmas away from family… and while I did forge some cherished memories and friendships that snowy Christmas night at an inn in North Carolina, it was, overall, a pretty miserable Christmas for me. Natale con i tuoi; Pasqua con chi vuoi resonates with me now, and rings true.

Decorations in Italy center on the creche, and this year, I made a point of venturing deep into the attic of my family home and finding the box labeled “Old Nativity.” It’s from Italy, from the 1950s, probably. My mom made a special trip by train into New York City to purchase it, but it hasn’t been out of that box in the attic in many decades. The stable is wooden and the pieces are plaster, painted by hand. Many of them are broken after all these years (we’re down to one magi). One of the pieces is a shepherd playing pipes, and looking at it, I think of my grandmother, who used to tell me about the zampognari, the bagpipers, who would come down from the mountains on Christmas Eve to play their ancient, almost mournful tunes in the villages, traditional Italian Christmas carols like Tu Scende Dalle Stelle, “You Come Down from the Stars.”

Tonight, we will be celebrating here, with family, as the wisdom of that saying suggests. The mad rush will be over; we’ll settle in for a dinner of seven fishes (another Italian custom), and then go to midnight mass to be with everyone else who has eaten too much and stayed up too late but still has come to hear the old, old story again. In the morning, we will open presents, and here is my present to you: It’s one of my favorite Convivio Dispatches from Lake Worth. It was originally sent out on Christmas Eve, 2011. It’s titled “Like Comets Through the Skies.” Merry Christmas. ––jlc

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CONVIVIO DISPATCH: LIKE COMETS THROUGH THE SKY

And so again we enter into Christmas, again the old year passes. Here in Lake Worth we are having one of our warm and summery Christmases. But this is okay. Always here at Christmastime there are folks who begin to feel a bit wistful for cold. A white Christmas is all they want. “It’s just not Christmas without snow,” they say, or, “It doesn’t feel much like Christmas when it’s 80 degrees outside.”

Our neighbor Margaret likes to wave her hand at these people and remind them that the first Christmas tree was a palm. This is a saying that was popular on Christmas cards here when I was a boy. A barefoot Santa might be in shorts and an open shirt, relaxing on a hammock strung between two cocoanut palms with a simple “Merry Christmas from Florida!” greeting, but if it was a manger scene, Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wise men and the shepherds would be surrounded by cocoanut palms––not that there are a lot of cocoanuts to be had in Bethlehem––and inside, the greeting always was the same: “The first Christmas tree was a palm,” which seemed to suggest that we, somehow, were doing things right… and this, admittedly, is not what typically comes to mind when folks think of Florida.

Still, it’s not easy to get past this idea of Christmas being a celebration in cold weather. Pirko Suoma sings “White Christmas” each year at the annual Christmas concert at the Finnish Lutheran Church on the south side of town, and this year was no different. She sings it in Finnish, so for those of us who do not speak Finnish, we listen to her and we follow along in English, in our heads, the words chiseled into our memory. Her solo usually comes about midway through the concert, and she stands up there in front of the rest of the choir and she sings in Finnish and tears begin to well in the eyes of some of the choir members, they miss Finland and snow and a cold Christmas so much. What brought them to Lake Worth? They’ve come to live in a virtual sauna.

Christmas in Finland will most likely be white, and perhaps it will be for you, as well. But for us this time around, it will be beach weather. There is at least one Father Christmas who seems to like it this way: We’ve had numerous Santa Claus sightings in Lake Worth over the course of the past month. I saw him first riding a bicycle past the house, donning the traditional red fur-lined hat and shorts and a t-shirt, which is not unusual around here at Christmastime, except this guy looked like the real thing, with a big white beard. I saw him again driving an old Volkswagen convertible down Federal Highway, this time in full Santa regalia, with presents piled in the back of the car, and when I mentioned this to Seth, he said he had seen Santa driving through town another day earlier in the week. I have news for you: Santa’s a bit of a speed demon.

Over at St. Bernard’s, Father Seamus has put in a special request for midnight mass with Sister Kathleen, the reluctant organist. It’s a traditional American folk hymn that he found in The Sacred Harp, and he’s asked Sister Kathleen to work it into the service. Seamus knew the words, because he is a man who memorizes and recites poetry, though he couldn’t have told you why he knows them, and yet here they were in this old American hymnal. He was overjoyed at his discovery, and the next day, he passed the book along to Sister Kathleen with the suggestion that the song be sung a cappella, no organ. “To preserve the spirit of the hymn,” he said. He wants it pure, simple, and with none of the extra notes that Sister Kathleen is apt to add through no fault of her own. The song is “Wondrous Love.” Do you know it?

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul!
What wondrous love is this, oh my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To send this perfect peace to my soul, to my soul,
To send this perfect peace to my soul.

Two additional verses follow, with winged seraphs and millions joining the theme. And it is this simple song that Seamus is looking forward to more than anything this Christmas, his gift to himself. He’s not a White Christmas kind of guy, Father Seamus. He didn’t have many white Christmases in Ireland, and he’s not so fond of Bing Crosby’s vocal stylings. Pirko Suoma’s solo at last week’s concert at the Finnish Lutheran Church may have inspired a few tears, and Wondrous Love will certainly do the same, at least for Seamus. But he won’t be alone. He never is. Something about the right combination of incense and old hymns manages to squeeze a tear or two out of people, even the ones you’d think have not a drop of water to spare. We sit there in that dark church and reflect and think on all the wrongs we’ve done and we resolve that next Christmas, things will be different. And so Christmases come and go, and the years go by, and always we do the best we can, and that’s not so bad, is it?

And whether in a sleigh or in a Volkswagen Cabriolet, in comes Father Christmas. “In comes I, old Father Christmas, welcome or welcome not. I hope old Father Christmas will never be forgot. Christmas comes but once a year, And when it comes it brings good cheer. Roast beef, plum pudding, strong ale, mince pie: And who likes that better than I?”

Merry Christmas. May Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the Twelve Days of Christmas that follow all be filled with good cheer and happiness for you and for those you love.
John

Image: The painted background of the stable of that 1950s creche from Italy.

Dec 13 2013
Santa Lucia, The Gift Bearers

Saffron & Light: Santa Lucia

Lucia

By now, the 13th of December, the Northern Hemisphere is well cloaked in the darkness of winter. The solstice, that turning point when the sun shifts from waning to strengthening, is, this year, still eight days away. And so enters St. Lucy, Santa Lucia, whose name comes from light: lux and lucis, the Latin words for light. Her feast day is today, the 13th of December. Centuries ago, before the Gregorian reform of the calendar, her day used to coincide with the Winter Solstice, so the connections between Santa Lucia and light overcoming dark are profound and powerful indeed.

Lucia was a fourth century Sicilian woman who worked ardently to protect her Christian virtue. She rejected numerous marriage offers and suitors. The story best known about the woman herself involves an admirer who was captivated by her eyes. Lucia, mortified, gouged her eyeballs from their sockets and had them delivered to her suitor on a platter. Did Lucia have a flare for the dramatic? Perhaps. Lucia was martyred for her Christian beliefs and steadfastness, and she is invoked today as a patron saint to help those afflicted with poor eyesight and diseases of the eye.

Lucia is sacred to Italy and to Sweden. The Italian connection is plain: aside from the fact that she was Sicilian, she is also known to have intervened in a terrible famine in 1582, when a flotilla of grain appeared mysteriously in a Sicilian harbor on her feast day. Palermo and Syracuse both lay claim to the arrival of the flotilla, and who knows, perhaps Santa Lucia sent a flotilla to both harbors. Be that as it may, that day in 1582, the people were so hungry, they didn’t even bother to mill the wheat from the ships into flour, but rather boiled the grains whole and ate them that way. Still, to this day, every 13th of December, the diet of the entire island of Sicily changes and people eat traditional dishes made of cooked whole grain wheat, rather than pasta. The traditions made their way to the Italian mainland from Sicily and Santa Lucia became one of Italy’s most venerated saints. Her day is celebrated with great festivity throughout Italy, and in some parts of the country, Santa Lucia is another of the winter gift bearers, and children may awake on Santa Lucia’s Day to find tiny sweets tied to the laces of their shoes if they leave their shoes the night before on the kitchen windowsill along with a bit of hay for Lucia’s donkey.

In Italy, Lucia is pronounced “loo-chee-a,” while in Sweden the C is soft: “loo-see-a.” Lucia apparently intervened in the midst of a famine in Sweden at some point, as well. Whether this is true or not, the fact is you’d also be hard pressed to find a darker place than Sweden this time of year, so a celebration of light seems quite natural there, too. Other Scandinavian countries celebrate Santa Lucia, as well, but it is Sweden where the celebrations are heartiest. Traditionally it is the eldest daughter of the household who rises early in the morning, fixes a breakfast of coffee and pepparkakor (traditional ginger biscuits) and saffron buns called lussekatter. Saffron, for the golden color of sunlight. She delivers them throughout the house while donning a wreath of candles on her head, a beacon of light in the early morning darkness. Electric candles nowadays help avoid hot melted wax from dripping on the head of these modern day Lucias, though strong traditionalists still wear real candles. It is, for sure, a beautiful sight, this illuminated angelic vision, dressed in white with a red sash, bringing you coffee and saffron buns on a cold winter’s morning.

In our house, if there is time (and there is almost always time to be found, even under protest), my family eats a wonderful concoction for Santa Lucia’s Day, which, of course, is made from whole grains of boiled wheat. Added to the wheat are pomegranate seeds, chopped almonds, and chocolate (also chopped), swimming in a pool of a special syrup we brew each year from the juice of grapes. The syrup, in my family’s Lucera dialect, is called cutto, something that Italian housewives have made since time immemorial from the must leftover from autumnal winemaking. The juice is cooked down to a thick spicy brew, and, for this Santa Lucia dessert, is made even headier with the addition of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. We call the dish chicci cutto, and although we sometimes eat it at Halloween and I Morti, it really is a tradition that comes out of Santa Lucia Day celebrations, as is confirmed by the prominence of the chicci––the whole grains of wheat––boiled, just as it was on that astounding Santa Lucia Day in Sicily in 1582.

Santa Lucia reminds us that although things may be dark, it takes but a little light to begin to overcome it.

 

Chicci cutto rarely photographs well, but what it lacks in good looks it certainly makes up for in taste: it is bizarre and delicious. Last year, for Santa Lucia’s Day, my mom and my sister made this very beautiful sweet yeast bread, too, and naturally they stuck four candles in it to symbolize the light of Lucia. The chicci cutto is there to the right, looking homely yet delicious. We oohed and aahed over both.

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