Category Archives: The Gift Bearers

Jan 05 2017
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Christmas, Epiphany, The Gift Bearers, Twelfth Night

Singing Round the Star

ELEVENTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Twelfth Night, Epiphany Eve

We’re coming to the close of Christmastide. Epiphany, tomorrow, is a celebration even older than Christmas itself, marking the day the Magi arrived at the stable to worship the child who was born on Christmas Night, for the Church celebrated Epiphany years and years before it began celebrating the birth of Christ. But tonight brings Twelfth Night. It is the Eve of the Epiphany. It is a cause for celebration that unfortunately doesn’t gather much attention here in the States, but what a lovely custom it is. In some places, Twelfth Night and Epiphany are celebrations that rival Christmas itself. And why shouldn’t it be so? We spend so much time and energy preparing for Christmas. It is right and good to send Christmas off in a grand way. This is the value of Twelfth Night and Epiphany.

We sometimes call it Little Christmas in my family. Convivio Book of Days reader Natalie Kavanagh wrote last year to tell me that where she comes from, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, it’s known as Old Christmas. (Thanks for sharing your story, Natalie!) This is the night that the Three Kings, los tres reyes, deliver presents to children in Latin America. There’s always a big Tres Reyes street celebration here in Miami. In Italy, this is the night la befana, the good witch, makes her rounds on her broom, bringing presents to good girls and boys. The naughty ones get sweet coal, and even that is not so bad. The Three Kings and la befana are the last of the midwinter gift bearers. When the gifts are all delivered, la befana hops off her broom and gets back to her sweeping. She sweeps and sweeps until Christmas is swept away once more.

With Epiphany, tomorrow, Christmas will come to a close. But if you are among those who dearly love the season and can’t bear to part just yet with your tree and your lights, I have good news: there is another old tradition that keeps Christmas going all the way to February 2. More on that, and the reasoning behind it (it’s very good, actually!), tomorrow, if I have it in me to write about it on Twelfth Night.

A merry Twelfth Night to you all.
John

Image:  Such a fair way to send Father Christmas on his way: “Singing Round the Star on Twelfth Night” by Cornelis Troost. Pastel and brush in gouache on paper, 1740. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Dec 13 2016
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Santa Lucia, The Gift Bearers

Santa Lucia

It’s late at night on the 12th (actually it is past midnight, so it is the 13th) and in these same overnight hours will arrive the next of the Midwinter gift bearers: Santa Lucia. She will come to homes mainly in Sweden and in Italy. In Italy, where children have left out their shoes and a bit of hay for her donkey, Santa Lucia will tie little presents to their shoelaces. In Sweden, where the nights this time of year are long and dark indeed, the Lucia will be one of the girls of the household, delivering saffron buns and hot coffee to the sleeping occupants, while donning a wreath of candles on her head. Or she will appear publicly in a procession, her gaggle of star boys and girls dressed in white accompanying her. Santa Lucia brings another magical night to this time of dark midwinter.

Though it be late, there is a gift I wish to bring you, as well, though I am no Santa Lucia. A star boy, maybe, at best. It’s a gift I’ve given on other Santa Lucia Days, but it is so beautiful, and subscribers Carl & Kathleen Maugeri loved it so much last year, I wanted to offer it again, for them and for all of you. It is a song called Santa Lucia, an old Neapolitan melody, but it is in Swedish, for Lucia is sacred to both Italy and to Sweden, two countries that in many ways could not be more different. I love this melding of cultures and celebration. In Italian, Lucia is pronounced with a “ch” (loo-chee-a) while in Swedish, the C is soft (loo-see-a). The song you’re listening to, if you’re listening to it (and I hope you are) is from one of those processions in Sweden: the young girls dressed in white and young boys, called star boys, also dressed in white, carrying stars on tall poles. “White,” Jane Siberry says, “the color of truth.” Somewhere amongst them is the Lucia, wearing a wreath of lit candles upon her head. Such a beautiful song and such a beautiful sight. Eight days yet to the solstice, darkness continues to build. We welcome light where we can find it. In this case, it comes with such beauty. A good night, indeed.

 

Dec 05 2016
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Advent, Krampus, St. Nicholas, The Gift Bearers

On Advent, St. Nicholas, and Speculaas

stclaus

Holiday confession time: When the Advent season arrives as early as it did this year, which basically stems from Christmas itself falling on a Sunday, I have a harder time than usual transitioning into the Christmas spirit. We’re already past the Second Sunday of Advent (it was yesterday) and still you’ll find dried corn hanging on our front door and orange lights strung on our bookcase. Though we’ve been opening the windows on our advent calendar, we had to catch up the first couple of days because we didn’t have a calendar chosen on the First. And life’s been so busy, Seth and I have ourselves quite a lot of catching up to do on our advent candles.

Ah, but tonight comes St. Nicholas’ Eve, and with this night, we welcome the first of the Midwinter gift bearers, wending his way through the midwinter darkness. Advent and Christmas suddenly seem more tangible, more real. On years like this, St. Nicholas serves as my reality check.

Although Santa Claus is a super big deal here in the States, and though we often call him Old St. Nick, the real St. Nicholas barely earns a blink of anyone’s eyes here. But there are other parts of the world, especially throughout Europe, where this is a very important night indeed. It is the Eve of St. Nicholas (St. Nicholas’s Day being tomorrow, the 6th of December), and children there will place their shoes by the chimney before going to bed in hopes that St. Nicholas will fill them with gifts. They’ll set out carrots and hay for his donkey.

In these overnight hours, the old bishop will make his rounds. Good children might wake up on St. Nicholas’ Day to find their shoes filled with fruits and nuts and sweets and small toys. But St. Nicholas does not wander alone; he travels tonight with a dark companion. The companion goes by many names, depending on the region––Knecht Ruprecht, Black Peter, Pelznickel… but he is best known as Krampus: half man, half goat, a bit terrifying… the punisher of children who have been naughty. These two are not as secretive as our American Santa. There are parades this time of year throughout Europe for St. Nicholas’ Day and Krampus pretty much steals the show at some of these parades, especially in parts of Germany, where tonight is known as Krampusnacht.

I love the time of the Midwinter gift bearers. Such a beautiful way to make the Midwinter darkness less… dark (despite Krampus). St. Nicholas will be followed over the next few weeks by the Christkindl, by Santa Lucia, by Father Christmas and Santa Claus, by los Tres Reyes (the Three Kings) and a kind old witch named Befana who will sweep away the remnants of the Christmas season in early January.

But that’s all a long ways away. For us tonight here in this little old house in Lake Worth, we will leave our shoes by the bed, which we always do. Our small old home has small old closets, and so we almost always have a couple of pairs of shoes outside the closet––there’s just no place in the closet to put them. I don’t know if St. Nicholas and Krampus will make their way this far from Europe, but chances are good that once we go to bed, Haden the Convivio shop cat will spend some time hunting down her little stuffed animal toys, carrying them about and making the odd cries that cats make once they have caught their quarry, and maybe tonight she will drop one of them into someone’s shoe, as she is wont to do so many nights. But before those magic overnight hours, we will brew ourselves some tea, or maybe some mulled wine, and we will for sure open a package of Steenstra’s St. Claus cookies. The cookies are speculaas, a type of Dutch cookie made for St. Nicholas’ Eve. They sell them all year long at the Publix bakery in a small cellophane-wrapped package. The cellophane is clear and the box inside is bright orange. The Steenstra family emigrated from the Netherlands to Michigan in 1926, and that’s where the cookies are still made, as they have been for about 90 years now. They taste of almond and warm spices like ginger and clove, and they depict five different scenes about St. Claus (more correctly about St. Nicholas of Myra, the kind fourth century bishop who gave gifts to the poor while they slept). There is St. Claus on a horse (a derivation of that donkey), a boy and a girl (because they like to receive presents from St. Claus), a rooster (because St. Claus starts his day at sunup), an owl (because St. Claus works til sundown), and a windmill (because St. Claus lives in a windmill). The first of the gift bearers gives us reason to celebrate tonight; we hope you’ll join us in that.

Image: Our Steenstra’s speculaas, ready to go. Just have to mull that wine now.

 

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