Category Archives: Holidays and Festivals

Father’s Day Musings

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About ten years ago, a woman from the U.K. told me that in a British poll, Homer Simpson had been voted “the most influential living American.”  One thing hasn’t changed much over the last decade:  men don’t get a lot of respect in the popular media.  Best case, they come off as lovable though horny goofballs like Joey and Chandler on Friends.  Worst case they are portrayed as liars and nincompoops who couldn’t survive a day without the steadying hand of a woman.  Without Carl’s Jr. bacon cheeseburgers, some guys would starve.

If you believe the marketing experts who layout the Father’s Day advertising supplements, the male imagination is limited to Docker’s shorts, socket-wrench sets, wide-screen TV’s, and golf balls.

When I was in the first grade, my bus used to stop to drop off a boy at a corner then turn uphill toward my house a mile away.  One day that boy’s father shot himself; it was clearly accidental.  He was a WWII veteran who brought home a German luger, and as he was cleaning the gun, he forgot the round in the chamber.  The details were discussed all over the schoolyard and the kitchen table at home; how the man had tried to reach the telephone before he died.  I lay awake quite a few nights with this reminder of my father’s mortality.  I think of that boy every Father’s Day and wonder what thoughts he has.  It may be that no one appreciates a father as much as those who have lost or never had one.

Father’s Day is a nice time to celebrate the expressions of men’s generosity as they have appeared in our lives.  It’s a time to celebrate every man who ever told us, “You can do it,” and made us believe we could.

The Royal Wedding, Rowan Williams, and Generosity

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Having declined the invitation from a British friend to watch the Royal Wedding live, Mary set the DVR, and we watched the event when we were home during the day.  I was busy with other things, but looked up at several points, for there is something hopeful and compelling about such a pageant.  At the same time, I’d watched Helen Mirren in The Queen the previous week, so I couldn’t help but think of Diana.  You have to wish this couple a happier fate.

What really caught my attention – and we backed this up to hear it again – was the homily delivered by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, after the vows were taken.  The gist of it was, as faith in God or a Higher Power has receded, we do a disservice to our marriage partners by demanding of them a fulfillment another human being cannot provide.

I searched online this morning but could not find the sermon.  I did find this interview with Williams conducted before the ceremony.  The word I most often heard him use was “generosity.”  He hoped that watching this service might renew our sense of generosity to ourselves and to others.  It’s a very nice way to think of the Royal Wedding.

Any priest or minister conducting a wedding is bound to feel a huge sense of privilege.  You’re invited into some intimate places in people’s lives.  You’re invited to take part in a very significant moment, a moment of hope; a moment of affirmation about people’s present and future.  And I’ve felt very privileged to be part of this event for those reasons.  Here are young people sending a message of hopefulness, sending a message of generosity across the world.  And it’s my privilege to be able to bless that in the name of God, to witness it in the name of God, and to send them on their way. – Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury

http://www.youtube.com/user/lambethpress?blend=23&ob=5

Missy’s Homecoming Day, aka, Valentine’s Day

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I’ve always been something of a Valentine’s Day Scrooge – “Humbug!”  Always, even in fifth grade, while trying to decipher the nuances of the text on candy kisses enclosed in the envelopes during the school Valentine swap.

I’m not doctrinaire about it.  I always bring Mary a card and some little treat.  And it is marvelous to stop to be mindful of the love and friendships we enjoy.  I’m just not a fan of Hallmark holidays.  It’s hard not to be a bit cynical when the hearts come out the last week of December, during the Christmas closeout sales.

Much of that cynicism ended two years ago, on Saturday, February 14, 2009, at noon.  Mary had spent the morning at Saint Francis Episcopal church.  Like their namesake, the good people there have a serious ministry with animals.  They rescue dogs and train them as companion and service animals for vets coming home from our wars.

Mary called to tell me an eight month old papillon had washed out of the program.  The little thing been mistreated or neglected, for she was much too hyper and skittish to make any kind of service training feasible.  “She is really sweet,” Mary said.  My wife later confessed that she was counting on me to be the voice of reason, and tell her to get real.  Didn’t happen!

Instead, I leashed up our other two dogs and took them over to meet Missy.  It was instant bonding, all around.  Humans and canines instantly warmed up to the little one, and she to us.  Thankfully, neither Mary nor I had any clue how much harder three dogs are to care for than two!  Missy was part of the family and we took her home within the hour.

Now Valentine’s day will forever have a face, one far more appealing than any stupid, rosy-cheeked cupid.  The hearts of people and animals do not seem to have any limits for how much love they can hold.  At this very moment I’m gazing at Missy curled up at my feet – one of the biggest hearts in one of the smallest beings I have ever had the joy of including in my life.

Missy

Happy Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day, Candlemas, Groundhog Day.

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Our Celtic ancestors marked the changing seasons not by solstice and equinox days, which divide the year into quarters, but with the “cross-quarter days” which fall between the astronomical events.  Seasons figured in this way more closely match our experience in the northern temperate zones.  Winter begins at Samhaim (Halloween) and ends on Imbolc, the first day of spring, February 2.  Imbolc or Oimelc are Gaelic words that refer to the lactation of ewes.  Through most of the British Isles, February was bitterly cold, yet it was also the time when lambs were born and shoots of green grass appeared, events that were heralds of new life and a new year.   http://www.chalicecentre.net/imbolc.htm

This time of year was celebrated in the British isles for at least 3,000 years, the age of several megalithic stone circles in Ireland oriented toward the positions of the sun on Samhain and Imbolc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbolc.  The people who raised the standing stones were as remote from the Celts as the Celts are from us:  we can only speculate on their motives and the meaning the day had for them.  And even though the word, Imbolc was used in the middle ages in Ireland and Scotland, who and what the Celts celebrated isn’t certain.  The earliest written records of Celtic cosmology come from Julius Ceasar’s commentary on the Gallic War, 51-52 BCE, in which Celtic beliefs are filtered through the Roman perspective.

Even so – even if our stock of “Celtic lore” dates from the 19th century on, when a revival of interest began (think of pre-Raphealite painting and William Morris’ craft movement), that does not mean it is not “authentic.”  When Yeats tramped around Ireland at the turn of the century gathering fairy lore, some of his informants lived such remote lives that they only spoke Gaelic.  How far back can such an oral tradition go?  Pretty far according to most folklorists.

At Imbolc, the maiden goddess, Brigid or Bride supplants the Cailleach, the hag of winter.  Brigid is the goddess of healing, poetry, and smithcraft.  And fire and divination and wisdom and childbirth.  As patron of healing she presides over numerous sacred wells in Ireland and in Britain (where they were renamed for Minerva by the Romans).  To this day, people extinguish old fires and light new ones for the coming year in her honor.

Brigid the goddess was supplanted by Brigid the saint in the Christain era, where she was revered as, “the Mary of the Gaels.”  Numerous miracle stories surround her life.  When just an infant, neighbors saw a fire burning at her house that rose to the heavens.  http://www.brighid.org.uk/saint.html.   Though a beautiful woman, Brigid renounced marriage to found dual monastic communities at Cill Dara, now Kildaire, in Ireland.  The nuns tended a sacred flame that burned continuously until the reformation, except for a brief 13th century inteval where a bishop had it extinguished for being too pagan.

Brigid and children, Kildaire, Ireland, copyright, brigid.org.uk

February 2 has long been celebrated by Christians as Candlemas.  The early church was not the least bit shy about superimposing new festivals over earlier pagan rites.  This day celebrates the Presentation of Jesus at the temple and the purification of the Virgin Mary.  The association of the day with candles comes from the passage where Simeon, an aged seer, recognizes Jesus and proclaims him as “a light for revelation.”  (Luke 2:21).  One website that explores correspondences between Christian and pagan festivals notes that the association of fire or light with this date is widespread through Europe.  In ancient Armenia, Feb. 2 was sacred to Mihr, the god of fire.  http://www.schooloftheseasons.com/candlemas.html

Of course no discussion of February 2 would be complete without a reference to Groundhog day, although locally, the staff at the Folsom City Zoo Sanctuary points out that groundhogs are not native to the American west.  Here we celebrate Prairie Dog Day.

"Don't drive angry!"

There is also an old Celtic tale involving the Cailleach that explains the importance of weather on Feb. 2.

Legend has it that if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on Imbolc is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood. Therefore, people are generally relieved if Imbolc is a day of foul weather, as it means the Cailleach is asleep and winter is almost over. (see the Wikipedia link above.)

***

I don’t keep sheep, but the signs of spring are everywhere. It’s light out at 5:00pm. The sap from the liquid amber tree takes a nightly dump on my car and I swear every year at this time to dig out our car-cover. The buds on the apple tree are a bit late but I expect them any day now. Strangely, pruning the apple tree is one of those rituals of super-bowl sunday I always enjoy.  The super-bowl itself is like the closing rite of winter – after this I won’t want to spend an entire sunday afternoon indoors. In two weeks the almond and walnut trees will be covered with blooms that look like snow when they fall.  Our brown hills will turn emerald green for a month or so.

May everyone have a happy Imbolc and bask in the promise of the return of light and warmth to the earth.

They Say It’s Your Birthday

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That’s right. January 22. Just over the cusp of Aquarius.  Old enough to know who Eddie Haskel was (see previous post).  Old enough to take the title for this post from a Beatles song.  Old enough that I was in Jr. High (they didn’t call it middle school then) when the Beatles played Ed Sullivan.

I am interested in Tibetan astrology and discovered there is some disagreement about where January birthdays fall in the scheme of the zodiacal year; the Tibetan new year is in February, but half the web sites and a friend who is a dedicated student of all things Tibetan say the astrological year begins at the winter solstice. That would make me an Iron Tiger. The prognosis for 2011 is not encouraging: one online site says, if you survive 2011, you will enter a run of good fortune. How’s that for good news/bad news? The same site suggests taking a retreat for the rest of the year, and urges caution around sharp tools.  Let’s just say we’re running low on firewood because I haven’t hauled out the chain saw in the last few weeks.

But in the forward looking department, I just put an official tag on this blog for the WordPress Post-a-week 2011 challenge. I saw this way back at the start of January, and figured, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do that anyway, so I don’t need to be formal about it.”  Rereading the challenge, I realized there is a real stand-up-and-be-counted aspect to being formal about it, so I’m in.

So here’s to a year of surviving and thriving, and at least a post a week to document it!

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

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My best friend gave me Dylan Thomas’ incredible prose poem back in high school. In whatever form – which now include recordings and at least one TV adaptation – it has been a part of every Christmas since then. I pass it on now, with best wishes for the holiday:

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six……

http://www.bfsmedia.com/MAS/Dylan/Christmas.html

Dylan Thomas

…Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang “Cherry Ripe,” and another uncle sang “Drake’s Drum.” It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

 


Toys You Will Never Play With – The Malcolm Forbes Collection

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Monopoly money worth more than what’s in your wallet?  Much more, if it comes from the earliest surviving monopoly set, hand made by the inventor of the game, and shaped to fit his dining room table.  It is expected to fetch $60,000-$80,000 at Sotheby’s tomorrow when the huge toy collection of the late Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) is sold at auction.

The collection is most famous for its huge assortment of boats and ships, dating from the mid 19th century.  David Redden, vice-president at Sotheby’s tells a story of Forbes’ childhood:

As a boy, Malcolm was traveling on an ocean liner with his family, and he attached his favorite toy ship to a very long string and lowered it into the Atlantic to sail behind the liner.  The toy of, of course, was lost.  “There really is a Rosebud sense to all of this,” says Redden.  “He was trying to bring back that lost toy of his childhood.” http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/132084278/malcolm-forbes-toy-auction-could-bring-in-millions

Toy collector, Leon Weiss, who sold Forbes some of his ships agrees: “I personally believe that old toys transcend generations. For me, it evokes an emotion and triggers a memory.”

Malcolm, third from right, 1924

“This…takes people back to their childhoods,” says Redden. “Whether or not you had a battalion of toy soldiers or a fleet of ships, you wish you had had them.”

Christmas Tree Facts and Legends

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I started out thinking of posting some kind of historical summary of Christmas trees but abandoned that notion after the first Google search.  Who knows when humans first noticed the start of the sun’s return at the darkest time of the year?  When did we first wonder why some plants stay green while others wither?

For a good overview, check out history.com: http://www.history.com/topics/history-of-christmas-trees. Rather than compete with the History Channel, I decided to simply post a few interesting tidbits and legends I happened across.

In Ancient Times:

The Egyptians did not have pine trees, but they did have palms, another evergreen tree, and they brought the fronds inside at the time of the winter solstice to celebrate the return of Ra, the sun god.

The prophet Jeremiah condemned the middle-eastern practice current in his time, of bringing trees indoors (often carved in the shape of a god or goddess) and decorating them.  Jeremiah 10:2-4 has often been cited by Christians who oppose the custom, even though the passage was written centuries before the birth of Christ.

As a Tool for Evangelism?:

Early Christians in Rome apparently set the date for Christmas to December 25 in an effort to convert members of the popular cult of Mithras, a dying and resurected god whose birth fell on that date.  Supposedly, these early Christians incorporated trees into their celebration, as an additional appeal to the Mithraic cult.

Mithras in a tree

Tertullian (160-230) a church leader and prolific writer, complained of those Christians who adopted the pagan custom of lighting lamps and hanging laurel wreaths at the time of the solstice.  With or without trees, Constantine ratified Dec. 25 as the birth of Christ, a move aimed at followers of both Mithras and Saturn, who had major holidays at the time of the solstice.

The Evergreen Vs. the Oak:

On a mission to the Germanic people in 725, St. Boniface, in an effort to stop human sacrifice, cut down Thor’s tree, a scared oak, supposedly with one blow of the axe.   A little fir tree appeared on the stump, which Boniface said was the tree of the Christ Child, and a symbol of eternal life.  He instructed the people to take such trees into their homes and place gifts at the base, “as symbols of love and kindness.”

The Paradise Tree:

Beginning in the eleventh century, one of the popular “Mystery Plays” depicted Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.  The plays were presented in winter, so evergreens were the logical choice to represent the lush trees of the garden.  They were decorated with apples, the forbidden fruit, and over time, with communion wafers as well – the tree of knowledge became the tree of life.

This resulted in a very old European custom of decorating a fir tree in the home with apples and small white wafers representing the Holy Eucharist at Christmas time. These wafers were later replaced by little pieces of pastry cut in the shapes of stars, angels, hearts, flowers, and bells. http://www.eldrbarry.net/mous/saint/xmastree.htm

The First Written Record of a Christmas Tree:

1510, in Latvia.  Men of the Merchant’s Guild decorated a tree with artificial roses, set it on fire, and danced around it while it burned – well, okay, that might be just a little bit pagan… 

The rose was already a symbol of the Virgin Mary, which makes me wonder if they were using the smoke to send prayers or offerings to heaven.  Or maybe they just had a little too much mulled wine.

The First Lighted Candles on Christmas Trees:

One account credits Martin Luther, who was pondering a sermon while walking home, and happened to look up at a dazzling sky full of stars, shining through evergreen boughs.  As a result, he is said to have set up a lighted Christmas tree for his family.

Martin Luther's Christmas Tree

Another source claims the custom of lighted candles originated in France in the 18th century, but every other bit of European Christmas tree lore I’ve found is Germanic in origin, which makes me doubt that claim.

The First Christmas Trees in America:

On the night of December 25, 1776, while Washington led his rag-tag army across the Deleware in a driving snowstorm, unsuspecting Hessian troops in Trenton celebrated what they expected to be a peaceful Christmas night.  One source speculates that their Christmas trees, fueling nostalgia for home, helped draw them from their guard posts to go indoors and celebrate.  Hessians, including the mercenaries who fought with the British, are credited with bringing the custom in America.

The First Christmas Tree in a Church:

The prize for this innovation goes to Pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland, OH, who decorated a tree in his church in 1851.  The congregation initially objected to this pagan practice, and Schwan received threats of physical violence, but “objections soon dissipated.”

The First Christmas Tree in the White House:

December, 1853, under the administration of Franklin Pierce.

The Christmas Tree Ship:

Thanks to Gordon Lightfoot, everyone knows of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that sank on Lake Superior in November, 1975, but an earlier disaster, “when the storms of November came early,” also captured the public imagination.  On Nov. 23, 1912, the Rouse Simmons (named for the industrialist whose name still appears on mattresses) was bound for Chicago with a load of Christmas trees.  She sank in a storm off Two Rivers, WI with fifteen men and one woman aboard.

The Rouse Simmons

Legend says the Rouse Simmons can sometimes be seen rising out of the fog on Christmas Eve.

The Christmas Truce:

To the later consternation of generals, peace broke out all along the western front on December 25, 1914.  There was no plan, no prearrangement, and it seems to have happened differently in different sections of the line.  In one account, the Germans began singing, Stille Nacht, the British responded with Silent Night, and men on both sides spontaneously climbed out of their trenches, hands in the air,  to meet in no-man’s land.  They traded cigarettes, food, and song.  When daylight came, they played soccer.  The story usually has hostilities resuming the next day, but in some parts of the line, the men were able to resist orders to resume fighting for several weeks.

British and German soldiers together, Dec. 25, 1914
In one account, on FirstWorldWar.com: Along many parts of the line the Truce was spurred on with the arrival in the German trenches of miniature Christmas trees–Tannenbaum. The sight these small pines, decorated with candles and strung along the German parapets, captured the Tommies’ imagination, as well as the men of the Indian corps who were reminded of the sacred Hindu festival of light.

Festivals of Light:

Light is what the solstice is about all over the world, in any number of ways. Hanukkah is the eight day Jewish Festival of Lights in early December.  Diwali is the five day Festival of lights in early December for Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains.  Both holidays celebrate the victory of good over evil, of light over darkness.

Until the 20th century, December 13, was thought to be the longest night of the year in Scandanavian countries.  December 13 is the feast day of St. Lucy, one of the few festivals of a saint celebrated in Northern Europe.  On Saint Lucy, or Santa Lucia’s day, young girls in march in procession carrying candles or even wearing crowns of candles in the north, and in Italy, Malta, and the Balkans.

Paramahansa Yogananda said it only takes one little flame to drive a thousand years of darkness out of a cave.  In this time of cold and darkness, may we consider the way that light and warmth manifest and can manifest in our own lives.