Twelfth Night, Candlemas, and ‘the greener box for show’

I know what you’ll be doing on Sunday morning! Half of you will struggle down to the garden centre with the Christmas tree to have it chipped and the other half will be wondering how the box has shrunk by three inches since you got the tree out a month ago. All of you will find that one glass ornament has been broken, and all pet owners will find a stretch of tinsel that has had all the dangly bits chewed off it.

Buxus Sempiverens (copyright Tomasz Górny)

Popular lore has it that Christmas decorations have to be taken down on the evening of Twelfth Night ( ie. the evening of 5th January, before Twelfth Day, 6th January) or you will have bad luck in the following year. I assumed this was several-hundred-year-old folklore, but it seems not. I started on a trail to the truth when I was listening to a Christmassy CD1 by the folk singer, Kate Rusby, and was surprised to see a song called ‘Candlemas Eve’. ‘Ho!’ thought I. ‘Someone doesn’t know their history, or was one song short of an album’. But I was wrong. It seems that for a large stretch of history you didn’t take decorations down until Candlemas Eve, that is, the evening of 1st February.I also found the words quite strange, to the extent it took me quite a while to work out what they were. It turns out they are a 17th-century poem written by Robert Herrick.

The Christmas/Midwinter round-up!

When you’ve been blogging for a while, you realise that there are very few subjects left uncovered and there are experts in everything (…and some who specialise in opinion, perhaps…). Anyway, here’s a round-up of festive posts for your reading delight.

Copyright D McIlmoyle

For a summary of the ancient origins of Christmas and midwinter customs, you could visit my post or pop over to Medievalists for their very thorough summary of Christmas in the Middle Ages.

One of my favourite blogs which seems to get nowhere near the coverage it should is Ferrebeekeeper. Here you will find

“A Mass of Indecent Vulgarity” : Christmas Mummers in 1820s Whitehaven

‘The comedians, of which there are many companies, parade the streets, and ask at almost every door if the mummers are wanted. They are dressed in the most grotesque fashion; their heads adorned with high paper caps, gilt and spangled, and their bodies with ribbons of various colours, while St. George and the prince are armed with ten swords. The mysterie ends with a song… I am satisfied you will join me, in surprise, that for so great a number of years, such a mass of indecent vulgarity as “Alexander and the King of Egypt” should be used without alteration.’

The doctor revives the patient – Mummer’s play

(Letter from William Hone of Whitehaven to The Every Day Book; dated 4^th September 1826.)

‘On the eve of the 25^th, a party of mummers, dressed in most fantastic costume… were admitted to the

Dinogad’s Smock: a 6th-century Cumbrian lullaby

About 1400 years ago, a Cumbrian mother sang a song to her new baby, a boy called Dinogad.

Page from the Book of Aneirin

Dinogad’s smock is pied, pied –

Made it out of marten hide…¹

So our baby boy is wrapped in pine marten furs; perhaps he was born on a cold, wintry day like today. The poem goes on to describe how Dinogad’s daddy went out with his dogs, Giff and Gaff, to catch fish, deer, boar and grouse, presumably to provide a very rich dinner for a very large household.

A Gallop through Midwinter

We have, it seems, long celebrated something special at this time of year. When the days are shortest and coldest, we need something to look forward to.

Ghost of Christmas Past, illus. John Leech, 1843 for Dickens' A Christmas Carol

For many people in the northern and western world, it’s about Christmas, the anniversary of Jesus’ birth. You might have heard that the bible actually gives very little clue about the actual date of Jesus’ birth, and this is true. The establishment of 25^th December as Christmas was only settled by the pope in Rome in 354 CE, a good three-and-a-half centuries after the event.

A Very Cumbrian Christmas Dinner

Grandma and the bakery girls, c. 1934

I was very lucky when I was growing up to have a grandma who was not only Cumbrian but a fully-trained baker and confectioner. You know all those delicious cakes and buns that Birkett’s Bakery used to make before they were swallowed by that huge northern ‘cheap sausage roll’ conglomerate? Well, add a few more currants, another dab of butter and a shake of icing sugar, and you’ve got my gran’s baking.

Long Meg & her daughters

I confess to a great liking for Long Meg. For one, I live very near to it and being handy for one of this land’s ancient monuments really tickles my historian’s cockles. It’s enormous – some say the third biggest in the country, but frankly, I’ve also heard second, fourth, fifth and sixth – so let’s just agree that, at a diameter of 109m, it is really big.

The largest of the stones in the circle is 3.3m high and estimated to weigh 28 tons. There are 27 stones still standing in the circle, with a whole load of others reclining. ‘Long Meg’ herself is an outlyer, made from local sandstone, and is 3.7m high. The pink stone has a strange quality in certain lights – it ‘glitters’ – and it’s then that you catch sight of the faint, eerily ancient, spiral carvings.