Category Archives: Hollantide

St. Martin’s Day Lanterns, or Your Convivio Book of Days for November

I did warn you on Hallowe’en night that your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for November would be belated, and boy, was I right about that! But here it is (click here for the calendar), finally, in plenty of time for St. Martin’s Day, or Martinmas, which approaches this weekend on the 11th. Martinmas brings the conclusion of our annual autumnal days of remembrance, this time of year when we particularly keep close in heart and mind those who have come and gone before us.

Of course we honored these days of the dead at the start of the month with Hallowe’en and All Saints and All Souls. But the connection of Martinmas to the days of the dead is just as strong, through memory. Before the change to the Gregorian Calendar, the 11th of November was Samhain, the Celtic New Year. Another name for Martinmas is Hollantide, and just as Hallowe’en is a corruption of the words All Hallow’s Eve, so is Hollandtide, which comes from Hallowtide: the time of the sacred, the holy. Many of our contemporary Hallowe’en traditions come out of Hollantide traditions: the carving of turnips (replaced by pumpkins here in America) into Jack o’ Lanterns and the going door to door in search of soul cakes, which has evolved into the trick-or-treating we know today. The day is also a traditional weather marker: If ducks do slide at Hollantide, At Christmas they will swim. / If ducks do swim at Hollantide, At Christmas they will slide. / Winter is on his way / At St. Martin’s Day.

And with Martinmas, winter certainly is on its way: the nights are much longer than they were just a few weeks ago at the equinox, and still growing longer as we approach the solstice of midwinter that will arrive in six weeks’ time. The increasing darkness informs one of the great Martinmas traditions, especially in Germany, where after sunset on St. Martin’s Day, people gather outdoors with lanterns, often homemade, shining warm light onto the chilly night. And it is a scene just like this that is the cover star for this month’s calendar: it’s a 1905 watercolor by Heinrich Hermanns depicting those St. Martin’s Day lanterns in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Martinmas also has much to do with wine, for it is time for the first tasting of the wine that was put up to ferment in September. These are not aged wines, mind you, but young new wines: think Beaujolais, for instance. This has to do with timing (this year’s wine has had a few weeks to ferment by now) and with the good saint himself, St. Martin of Tours, being a patron saint of winemakers. It is also the last big religious feast before Advent, that time of preparation for Christmas. In earlier days, Advent was a season of fasting, and so Martinmas was a very big deal, a chance to indulge. Traditional Martinmas foods include goose and turkey, and also chestnuts and in Italy, very hard biscotti, some of which are baked not just twice like regular biscotti but three times. The extra baking makes them hard as rocks, but with good reason: Biscotti di San Martino are meant to be dunked in that new wine that we’re drinking on his day.

And with this day’s passing, Advent fast approaches. At our online shop, you’ll find traditional Advent calendars from Germany and Advent candles from both England and Sweden. We don’t sell anything anyone really needs, but I would say we do sell many useful things, and these simple candles and calendars are indeed useful: they help us slow down, they help us set a pace for the Christmas joy that is to come, and perhaps help us appreciate it, too, and this is the value of Advent and this time of preparation that is to come. Martinmas, Thanksgiving, Advent. Enjoy each as it comes. This is what we mean by enjoying the ceremony of each day.

 

COME SEE US!
We’d love to see you at our pop-up shops at these upcoming events in South Florida. These are the ones we currently have planned:

DELRAY BEACH 100′ CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING & YULETIDE STREET FAIR
We’ll be there near the 100′ tree in our 10′ tent with a nice little shop of Advent candles and calendars and Christmas goods from Germany, Sweden, and Mexico. Tuesday November 28 from 6 to 9 PM at Old School Square, Downtown Delray Beach.

CHRISTMAS MARKET MIAMI
We’ll have a huge pop-up shop of handmade artisan goods from Germany plus specialty foods, too, and our Advent candles and calendars. Saturday December 2 from 11 AM to 8 PM, indoors and outdoors (we’ll be indoors) at the German American Social Club in Miami, which is where we spent Oktoberfest this year. 11919 SW 56th Street, Miami.

SANKTA LUCIA FESTIVAL & JULMARKNAD
This lovely festival is a fundraiser hosted by SWEA, the Swedish Women’s Educational Association. It will be held at the First United Methodist Church of Boca Raton at 625 NE Mizner Boulevard on Saturday December 2 from 11 AM to 3 PM. Our pop-up shop will feature traditional and contemporary Swedish Christmas items plus Advent candles and calendars, and some delicious German Christmas cookies and candies, too. (Same day as the Christmas Market in Miami, but don’t worry, we’ll be at both!)

KRAMPUSNACHT
On the Eve of St. Nicholas’ Day, it is Krampus who accompanies the good saint to scare girls and boys into good behavior, and he gets his own celebration at the American German Club in suburban Lake Worth on Friday evening, December 8, from 7 to 11 PM. We’ll be there with our biggest pop-up shop ever as this night ushers in the weekend’s Christkindlmarkt. Tickets required and must be purchased in advance. 5111 Lantana Road, Lake Worth.

CHRISTKINDLMARKT
It’s our favorite event of the year! The annual Christkindlmarkt at the American German Club in suburban Lake Worth is just wonderful, and we’ll be there with our biggest pop-up shop ever, filled with German Christmas artisan goods plus more from Sweden and Mexico, as well as specialty foods and who knows what else! Tickets are required and must be purchased in advance. Usually sells out! Saturday December 9 from 2 to 10 PM and Sunday December 10 from 12 to 8 PM. 5111 Lantana Road, Lake Worth.

Image: “Sankt Martins Zug vor dem Düsseldorfer Rathaus” by Heinrich Hermanns. Watercolor on paper, 1905 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Closing These Days of Mystery & Remembrance

The days have been hectic and I apologize for not writing more often. No news from me for Hallowe’en, nor for Dia de Los Muertos and All Souls Night. And now, with Martinmas, we come to the close of these annual days of remembrance and mystery. And even today I have nothing new to write you, but instead offer this piece from years past. It is a worthwhile read, so please accept it as that, and allow it to give you pause as this day progresses: time to honor this day, and time to honor those on that distant shore. And time, too, to appreciate the days that lead us soon into even busier times: Thanksgiving and the holidays that follow it. There are a few invitations at the end of this chapter, too: invitations to a sale, to a story, and to an online social. Happy Hollantide. Happy Martinmas. –– John

It’s November, and very soon, Mom will wake up one morning and decide it is time to make u cutto. She’ll put her big pot on the stove, pour in the ingredients, and it will simmer all day long, and into the night. U cutto is what we call it in our Lucerine dialect from Apulia: “oo coo-toe.” In proper Italian, it would be vin cotto, or mosto cotto: cooked wine, or cooked must. It is a syrupy concoction that we use in all sorts of sweets at the end of the year. It’ll show up in Christmas cookies, and last year’s mosto cotto made an appearance at All Souls Day in a dessert distinct to my grandparents’ region of Apulia that is made just for that night. My grandparents used to pour it over freshly fallen snow as a treat for the kids. It is, at its most basic, what’s left of the grape must after winemaking, boiled down with sugar to a reduction. The aroma fills every corner of the house as it simmers through the day, as the brew reduces to its proper consistency. It is prized by my people, this autumnal concoction so distinctive to Apulia: its own sort of black gold.

U cutto would traditionally be made around the Nativity of Mary, which was in September, or around Martinmas, which is today. Mom doesn’t usually even think about these things, though: when she makes it, it is simply time to make it. It’s autumn, and her thoughts have begun shifting to holiday preparations, and making u cutto is a big preparation, and a time-consuming one. When she makes it, it is more instinctual than anything else: it is November, and this is what we do in November… a culinary tradition handed down from time immemorial. Her mother made u cutto, as certainly did her grandmothers, and their mothers before them.

Martinmas has a lot to do with wine, anyway, for it is time for the first tasting of the wine that was put up to ferment in September. It’s also when the young new Beaujolais wines of France are released. This has to do with timing and with St. Martin of Tours, who lends his name to Martinmas, being a patron saint of winemakers. It is also the last big religious feast before Advent, that time of preparation for Christmas. In earlier days, Advent was a season of fasting, and so Martinmas was a very big deal, a chance to indulge. Traditional Martinmas foods include goose and turkey, and also chestnuts and very hard biscotti, some of which are baked not just twice but three times. The extra baking makes them hard as rocks, but with good reason: Biscotti di San Martino are meant to be dunked in that new wine that we’re drinking on his day.

In the parts of Europe that most thoroughly celebrate St. Martin’s Day, it is often a time of warmer weather, the last bit of it before the full onset of winter. Kind of like Indian Summer in America, it’s known in Italy, for instance, as l’estate di San Martino (St. Martin’s Summer). But this mild weather tends to be fleeting. Colder nights lie ahead and with Martinmas we find ourselves, by traditional reckoning of time, at the natural start of winter. It is, until Yuletide, a time of increasing darkness. The living world continues its process of shutting down and receding into itself: going underground. Trees are no longer growing above, but roots below the surface still are growing. And so the connexions are strong, these darkening days, between the world of the living and the underworld of the dead.

Of course we honored these days of the dead at the start of the month with Hallowe’en and All Saints and All Souls. But the connexion of Martinmas to the days of the dead is just as strong, through memory. Before the change to the Gregorian Calendar, the 11th of November was Samhain, the Celtic New Year. Another name for Martinmas is Hollantide, and just as Hallowe’en is a corruption of the words All Hallow’s Eve, so is Hollandtide, which comes from Hallowtide: the time of the sacred, the holy––those who have gone before. Many of our contemporary Hallowe’en traditions come out of Hollantide traditions: the carving of turnips (replaced by pumpkins here in America) into Jack o’Lanterns and the going door to door in search of soul cakes, which has evolved into the trick-or-treating we know today. The day is also a traditional weather marker: If ducks do slide at Hollantide, At Christmas they will swim. / If ducks do swim at Hollantide, At Christmas they will slide. / Winter is on his way / At St. Martin’s Day.

Finally, it is, of course, Veterans Day, when we honor all who have served in the military. The day was formerly known as Armistice Day, for it was on Martinmas in 1918 that the treaty ending what would later be known as World War I was signed. The day is known as Remembrance Day in many places, but here in the US, Veterans Day became the day’s official name in 1954.

St. Martin also was a veteran. He served in the Roman army, until his conversion to Christianity and to pacifism, for which he was imprisoned. Upon his release, he went to France and founded a monastery. The best known legend about good St. Martin is his happening upon a shivering drunken man on a cold winter’s day. Martin tore his own cloak in two and gave one half to the drunken man to warm him. The legend makes St. Martin a patron saint not just of winemakers, but also of those who love wine (including those who love it too much).

And so we continue turning inward at this time of year, gathering in, preparing for winter. What’s a good way to mark this Martinmas evening? Certainly with wine. Light a fire while you’re at it. The Celts would have lit huge bonfires on Samhain to welcome in the new year, and in our case, a small celebration involving a fire in the hearth or in the fire pit in the back yard is just as good, made even better with mulled wine and good company. Good St. Martin himself would have it no other way… especially if the year’s new cutto––the mosto cotto––is already brewed and bottled and being kept cool in the fridge. Our time of Christmas preparation lies ahead. For now we pause and delight in the small things of this earth.

Images: At top, Cici Cutto (pronounced “chee-chee coo-toe”), the traditional dessert for I Morti, or All Souls Night, that comes from my grandparents’ city of Lucera in Italy. It is a strange concoction of cooked whole wheat berries, pomegranate, chopped toasted almonds, and chopped chocolate. U cutto, infused with cloves and cinnamon, is poured over it. Second photo: Mamma’s pot of u cutto simmering on the stove, to be later packed in jars and stored in the refrigerator, ready for use on all sorts of wonderful things. Like most seasonal delicacies, she makes it just once each year.

 

CHRISTMAS STOCK-UP SALE!

Our annual Christmas Stock-Up Sale is back! Use discount code STREETFAIR when checking out at our online catalog, and we’ll take $10 off your purchase of $75 or more, plus we’ll ship your domestic order for free. That’s a savings that totals $19.50, which is not so bad at all! Many fine things to choose from: traditional sparkly Advent calendars from Germany and handmade daily Advent candles from England to help mark daily the transition to Christmas; winter incense and traditional wooden artisan goods for Christmas from Germany and Sweden and Italy, including ornaments and incense burners and pyramids and nutcrackers (some vintage GDR!); sparkling painted tin ornaments and nativity sets from Mexico (one of them is a pop-up!), and our popular embroidered protective face masks from Chiapas (they make fine stocking stuffers); handmade soaps for Hanukkah and Christmas from our local soap maker Kelly Sullivan; fir balsam pillows that smell for all the world just like Christmas itself––they are from the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine, who also offer you bags of their homegrown culinary lavender and their full selection of herbal teas and culinary herbs; letterpress printed books and broadsides that we make here in our workshop… oh and how about a Day of the Dead themed nativity set handmade in Mexico (one of our most popular items ever)? Not to mention all of our new textiles: Millie’s Tea Towels (hand embroidered by my mom) and tea towels from Kei & Molly Designs in New Mexico, plus beautiful Otomi embroidery from Chiapas.

Click here to shop our catalog and see if we can’t help fulfill some of the shopping on your list (while saving you a bit of cash, too). Your transactions translate into real support for a very small company AND for other small companies, real families, local friends and family, and as for the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, well… they are the only remaining active Shaker Community anywhere, and America’s oldest religious community, established in 1783. All of the folks we work with are deserving of your support on this transactional basis. Our appreciation and theirs is genuine!

 

A TALE of MYSTERY


If my Hallowe’en Dispatch from Lake Worth never made it to your inbox (perhaps you are not a subscriber to the Convivio Dispatch from Lake Worth), click here to read the mysterious tale… fitting enough as this season of remembrance comes to a close.

 

CALLING ALL ABBA FANS!

One last thing before I sign off: Won’t you join me, virtually, at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts’ next virtual Real Mail Fridays social? We’re calling this one the ABBA Voyage Social, and we’re playing three hours of ABBA music––classics and new music from ABBA’s just released new album: their first in nearly 40 years. I’ll be in my ABBA T-shirt––either the brand new one that I ordered or the one I bought in 1983. Click here for the Zoom link to join in the social, which is on Friday from 2 to 5 Eastern. Come and go as you please.

 

 

Closing Our Days of Remembrance

Sometimes, very occasionally, I read earlier chapters of this blog in preparation to write new ones, and it seems to me that I can’t say things any better than I did in the past. Today’s post is one such case. Most of the paragraphs below were written for Martinmas 2019. I’ve improved a few things, I think, but for the most part, here is that chapter as it appeared last year. It is the time now of closure for our mysterious autumnal days each year when we remember those who have come and gone before. Through memory, we look back, and yet we are very much present during this time. Perhaps, then, this bit of looking back and looking ahead is more fitting than I thought. –– John

It’s November, and very soon, Mom will wake up one morning and decide it is time to make u cutto. She’ll put her big pot on the stove, pour in the ingredients, and it will simmer all day long, and into the night. U cutto is what we call it in our Lucerine dialect from Apulia: “oo coot-oh.” In proper Italian, it would be vin cotto, or mosto cotto: cooked wine, or cooked must. It is a syrupy concoction that we use in all sorts of sweets at the end of the year. It’ll show up in Christmas cookies, and last year’s mosto cotto made an appearance at All Souls Day in a dessert distinct to my grandparents’ region of Apulia that is made just for that night. My grandparents used to pour it over freshly fallen snow as a treat for the kids. It is, at its most basic, what’s left of the grape must after winemaking, boiled down with sugar to a reduction. The aroma fills every corner of the house as it simmers through the day, as the brew reduces to its proper consistency. It is prized by my people, this autumnal concoction so distinctive to Apulia: its own sort of black gold.

U cutto would traditionally be made around the Nativity of Mary, which was in September, or around Martinmas, which is today. Mom doesn’t usually even think about these things, though: when she makes it, it is simply time to make it. It’s autumn, and her thoughts have begun shifting to holiday preparations, and making u cutto is a big preparation, and a time-consuming one. When she makes it, it is more instinctual than anything else: it is November, and this is what we do in November… a culinary tradition handed down from time immemorial. Her mother made u cutto, as certainly did her grandmothers, and their mothers before them.

Martinmas has a lot to do with wine, anyway, for it is time for the first tasting of the wine that was put up to ferment in September. It’s also when the young new Beaujolais wines of France are released. This has to do with timing and with St. Martin of Tours, who lends his name to Martinmas, being a patron saint of winemakers. It is also the last big religious feast before Advent, that time of preparation for Christmas. In earlier days, Advent was a season of fasting, and so Martinmas was a very big deal, a chance to indulge. Traditional Martinmas foods include goose and turkey, and also chestnuts and very hard biscotti, some of which are baked not just twice but three times. The extra baking makes them hard as rocks, but with good reason: Biscotti di San Martino are meant to be dunked in that new wine that we’re drinking on his day.

In the parts of Europe that most thoroughly celebrate St. Martin’s Day, it is often a time of warmer weather, the last bit of it before the full onset of winter. Kind of like Indian Summer in America, it’s known in Italy, for instance, as l’estate di San Martino (St. Martin’s Summer). But this mild weather tends to be fleeting. Colder nights lie ahead and with Martinmas we find ourselves, by traditional reckoning of time, at the natural start of winter. It is, until Yuletide, a time of increasing darkness. The living world continues its process of shutting down and receding into itself: going underground. Trees are no longer growing above, but roots below the surface still are growing. And so the connexions are strong, these darkening days, between the world of the living and the underworld of the dead.

Of course we honored these days of the dead at the start of the month with Hallowe’en and All Saints and All Souls. But the connexion of Martinmas to the days of the dead is just as strong, through memory. Before the change to the Gregorian Calendar, the 11th of November was Samhain, the Celtic New Year. Another name for Martinmas is Hollantide, and just as Hallowe’en is a corruption of the words All Hallow’s Eve, so is Hollandtide, which comes from Hallowtide: the time of the sacred, the holy––those who have gone before. Many of our contemporary Hallowe’en traditions come out of Hollantide traditions: the carving of turnips (replaced by pumpkins here in America) into Jack o’Lanterns and the going door to door in search of soul cakes, which has evolved into the trick-or-treating we know today. The day is also a traditional weather marker: If ducks do slide at Hollantide, At Christmas they will swim. / If ducks do swim at Hollantide, At Christmas they will slide. / Winter is on his way / At St. Martin’s Day.

Finally, it is, of course, Veterans Day, when we honor all who have served in the military. The day was formerly known as Armistice Day, for it was on Martinmas in 1918 that the treaty ending what would later be known as World War I was signed. The day is known as Remembrance Day in many places, but here in the US, Veterans Day became the day’s official name in 1954.

St. Martin also was a veteran. He served in the Roman army, until his conversion to Christianity and to pacifism, for which he was imprisoned. Upon his release, he went to France and founded a monastery. The best known legend about good St. Martin is his happening upon a shivering drunken man on a cold winter’s day. Martin tore his own cloak in two and gave one half to the drunken man to warm him. The legend makes St. Martin a patron saint not just of winemakers, but also of those who love wine (including those who love it too much).

And so we continue turning inward at this time of year, gathering in, preparing for winter. What’s a good way to mark this Martinmas evening? Certainly with wine. Light a fire while you’re at it. The Celts would have lit huge bonfires on Samhain to welcome in the new year, and in our case, a small celebration involving a fire in the hearth or in the fire pit in the back yard is just as good, made even better with mulled wine and good company. Good St. Martin himself would have it no other way… especially if the year’s new cutto––the mosto cotto––is already brewed and bottled and being kept cool in the fridge. Our time of Christmas preparation lies ahead. For now we pause and delight in the small things of this earth.

Images: At top, Cici Cutto (pronounced “chee-chee coot-oh”), the traditional dessert for I Morti, or All Souls Night, that comes from my grandparents’ city of Lucera in Italy. It is a strange concoction of cooked whole wheat berries, pomegranate, chopped toasted almonds, and chopped chocolate. U cutto, infused with cloves and cinnamon, is poured over it. Second photo: Mamma’s pot of u cutto simmering on the stove, to be later packed in jars and stored in the refrigerator, ready for use on all sorts of wonderful things. Like most seasonal delicacies, she makes it just once each year.

 

CHRISTMAS STOCK-UP SALE!

Use discount code STREETFAIR when checking out at our catalog, and we’ll take $10 off your purchase of $75 or more, plus we’ll ship your domestic order for free. That’s a savings that totals $18.50, which is not so bad at all! Many fine things to choose from: traditional sparkly Advent calendars from Germany and handmade daily Advent candles from England to help mark daily the transition to Christmas; winter incense and traditional wooden artisan goods for Christmas from Germany and Sweden and Italy, including ornaments and incense burners and pyramids and nutcrackers (some vintage GDR!); sparkling painted tin ornaments and nativity sets from Mexico (one of them is a pop-up!), and our popular embroidered protective face masks from Chiapas (they make fine stocking stuffers); handmade soaps for Hanukkah and Christmas from our local soap maker Kelly Sullivan; fir balsam pillows that smell for all the world just like Christmas itself––they are from the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine, who also offer you bags of their homegrown culinary lavender and their full selection of herbal teas and culinary herbs; letterpress printed books and broadsides that we make here in our workshop… oh and how about a Day of the Dead themed nativity set handmade in Mexico (one of our most popular items ever)?

Take a look around our catalog and see if we can’t help fulfill some of the shopping on your list (while saving you a bit of cash, too). Your transactions translate into real support for a very small company AND for other small companies, real families, local friends and family, and as for the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community, well… they are the only remaining active Shaker Community anywhere, and America’s oldest religious community, established in 1783. All of the folks we work with are deserving of your support on this transactional basis, especially now, in strange, more challenging times. Companies like Amazon are enjoying record-breaking sales and profits right now… but it’s the little guys that are struggling to make ends meet. The small companies and artisans we work with appreciate every sale, like you wouldn’t believe. It’s just like voting. Purchasing what they make is your vote for them; it means you believe in what they do. Please consider supporting what we do so we can continue to support the artisans we know. And please take a look around at the small businesses in your area, too. Especially small family-run restaurants. They need your business to make it through to the other side of this.

Here’s a link to our catalog. Remember the discount code STREETFAIR at checkout… our nod to all the wonderful local celebrations that are canceled this year (like the Sankta Lucia Festival by SWEA: the Swedish Women’s Educational Association in Boca Raton, and the Christkindlmarkt at the American German Club in Lantana). We thank you for your support!