Category Archives: St. John’s Day

First Two Days of Christmas

Advent has run its course, Christmas has been made welcome, and now we enter into the Christmas season proper. When we sing the old carol about five golden rings and a partridge in a pear tree and all those other gifts that my true love gave to me, this is what we are singing about: The Twelve Days of Christmas begin now, now that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have passed.

There are two approaches to the calculation of these Twelve Days: One approach has the Twelve Days of Christmas beginning on Christmas Day itself, while the other starts them on St. Stephen’s Day, the 26th of December. In this house, we subscribe to the second approach. Our ancestors, who perhaps were more attuned than we to the passing of the days and to each day’s meaning, loved symmetry in numbers, and the second approach provides exactly that. Christmas Day itself has long been seen as a day outside ordinary time: a most distinct and holy day, followed by a beautiful symmetry that comes along with the passing of the year. In this model, we have six days of Christmas in the old year and six days in the new, creating a balanced bridge at the start and end of each year, a balance that links the other old story –– that of the ever expanding round of the year as this old earth spins on its axis and rotates around the sun –– to the story of the child’s birth at Bethlehem. The links connect Christmas through the years in a lovely balance. More mystery, of the universal sort, heavenly yet here on earth.

If you feel let down when Christmas Day has passed, join us on our journey and you won’t have any reason to feel this way, and I do hope you’ll join us at your home in celebrating the full season that lasts through Epiphany on the Sixth of January. And if you are a bit in love with Christmas as we are in this household, welcome. Our Christmas tree and other greenery will be illuminated tonight and every night through Epiphany, and most likely we will go even beyond, for traditionally the greenery would come down at Candlemas Eve: the First of February. Keeping it up longer would invite goblins into your home, and no one wants that. But to bring light and cheer through all the dark month of January is, I think, a wonderful thing.

My plan this year for the Twelve Days of Christmas is to write a few Book of Days chapters, grouping together the days of Christmas that seem fittingly grouped, and in this chapter, we’ll discuss the first Two Days of Christmas. Before we begin, I’ve got a worthy suggestion: there are a few farm stand and pantry items you may find handy to stock up on for this season. My recommendations: apples, chestnuts, mulling spices, honey, red wine, fresh cider, and rose water. We can supply your mulling spices and rose water; ours are both made by the Sabbathday Lake Shakers and we’ll ship via US Priority Mail to get your domestic order to you in just two or three days.

And now to begin our journey: It begins, of course, with Christmas Day, December 25, a day outside ordinary time. In our model, Christmas Day stands alone in its holiness, a holyday/holiday if ever there was one. But December 26 brings St. Stephen’s Day and the First Day of Christmas:

FIRST DAY of CHRISTMAS
December 26
St. Stephen’s Day, Boxing Day, Day of the Wren, First Day of Kwanzaa

On this First Day of Christmas, Father Christmas brings Boxing Day, celebrated in England and the Commonwealth countries. Servants typically had to work on Christmas Day, but this First Day of Christmas was their day to spend with their families. Their employers would send them home with boxes of gifts for themselves and for the families they were heading home to. Perhaps more important, though, it is St. Stephen’s Day. Stephen was the first Christian martyr, and so the Church assigned this first day of Christmas to him. In Italy, this Giorno di Santo Stefano is a big deal. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is for family, but St. Stephen’s Day is a day to bundle up and go out to visit friends and to visit nativity scenes. It is a day for roasted chestnuts and mulled wine (as is tomorrow, St. John’s Day: the Second Day of Christmas). My grandmother, Assunta, typically made soup for supper on this First Day of Christmas, when we remember Santo Stefano. The soup was a nice break from the rich fare of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Over in Ireland, it is the Day of the Wren. It is the wren that is traditionally thought to have brought bad luck upon the imprisoned Stephen, who was making his escape when a wren alerted the sleeping guards to the situation. His capture lead to his execution and martyrdom. Wrens were traditionally hunted on this First Day of Christmas, then paraded around town. Nowadays, the wrens paraded around town are effigies, and not real wrens (all is forgiven, wrens!).

The 26th also brings the start of a newer tradition, the First Day of Kwanzaa, which brings yet more light to the world through candles and a celebration of African-American culture: each candle and each day, through the First of January, focusing on one of seven principles: first, umoja (unity); then kujichagulia (self-determination); next, ujima (collective work and responsibility); followed by ujamaa (cooperative economics); and then nia (purpose); kuumba (creativity); and finally imani (faith).

SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS
December 27
St. John’s Day

On St. John’s Day we remember St. John the Evangelist, one of the Twelve Apostles and the only one who did not die a martyr’s death for his beliefs, although many attempts were made on his life. In the most famous of these, St. John was sentenced to die by ingesting poisoned wine. John drank the wine but the poison had no effect on him. And so it is customary on this Second Day of Christmas to give gifts of wine, as well as to bring bottles of wine to church to be blessed, especially in Germany and Austria. This blessed St. John’s wine is thought to have healing properties and to taste better than other wines. Some even hold that wine that is not blessed but is stored nearby to blessed St. John’s wine improves in flavor just by being near it. It is a fine night (as are most nights during Christmastide) to enjoy mulled wine and roasted chestnuts… and here is our recipe for mulled wine, one of the loveliest drinks of the Yuletide season (indeed, all winter long):

M U L L E D   W I N E
A bottle of good red wine
Mulling spices (a blend of cinnamon, cloves, allspice, orange peel)
Sugar

Pour a quantity (enough for as many people as you are serving) of good red wine into a stainless steel or enamel pot and set it on the stove over medium heat. Add about a teaspoon of mulling spices for each serving. Add sugar: start with a teaspoon or two of sugar and add more to taste. We prefer a less-sweet mulled wine, and while you can always add more sugar, you can’t take it away once it’s in. So my recommendation is to add the sugar gradually, tasting as you go. Heat to allow the spicy flavors to infuse the wine, but do not allow to boil. Strain before serving in cups (not glasses).

I’ll be back with our next chapter on the Third Day of Christmas: Childremas, or Holy Innocents’ Day… it is a day in the Twelve when the story takes a dark turn, acknowledging the sorrows in life. For now, though: Cheers!

TWELVE DAYS of CHRISTMAS SALE
At our online shop, our Twelve Days of Christmas Sale brings you automatic markdowns on most of our authentic German handmade nutcrackers, pyramids, and incense smokers. We are running the sale for the full Twelve Days of Christmas, through the Sixth Day of January. If there are things you wanted that Santa couldn’t fit in his sleigh, well, we’re here to help (and to offer you our best prices of the year, too). CLICK HERE to shop!

 

Image: “Provando o Vinho” (“Tasting the Wine”) by an unknown artist working in the English School, Portugal. Oil painting, 19th century. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Midsummer Solstice

June 21 this year brings the June Solstice: Midsummer in the Northern Hemisphere, Midwinter in the Southern. As precision goes, the solstice moment this time around, more or less (for there are variations east and west within time zones), is 10:57 AM here in US Eastern Daylight Time. That is the moment when the sun’s rays strike the Tropic of Cancer, 23.5° north of the Equator. It is our longest day in the Northern Hemisphere. And for a lovely explanation of why (by way of a fresh lemon representing Earth), I invite you to watch a short video by one of the people on this planet that I really admire: Lia Leendertz, author of The Almanac, which you might think of as a Book of Days with a British focus, explains the celestial mechanics while offering some thoughts on Midsummer in a charming video she released just yesterday.

This 23.5° tilt of the Earth brings us our seasons, and today, we reach the extreme that brings the most sunlight to the Northern Hemisphere. It is the start of summer by the almanac, but our ancestors saw this as the height of summer, hence its older monicker: Midsummer. And just as the Midwinter solstice in December is soon followed by Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so too is the Midsummer solstice soon followed by St. John’s Eve and St. John’s Day. St. John’s Eve will come on Friday, the evening of the 23rd, and St. John’s Day on the 24th. This St. John is John the Baptist: the cousin of Jesus, he who was sent to prepare his way. All those feast days of saints that we celebrate throughout the year… like when we eat zeppole on St. Joseph’s Day, or minne de virgine on St. Agatha’s Day, or soda bread on St. Patrick’s Day: all these feasts commemorate the day each of these people left this earthly life. There are only three birthdays the Church celebrates each year: Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist. It’s the two cousins that are the more fascinating here, because the Church placed their birthdates at the solstices. No one knows for sure when they were actually born, but they are placed in this particular order in the round of the year for metaphoric reasons: St. John is born at the brightest time of the year, the time of our longest days. But what happens immediately after the Midsummer solstice? Sunlight begins to decrease a little bit each day. It is the Constant Rearrange: no day exactly like the one that came before or the one that follows. John himself tells us something to the effect of, “I must decrease so he may increase.” John prepares the way for Jesus, the Light of the World. And Jesus is born then, at the opposite pole of the year, the time of our darkest days, our longest nights, just as sunlight is again increasing.

That is one version, anyway. It is the old old story and a fascinating one: the story of our planet and its place in the universe and it is our story, too, no matter which players you place in the roles. The planet continues its journey around the sun at its 23.5° tilt and with it comes summer and fall and winter and spring and therein, in this simplicity, lies the mystery. The mystery of our unfolding days and the spiraling circular nature of our existence.

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SPEND MIDSUMMER WITH US
Join me on Friday, June 23, in the afternoon hours before St. John’s Eve begins, for the Real Mail Fridays Midsummer Social on Zoom. This online social runs from 2 to 5 Eastern, and you may come and go as you please for time to get things done (letter writing or otherwise) in the company of friends from around the globe. We will feature music by Felix Mendelssohn and readings from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mixed in with some other music fitting for the height of summer, and once an hour we’ll take a little break for some casual banter. We welcome you to join us from wherever you are by clicking here. Real Mail Fridays is always a very heartwarming time and this week it’s a midsummery time, too.

Saturday evening, St. John’s Night, Seth & I are thinking about going to the Midsummer Fest––the Juhannusjuhla––outdoors at Finnish-American Village, weather permitting. There’ll be a traditional midsummer bonfire! Entry is $5. Finnish American Village is at 1800 South Drive here in Lake Worth, Florida. The festivities begin at 6 PM, but if we go, we’ll be going later, as I am teaching a workshop that day at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts called Book Arts 101: Midsummer Night’s Dream and then we’ll be having a traditional Swedish Midsommar feast, of the carry-out sort, from our friends at Johan’s Jöe in West Palm Beach. They are accepting Midsommar catering orders through Thursday. Everything at Johan’s is always delicious! Here’s a link to order your own Midsommar feast from Johan’s. Highly recommended!

Also online, I invite you to watch the episode of Stay Awake Bedtime Stories that I recorded last year for Midsummer: It’s my own retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an adaptation of the 1899 story version by Edith Nesbit. It’s a fun time. And in the video, I’m wearing an awesome floral crown that Seth made for me. Click here to watch.

 

MIDSUMMER SALE
At our online catalog, use discount code BLOSSOM to take $10 off your order of $85 or more, plus get free domestic shipping. Good on everything in the shop! Click here to shop! Happy Midsummer to you all. Glad Midsommar. Hyvää Juhannusta.

 

Image: “Summer Night (Sommernatt)” by Harald Sohlberg. Oil on canvas, 1899. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Think But This and All is Mended

A midsummer gift for you, and an invitation to join us on Saturday at Lake Worth’s Island Fest.

And so the wheel of the year moves forward one more notch: 5:13 AM Eastern on the 21st of June brings the Summer Solstice to the Northern Hemisphere. It is the astronomical start of summer, and, by traditional reckoning of time, midsummer, for now, after six months of increasing daylight and of the sun climbing higher and higher in the northern sky, things will seem to stand still for a day or two (this is the origin of the word solstice) and then, practically imperceptibly at first, things will shift the other way, and daylight will begin to diminish. This is the constant back and forth, the constant give and take, the constant rearrange that is the result of our planet on its tilted axis orbiting the sun: the tilt gives us our seasons, and the rhythm of our lives in tune with the natural world.

To the solstices the Church assigned great entrances into the world: To the solstice of midwinter it assigned the birth of Christ, and to the solstice of midsummer, the birth of his cousin, John the Baptist. Hence, Christmas falls just after the December solstice, and on this side of the wheel of the year, St. John’s Day falls just after the June solstice, on the 24th. And just as Christmas Eve is considered a magical time (animals speaking at midnight, animals kneeling to pray, wells running with wine), so is St. John’s Eve considered a magical time, as well. And while some people will insist that William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is set on May Eve (April 30, Walpurgis Night), I don’t think that’s quite right. I subscribe to the camp that believes the play is set on St. John’s Eve, the 23rd of June.

This is precisely why I read an adaptation of  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for a new video series from the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. It’s called Stay Awake Bedtime Stories. The episode was just released, in time for St. John’s Eve this Thursday night and St. John’s Day on Friday, but also in time for the solstice. Seth made the floral crown for me, and Haden the Convivio Shopcat is there at the start of the video (though she soon stretched and ventured off in search of a meal). The reading is my gift to you at this magical time of year. Please enjoy it by clicking here.

This is the second story I’ve read for the series, but I began Stay Awake with the idea of enlisting storytelling help from friends of mine around the globe. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is only Episode No. 4. Aside from me reading that, you can Stay Awake with me as I read “Pierre” by Maurice Sendak. But also Stay Awake with British artist Davy McGuire as he reads “That Pesky Rat” by Lauren Child, and Stay Awake with master storyteller Jonathan Kruk as he performs “The Misadventures of Ichabod Crane.” Find all four episodes here at the Stay Awake tab at jaffecollection.org. And if you follow the project on Instagram (@stayawakebedtimestories), you’ll be amongst the very first to know about new episodes, for our followers there typically learn about new broadcasts days before anyone else. (You’ll find Convivio Bookworks there, too: @conviviobookworks.)

COME SEE US!
We’ll be at Lake Worth’s inaugural Island Festival this Saturday from 3 to 9.

It’s our first pop-up market since Eastertime and I’m really excited for the stilt walkers and the Junkanoo band and the Polynesian fire dancers. Island Fest is a free event for the whole family and it’s at Hatch 1121, just west of City Hall at 1121 Lucerne Avenue here in Lake Worth (the same place where we gather each year for our local Dia de Los Muertos celebration). Hopefully the weather stays dry! We’ll be there with all our textiles (including Millie’s Tea Towels) and some of our traditional artisan goods from Mexico, some things for Midsummer from Germany and Sweden, and our Shaker herbs and teas and soaps. Click here for full details and if you come by, please say hello!

Finally, I apologize for not writing more. Things have been way too busy at work. You know I would have written if I could have for all the celebrations I’ve missed: Juneteenth, Father’s Day, Bloomsday, Pentecost… but I’ll do my best to be with you for the celebrations to come. In the meantime: Give me your hands if we be friends. Happy Midsummer to you.