FIRST DAY of CHRISTMAS
St. Stephen’s Day, Boxing Day, Day of the Wren
It’s not uncommon for folks to feel let down once Christmas Day has passed, or sad that it’s over. We lay our hopes and dreams upon Christmas, along with expectations for how we envision the holiday, but Christmas delivers to us what it will. Perfection is rarely part of the equation. And here we have the antidote to all of these feelings: Welcome now to the Twelve Days of Christmas. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day stand on their own and we enter now the season of Christmas proper. Following along means taking a step outside dominant culture, but if you can handle that, you will find this journey more fulfilling than the alternative, trust me. For doing so means treating Christmas like an old friend who comes to visit each year, and it is good to be friendly with Christmas. This is what “keeping Christmas” is all about.
This First Day of Christmas 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 is a day for roasted chestnuts and mulled wine (as is tomorrow, St. John’s Day: the Second Day of Christmas). In medieval Europe, chestnuts were so common a part of our foodways that much of the chestnut crop was ground into flour for bread and other baked goods. This changed over the centuries, of course, to the point that chestnuts are more of an oddity and delicacy on our tables. They are, nonetheless, a big part of my family’s dinner table come autumn and winter each year, and now here we have two days set aside where they play a central role.
My Aunt Anne and my mom say that my grandmother, Assunta, typically made soup for supper on this First Day of Christmas, where 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.
And in England and the Commonwealth countries, it is Boxing Day. Servants typically had to work on Christmas Day, but the 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. Certainly those boxes contained chestnuts.
Tonight, join us in raising a glass of mulled wine and cracking open some roasted chestnuts for this First Day of Christmas. The mad rush is over, and now we can enjoy Christmas in our own time.
Image: My father cutting a cross into each chestnut, preparing them for roasting. The cross cut into the nut makes things a lot easier when it comes to peeling them when they are hot out of the oven. Dad doesn’t have many kitchen tasks, but it is always his job to do this.
In the early 70s I lived in Switzerland, and my husband Paul and I always enjoyed buying roasted chestnuts in newspaper cones. Although we lived in Basel, we were better at French and could barely read the cones. Along with bratwurst and bread, these were wintertime specialties in that area.
Merry Christmas to you and to all your readers.
Thank you, Barbara! Merry Christmas to you, as well!