Mar 25 2014
Equinox, Feast of the Annunciation, Lady Day

Our Lady of Waffles

Annunication

Just a few days past the Vernal Equinox each year comes the Feast of the Annunciation, which in earlier times was known best as Lady Day. It marks the day that the angel Gabriel came to Mary to deliver the news that she was to bear a child, a son, and that that child would be the light of the world, the son of God. We are nine months, at this point, to the Nativity.

We are nine months, as well, to the Winter Solstice, and this date has held significance for a very long time, long before Christianity. In the cyclical year, this is the season of opening (apero, as mentioned in our previous chapter, which gives its name to April), and rebirth. Mary conceives her child at this season magically, having “known not a man,” just as the earth goddess did at this same time of year. And so the Vernal Equinox brings both rebirth (the Green Man, leafing out in plants across the landscape) and conception (the Sun Child, who will be born at the Winter Solstice). The connections between Pagan and Christian roots are deep indeed.

March 25 was, for many, in the Old Style Julian Calendar, New Year’s Day. Again,  this is all relative to the Vernal Equinox and the idea of fresh beginnings. And still the traditional Persian new year, Nowruz, is at this time of year. It begins on the equinox and continues on for 13 celebratory days. Mostly, the 25th of March has long been considered a mystical day in Judeo Christian tradition. It was considered by many through history as the first day of creation, the day of the expulsion from Eden, the day the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, the day of the beheading of John the Baptist, and the day of Christ’s crucifixion.

English folk custom considers it unlucky when Lady Day also happens to fall on Good Friday, which does happen on occasion. When it does, the Feast of the Annunciation is transferred to the Monday following the Second Sunday of Easter. But not many customs are associated with Lady Day. It is mostly set aside as a day of prayer. In Sweden, however, perhaps the most unlikely place for a Marian celebration, there is a long standing tradition of eating waffles on Lady Day, where the day is also known as Våffeldagen. Waffles are eaten at any time of day on Våffeldagen, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, served with whipped cream and lingonberries or cloudberries.

It is said that this waffle celebration all stems from one big misunderstanding. The Christian celebration of Lady Day is called, in Swedish, Our Lady Day, or Vårfrudagen… which, especially in some Swedish dialects, is awfully close in spelling and pronunciation to Våffeldagen, which translates to “Waffle Day.” And for centuries now, in addition to acknowledging Mary’s yes to the angel, Swedes all over the world have been eating waffles on the 25th of March. This, I say, is as good a reason as any to do the same.

 

Image: San Domenico Annunciation by Benozzo Gozzoli, tempera on wood, c. 1449, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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Mar 20 2014
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Equinox

Balance

GreenMan

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the Vernal Equinox occurs today, March 20. It is, by the almanac, the first day of Spring. The sun continues to strengthen. Day and night are fairly well balanced at this point across the globe, and we are midway between the shortest day (Winter Solstice, or Midwinter, in December) and the longest day (Summer Solstice, or Midsummer in June). It is a day of balance.

It is, as well, a time of renewal, a time of opening. The month of April, just a little more than a week away, is named after the Latin apero, to open, like the aperture on a camera. It is Earth who is opening in Spring, ready to receive seed and give forth life and abundance. It is time for the return of the Green Man, the ancient spirit of vegetation, born from the virginal Earth goddess.

Here in South Florida, spring comes early. For a few weeks now, we’ve been noticing the young chartreuse green of new leaves, and our annual litany of flowering trees has begun with the blooming of the citrus trees, followed by the Florida Lilac (which is not a tree but will happily vine up a tree) and the Tabebuia argentia (the Yellow Tabs, as we call them), and soon the Jerusalem Thorns, the Bottlebrushes, the Jacarandas, and by May, we’ll be enthralled with the flaming reds of the Royal Poinciana. But by then we’ll know that summer has arrived. For now, the bright yellow of the Tabebuias is all we need, together with the near perfect weather, not too hot, not too cold, to know that spring has come. Plenty of folks will tell you that this place has no seasons. We beg to differ. All of our flowering trees beg to differ, as well. Florida is a beautiful place to be in springtime.

On this vernal day, we wish you renewed energy. We wish you openness. We wish you balance.

 

Image: A typical Green Man roof boss, this one from Rochester Cathedral in England, circa 1079. Green Men were typically carved in wood and some medieval cathedrals contain scores of them, usually high up, looking down upon the congregation.

 

Mar 19 2014
1 Comment
Lent, St. Joseph's Day

San Giuseppe

SanGiuseppe

It’s St. Joseph’s Day today, the 19th of March. When the Lenten season begins early, which this year it did not, St. Joseph’s Day arrives bringing a welcome respite from Lent’s bare-bones penitence in the form of decadent desserts. This year, we’re only two weeks into Lent at this point… but still, we’ll take the decadent desserts.

St. Joseph is sacred to Italy. He is a patron saint of children and of pastry chefs, both of whom typically have a fondness for sweets, and any Italian bakery worth its salt today will be selling at least a couple of pastries made especially for San Giuseppe. It’s a good sign if you walk into one such bakery today and see trays and trays of zeppole and sfinci. Both are pastries of fried dough, generous in size, each typically something you could fit into two open hands. Zeppole are filled with custard and often include a few cherries on top. Sfinci are filled with sweetened ricotta cream, perhaps with a few small chocolate chips, very much like a cannoli filling. Many Italian bakeries sell these pastries for a few weeks before and after St. Joseph’s Day, but today is their traditional day, and we take that first bite into a delectable zeppole, with the aroma of strong espresso in the air, and we thank San Giuseppe for bringing a bit of sweetness to Lent’s otherwise stark and penitent nature.

Variations of these sweets, in name and in shape and ingredients, exist throughout Italy for the feast of San Giuseppe, but it is in the South, from where my family hails, that they are best known. Both sfinci and zeppole are pastries with histories that go back many centuries, with names that come out of the Arabic influence on the region. How far back do they go? The ancient Romans made fried pastries each year on the 17th of March in honor of Bacchus, and it is thought that the zeppole and sfinci we make today are direct descendants of those springtime sweets.

Both of my grandmothers were devotees of San Giuseppe. Many years before I was born, Grandma Cutrone used to prepare an altar to St. Joseph each year for his feast day. My dad would help her set up the altar in their home, and on it Grandma would place breads and ceci beans and oranges and animal crackers for the children. There are old 8 mm black and white home movies of friends and neighbors coming in to see the altar and pay their respects. The priest would come to bless it, and Grandma Cutrone would give each person who visited an orange to take home with them.

My Grandma Assunta did not have such an altar in her home, but she would often pray to San Giuseppe, and we couldn’t leave church each Sunday before she lit the big candle at St. Joseph’s statue in the chapel. We would visit him each week there. To this day, every time I go to a church, I light a candle for her, because that’s what she would do, and it’s one of many ways I have of keeping in touch with those who came before us.

I’m glad they both loved St. Joseph so much. A good friend of ours, Father Philip Joly, recently helped me see St. Joseph in a new light. St. Joseph, who is also a patron saint of families, is almost always depicted as an old man. The truth is, though, Mary was probably just a teenager when the angel came to tell her she would be giving birth to a son, the son of God. Joseph, who was engaged to her, was probably not much older himself, and he, too, received a visit from the angel saying, “Don’t be afraid.” There he was, a young man, with a pregnant teenage wife, pregnant not by him, asked to become a father to a son that was not his. That’s a lot to swallow, no? But he supported his betrothed, and he went through with it. He had compassion, and he had faith. Joseph’s family was no ordinary family. And so when we think of San Giuseppe as the patron saint of families, we know that that extends to all families, no matter how traditional or non-traditional they may be. What a guy.

 

Image: That’s Grandma Cutrone on the right, Grandpa Cutrone on the left, my dad’s Aunt Carmela between them, and the altar to San Giuseppe in their home for St. Joseph’s Day, circa 1940s, Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

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