Category Archives: Midwinter

Dec 02 2021
Advent, Book of Days Calendar, Krampus, Midwinter, St. Nicholas, The Gift Bearers

Gathering the Holly, or Your December Book of Days

Two days into the last month of the year, and here is your Convivio Book of Days Calendar for December. Last night, we lit our daily Advent candle for the first time, and opened the first window of our Advent calendar. The decorations in our house still revolve around leaves and pumpkins and Indian corn, but we will soon be bringing in the evergreens like fir and holly. Hence our cover star for this month: a watercolor from 1901 called Christmas Eve, which, in those days and for centuries before, was the day to first bring in those festive decorations. We rather like that slow approach, and that building of anticipation. The painting is by Carlton Alfred Smith, who, no doubt, appreciated these things, as well.

We are on the approach to Christmas and to the solstice of midwinter: the nights grow darker and longer, just as they’ve been doing since the solstice of midsummer in June, but now we are approaching the zenith, and the longest night of the year. The midwinter gift bearers will soon be making their appearances in their traditional lands, beginning with St. Nicholas on the night of the 5th, who is accompanied in some of those places by dark companions like the Krampus, who we are about to meet in person. You can, too, if you are local and come see us on Krampusnacht at the American German Club west of town on Lantana Road. Here’s a list of the outdoor pop-up markets where you’ll find us these next couple of weeks before Christmas. If you come, please do say hello and introduce yourself. We have one job this time of year: to dispel the night. We do that with candlelight and with the lights of the season, and we do it with the light from within. A friendly hello is the essential first step.

HOLIDAY NIGHT MARKET & FESTIVAL at SOCIAL HOUSE
Saturday December 4 from 6 to 10 PM at 512 Lucerne Avenue in Downtown Lake Worth Beach. Inspired by traditional European Christmas markets. We’ll be in the outdoor courtyard with a large selection of our Advent and Christmas artisan goods from Germany, Sweden, and Mexico, Shaker culinary herbs and herbal teas, and some of our textiles from Kei & Molly Designs and Millie’s Tea Towels.

KRAMPUSNACHT at the AMERICAN GERMAN CLUB
Friday December 10 from 7 to 11 PM at 5111 Lantana Road in suburban Lake Worth. Tickets required. It’s the night before Christkindlmarkt and you should get a babysitter, because this one is for the adults. What once was meant to frighten youngsters into good behavior, Krampusnacht in Europe has taken a twist over the decades and become a fun night of mischief and dancing, as the Krampus of German legend rules the scene. Expect to see many Krampuses at this inaugural Krampusnacht celebration! Our largest pop-up shop ever, which will carry over into Christkindlmarkt the following two days, will include Advent candles and calendars, Christmas artisan goods from Germany, Sweden, and Mexico, Shaker culinary herbs and herbal teas and soaps, Millie’s Tea Towels, our new line of tea towels and reusable bags from Kei & Molly Designs, market bags from Mexico, and more.

CHRISTKINDLMARKT at the AMERICAN GERMAN CLUB
Saturday December 11 from 2 to 10 PM and Sunday December 12 from Noon to 8 PM at 5111 Lantana Road in suburban Lake Worth. A traditional German Christmas market. Tickets required. Our largest pop-up shop ever will include Advent candles and calendars, Christmas artisan goods from Germany, Sweden, and Mexico, Shaker culinary herbs and herbal teas and soaps, Millie’s Tea Towels, our new line of tea towels and reusable bags from Kei & Molly Designs, market bags from Mexico, and more.

CHRISTMAS STOCK-UP SALE
For everyone else, there’s the Convivio Bookworks Christmas Stock-Up Sale. Spend $75 on anything and everything in our catalog, and save $10 plus get free domestic shipping: a total savings of $19.50. Just use discount code STREETFAIR at checkout. Click here to shop! We always offer free domestic shipping when you spend $60 –– no discount code is required for that. I think you’ll be amazed at all you’ll find that’s new at our website, especially if you haven’t visited in a while! Locals, you can choose Free Local Delivery at checkout no matter how much you spend… I’ll deliver on my vintage Raleigh bicycle in the 33460 zip code.

Image: “Christmas Eve” by Clayton Alfred Smith. Watercolor on paper, 1901 [Creative Commons, via Wikimedia Commons].

 

Dec 20 2020
6 Comments
Advent, Midwinter, Solstice, Yule

Midwinter

And now it is Midwinter, and I am here to tell you again the same story, the story I tell you each year on this darkest night. It never grows old (I don’t think so, anyway), for it is the story of our home, our planet, our place in this vast mysterious universe. It is a story rooted in science and perhaps in divinity and certainly in celestial mechanics: at about 5:02 AM––early Monday morning here in Lake Worth, which is in Eastern Standard Time now––the planet will reach its solstice moment. The sun, which has been tracking further and further south on the horizon since last June, appears to stand still for a few days––tracking no farther south. And herein lies the etymology of the word solstice: sol = sun; stice = static, stand still. By Tuesday, already, things will begin to shift the other way, and we will be on our slow and patient way toward summer.

Ah, but that is already the future, and tonight it is the present we are concerned about. It is the Midwinter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere: our longest night of the year, our shortest day. Out of these darkest nights come our deepest joys: all of the celebrations of Midwinter that have come to pass and that are on the horizon. The feasts of St. Nicholas, of Santa Lucia, and of Our Lady of Guadalupe; the eight nights of Chanukah; the ever increasing light of Advent, and still ahead, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and the Twelve Days of Christmas that follow. These are days and nights of adding our light to the sum of light, of understanding that joy comes out of our countering what is dark with light.

The science behind all this is the simple fact that our planet rotates on its axis at a tilt of about 23.5 degrees. As we spend our year revolving around the sun, the pole that is tilted toward the sun experiences spring and summer, the pole that is tilted away experiences autumn and winter. Were it not for that 23.5 degree tilt, we would have no seasons. The round of the year would not be the same, would it? We would lack that constant rearrange––each day slightly different from the one before and the one to come. Experienced day by day, the change is not terribly noticeable. Stack them up and view them as a year, though, and our world turns upside down with change. Many of us are not fond of change (I can be like that), and yet our planet is constantly in flux. Nothing stays the same, and yet nothing really changes. That is the paradox of our round of the year, and that is the paradox of a tilted axis, too. It is sublime, and divine, and it is the beauty of physics and science. How wonderful (how completely filled with wonder) is that?

Image: Earth daylight distribution on the December 2020 Solstice (Northern Winter; Southern Summer) as seen on w:SpaceEngine. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

 

Dec 20 2019
2 Comments
Advent, Hanukkah, Midwinter, Solstice, Yule

Deepest Joy

And now, the longest night arrives. With each passing day, since the Midsummer Solstice of June, we have been shaving a bit of daylight off our daily tally. By September’s equinox, day and night were balanced. Darkness continued to overtake light. On the 21st of December, though, our planet’s Northern Hemisphere will experience its longest night, and at 11:19 PM, Eastern Standard Time, its solstice moment, when things begin shifting again the other way. It is the constant rearrange, the back and forth of vast celestial mechanics, all based on the scientific fact that the Earth spins on its axis at a tilt of about 23.5 degrees. As we orbit the sun, that 23.5 degree tilt means that at this time of the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun as we spin, while the Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun. Give things six months and we will find ourselves in the opposite situation, as the Northern Hemisphere will be tilted toward the sun. But that is summer, and this is not; this is winter. It begins by the almanac with the solstice, though traditionalists will view this point as midwinter, which is why many of us will stand in dark churches come Christmas Eve and sing “In the Bleak Midwinter” as tears well in our eyes. We are tapping into those old ways when we sing that song on these long dark nights, and still the circle proceeds: it is the round of the year, with no beginning and no end.

The solstice is linked inextricably with all the celebrations of light that revolve around it: Advent, Sankta Lucia, Yule, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Epiphany. We call down the light in each of them, to burn bright in the darkness. Light, a symbol of hope, of warmth, of kindness, of the passing of generations. Light is the central theme of Hanukkah, which begins with the setting sun this year on the 22nd, the day after the solstice. In ancient Jerusalem, during the defeat of oppressors by the Maccabbees, a small flask of oil, enough to keep the lamp of the Temple illuminated for a day, kept the lamp illuminated for eight days and nights. That miracle is commemorated each year during the eight nights of Hanukkah; each night, an additional candle is lit on the menorah. This year, that First Night of Hanukkah is met with the Fourth Sunday of Advent: we’ll be lighting all the candles of the advent ring: three purple candles and one rose candle, completing the circle of light, for Christmas is now just a few days away.

Our tradition each Midwinter Solstice night is to light a backyard fire in the copper fire bowl. We dispel the night, as the advent hymns tell us. The fuel for our fire is the remnant of last year’s Christmas tree, which we brought out to a corner of the yard some time after Twelfth Night last January. It’s sat there all these months, near the mango tree, shedding needles, drying, and still for all the world smelling like Christmas, even through spring and summer and fall, and it is good, it is right to have this reminder of Old Father Christmas in our lives all the year long. We will sit at the fire that he provides under the starry night sky and toast him with mulled wine and roasted chestnuts. In this small way we pull down the celestial mechanics of our planet and bring it directly to our tiny dot in this universe, and into our hearts, too: the old Yuletide illuminating and welcoming the new, connecting us with the past as we continue to forge that circle, no beginning, no end. With it, we know that Christmas is surely almost here. And so we welcome the solstice and we welcome Yule. And we welcome all the celebrations of light around it.

 

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