A sermon given to the
Dakota Unitarian Universalist Church
Burnsville, MN
December 22, 2013
Scholars are
well aware now that Jesus, who probably existed either as an individual or as a
group of men and women over the first centuries of the new millenium, certainly
was not born on December 25 or anywhere in December, at least not according to
the New Testament’s testimony. It would
be sometime in the spring according to the gospels, which makes a good deal
more sense metaphorically, Jesus as the lamb of god and bringing in the spring
of Christianity and all that.
Interestingly, the First Day of Christmas in the popular song we sang
earlier is not Christmas. In most
chronicles of the twelve holy days, Christmas is considered the pre-day, day
zero if you will. It’s the day for
celebrating the birth of Jesus among Christians, but it’s also associated with
the births of Mithras, Attis, Aion, Horus, Dionysus and the Unconquered Sun. Mithras you may be familiar with. The Persian god of light, his name means
“Friend” and he is often synonymous with the Sun who protects man after
death. Attis or Atys is not to be
confused with Attic which means having to do with Athens, but was a young man laid
claim to by the hermaphroditic fertility goddess Agdistis who was so maddened
by her jealousy he castrated himself in frustration and before he could cut his
throat was changed by her into a pine tree.
Agdistis herself, by the way, was also made wholly female by
castration. Aion is the Germanic term of
personification for the age of the universe, an eternal being itself
personified. Horus is familiar as one of
the Sky Gods as well as a Sun God and is often represented as having the head
of a falcon. Dionysus, also known as
Bacchus, is the god of wine and good times.
His name in Roman, Iacchus,
comes from the Latin for “shout” and is thought to have originated as an
epithet for the rowdy, noisy god.
The
Unconquered Sun is an interesting character because it is both a stand-in for
any of the above gods as well as a euphemism for the thing itself. The unconquered sun is what we see in the sky
along about this time. It is equally
connected with the Reindeer Man, a sort of Green Man of the North, a pagan mix
of Sintaklass and Odin, who appears
at this time of year with the gift of deer.
Why
twelve days? The number twelve pops up a
lot of places in both Abrahamic and pagan beliefs. Twelve apostles, twelve months of the year,
twelve zodiac signs, two twelve-hour segments to a day, the twelve of the
Circular Council to the Dalai Lama, the twelve members of the Arthurian Round
Table, the historical Twelve Peers of France, the twelve tribes of Israel, the
twelve imams in Shi’a, the twelve principle gods of the Greeks, the twelve
cranial nerves in the human cerebellum, the age 12 when a Jewish girl matures
and receives bat mitzvah, the twelve sons of Odin, and even the twelve function
keys on my PC keyboard—F1 through F12.
The
true first day of Christmas is Boxing Day, so-called from the British custom of
giving a servant a Christmas box the day after his masters have
celebrated. It’s also associated with
St. Stephen, the proto-martyr associated with horses—it’s said his body was
returned to his people on the back of a horse—and with wrens. It’s said that to kill a wren on any day
other than Boxing Day is to invite bad luck.
The
second day, December 27th, is given over to Mother Night or MotherCarey or Mother Christmas. She is the
Anglicized version of the German Frau Holle or Holda or Hulda, a figure of
fertility, abundance and justice. She
was often seen, originally, as a beautiful woman in white and with a golden
girdle or a sash, dispensing gifts from a sleigh pulled by her dogs. She probably physically resembled the evil
character Mrs Colter played by Nicole Kidman in the film The Golden Compass, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Phillip Pullman
based this character on her.
But
far from the nasty Miss Colter, who Pullman
chooses to personify the less savory aspects of Christianity, Frau Holle, whose
name means “kindly one,” was a gentle goddess specializing in the care of
children. It was up to the early church
to turn her to a witch who stole unbaptized children. But at midnight
on the Eve of Epiphany, it’s said that a man walking home heard voices, many
voices, behind him and stepped aside in time to allow Frau Holle and her passel
of children and her flowing white train to pass him, the children laughing and
running beside her. The last of the
children, the smallest, kept falling behind from tripping over his
nightshirt. The man gave him his own
belt to tuck the shirt into. Frau Holle
saw this and rewarded the man with a gift that his own children would forever
be without want. It is important that we
recall Frau Holle or Mother Night or Mother Carey or Mother Chrismas as a
mother. She is both nurturing and kind
and a shrewd judge of character and it’s for these aspects we honor her.
Following
is Day three: the Day of Holy
Innocents. In the Middle Ages this day
of Childremass was considered particularly unlucky; nothing begun on December
28th would be completed, since children have remarkably poor
attention spans and tend to wander around abstractedly. The practice for this day is an ancient one
that survived until the 18th century: regularly beating children on
this day. The idea was that by
mercilessly flogging and smacking children on the 28th, one would
both drive out the evil spirits that had lodged there the previous year and
serve as a surrogate for any deserved beatings the following year. The practice evolved into a call for ritual,
painless token beatings between children and parents, husbands and wives,
masters and servants. On this day we
honor children and correspondingly honor both our wishes for what they will become
and our recognition of the reality of who they are. We also recall our lives before their
arrival, although it’s probably best not to think of that before we whip them.
The
fourth day is one we might be a little familiar with. This is the Feast of the Fools, celebrated in
the Hunchback of Notre Dame and a few
other novels and a MASH episode. This is the day when the normal order of
things is reversed. Servants become
masters, pupils become teachers, women behave like men, and the fools rule. Naturally, this is my favorite day. Parties were held, masques given, general
mayhem encouraged. It was a ritualistic
method for blowing off steam, the opportunity for people who lived by the
strictest restrictions to behave in the riotous, cavalier way they had
foresworn in order to keep their places in the community. At one time, this day was more celebrated and
better-remembered than Christmas. So
when someone tells you that we ought to put the Christ back in Christmas, you
ought to remind him to put the Fool back in Fool’s Day.
Day five is the
Feast of the Boar’s Head. On this day,
two ceremonies are honored: the
Scandinavian tradition that Frey, the god of sunshine, rides across the day
atop Gulli-burstin, his golden boar, whose spikes are the rays of the sun. The second is the older, now lost, tradition
in England
of the boar’s head, whose meat graced the Christmas table until probably the
mid Twelfth century when it disappeared, being brought in as the final remnant
of the sacred meal and distributed among the revelers. It is meet we should remember the boars, now
gone in both England and here, by leaving for them a small offering to their
memory, an apple or orange, in the event one is still snuffling around.
New Year’s Eve,
that most festive of drinking holidays, is day six, and in many places
supersedes the celebration of Christmas itself.
In Gaelic Christmas is called An
Nollaig Mhor “big yule” and New Year’s Day An Nollaig Bheag “little Yule.”
And why not? The change of year
has sturdier and more aged roots than the ostensible birth of the Christ. Still, how anyone might have guessed this day
would become the night when everything switches off for one year and switches
on for the next is a feat of mathematical dexterity I couldn’t begin to
fathom. Nevertheless, December 31st’s
feast is known as Hogmanay and it was
the day when the Druid priests cut the sacred mistletoe and distributed sprigs
among the people. Hogmanay itself is a
corruption of the French term au gui
menez “lead [us] to the mistletoe,” and in some parts of France children
still celebrate the day with a race during which they cry, “Au guy l’an neuf, au guy Gaulois” “to
the mistletoe, to the French mistletoe.”
This is the day
when we take care of the things we have missed taking care of throughout the
year. The trash is taken out and fresh
sheets placed on the beds. Socks are
darned and brass and silver shined.
Pictures are hung straight. This
is the day for Reclaiming Unfinished Business, clearing up all those things we
neglected the rest of the year. Everyone
experiences a new beginning, a new clearing of the old. After sunset, juniper branches and fresh
water were brought into the house. The
branches were dried out overnight, and in the morning the head of house drank
the first sips from the water and sprinkled everyone else with some. Then the dried juniper was lit, the doors and
windows latched, and the house was fumigated with the burning branch. This ensured the gifts of the new year were
appreciated appropriately. The new
year’s blessing was brought by the first person to cross the threshold to
visit, called “first footing.” All the
lights were put out except for a single candle, and then that first visitor
must step outside, protecting the candle from the elements. At the stroke of twelve, he reenters, is
given a mug of eggnog, and sets about relighting all the candles and lanterns
of the house, blessing the house with new light. Often that person also gives a handsel, a gift of coal or whiskey to
make the blessings concrete.
Day seven of
course everyone sleeps in. This is the Kalends of the new year, the hopefulness
of the new day. The old year is now
officially dead and while we may not immediately see any benefits yet to the
new, there is always a reason to be thankful, even if it is our ability to have
made it through another year. In
contrast to New Year’s Eve day, nothing is taken out of the house this
day—trash, bones, excrement, they are all left inside until the next day, to
ensure blessings of the first footing do not escape.
One of the
nostalgic traditions we think of as Christmas in origin is caroling, but this
is actually done on the Seventh Day and is referred to as Wassailing. Wassail is a heated, alcoholic apple cider
and is meant to be shared with the trees of the orchard as well as with the
visitors who sing. Robins are the
guardians of apple trees and it was them that the wassail was intended to
provoke, cake pieces and bread pieces soaked in the wassail being stuck to
branches to reward them for their past year of faithful service. On this bleak day it is beneficent to intone,
“The luck of the year, it is the bird-quiet hour, the midday contemplation of the sun. On this bleak day, when no sun shines, what
wraps the birds in silence, what power blankets their song?” It’s the day of prophesying and divination—weather
divination especially, as you can imagine from a people reliant on weather for
their well-being, and one saying from Scotland runs, “Wind from the west, fish
and bread; wind from the north, cold and flaying; wind from the east, snow on
the hills; wind from the south, fruit on trees”—and the first day’s water drawn
from the well is considered especially blessed and called the flower of the
well.
The Eighth Day
is the day for sitting inside to contemplate and reflect on snow. It’s imperative that we remain on snow’s good
side, since to be in opposition to snow is to be in opposition to winter and
that’s simply a waste of energy. We pay
our respects to snow on this day, for its cancelling out the darkness at
midwinter and its transformation of even the bleakest spaces into places of
wonder and enchantment.
The Cherokee
have a story about the Ninth day, which is devoted to evergreens. The Druids of course revered the oak and
during Kalends yew and juniper play a
major role. In the middle ages there was
a well-known play about the Paradise Tree, a descendant of the original Tree of
Knowledge, which Adam smuggled out of Eden and planted in the outer world,
where it grew to huge proportions and provided the wood for the cross on which
Christ was crucified.
Back to the
Cherokee. When the Great Mystery created
all the trees and plants she wanted to give something to all of them. But she couldn’t decide among them who best
deserved it, so she proposed a contest.
Whoever could keep watch for seven days and seven nights would receive
the gift. All the trees were atwitter to
be given such an important duty and had no problems remaining awake the first
night. But on the second night they
found it hard to stay awake, and the flowers were the first to fall asleep. By the third night, the birch and grasses
were drooped, and by the fourth night the elms were snoring. On the fifth and sixth nights, the maples and
even the oaks had drifted off, until, by the eighth morning only a few—the
pine, the cedar, the spruce and fir and holly and laurel—were still awake and
watchful. “What great endurance you
have!” cried out the Great Mystery, and so she gave them the gift: they would remain green forever and keep
guard throughout the winter while all the others sleep. The evergreens, this story says, are always
awake. And always watching.
Day
Ten is interesting because it is two different days for men and women. For both it was the day when each had to
return to the drudgery of work after the luxurious time off afforded by the
festivities of midwinter. In the case of
women who in these preindustrialized times were often employed as weavers and
spinners, it was known as St. Distaff‘s Day, while for the men who were also
expected to return to work, it was known as Plough Monday. Whether the day itself fell on a Monday or
not wasn’t important, it was simply another Monday in their eyes. This became the excuse for another day of
celebration as mummers, the bemasked players who appeared throughout the year
at festivals and feasts, now sped through town blessing the ploughs and
spindles. Today Plough Monday has been
given its own day in England,
January 8, separate from the twelve holy days, but it’s thought to originate in
another ancient Roman celebration, Compitaline. In this ritual a small shrine was built where
four estates met to the four directions, with a miniature plough and wooden
doll set on each alter, and then the first earth-breaking of the new year was
done on each property. Until now we are living in Liminal Time, the threshold
between extraordinary and ordinary events that for pagans began in late October
or early November with Samhain. With St. Distaff’s Day we begin a return to normalcy,
what Christianity calls Ordinary Time.
The
Eleventh day of Christmas, January 5, is the Eve of Epiphany and the Festivalof the Three Kings. This day is given
over to the Magi whose journey is often a microcosm of the journey we ourselves
make spiritually. Consider, they were
themselves seekers after something and doing what felt right to them to do,
going where their inner compass told them to go, and for so many of us, here
today in this church, we have traveled so far and so wide only on the basis of
our own compasses, be they in our hearts or our heads. As the Magi found what they sought in the
form of a child, may you find what you seek here.
This
is the day to consider too the gifts that so often become the major focus of
these holy days, forgetting as we do that we are ourselves the recipients of a
gift. I quote now from JohnMatthews:
At a time when
the commercial Christmas has a tendency to swamp the sacredness of the season,
we ask and are being asked, ‘What do you want this year?’ There are certainly things we would quite
like, things that we hope will be brought for us, but these are not the same as
our wants. True wants are not small
things satisfied by prettily wrapped parcels:
they are the immense needs of inner space that can be overwhelmed by all
our little wants and yearnings. To
consider our real needs—the things we lack in our lives—is often too
frightening, opening up an abyss of need that calls our very existence into
question.
Our real wants
eat holes in us: never resting, never
loving, never greeting, never finding, never seeking, never being satisfied
deep down. These ravenous wants define
our treasures…they create a Christmas list that no store could supply: time to stop and really enjoy, in a space of
quietness and contentment all the things we were put on earth to do.
Space to give and
receive love reciprocally. The grace to
seek and find our spiritual joy. Freedom
from the tyranny and burden of other’s expectations, of what others think. Acceptance of ourselves as we truly are.
This
then is the gift afforded us on the twelfth day. Epiphany.
It means manifestation, making an appearance, and refers theologically
to the appearance of Christ to the Three Kings.
But it’s a lot more than that. In
literature James Joyce gave us another meaning in an early draft of what would
become Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He describes
it as a sudden insight, an instant when reality shines through an ordinary
object, when “its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its
appearance.” It’s the appearance of what
we need. Perhaps not what we want,
because that’s always going to be something good, something we like, and our
epiphany is more likely to be something we haven’t considered and don’t want
and, god help us, we don’t like. For me,
epiphany is often the realization that the shift from dark to light carries
with it a responsibility not to continue hunkering in but, like a bear or a
vole, to start the stirring for the reawakening I undergo each spring. For you it might be a recognition that you’ve
had all your needs met and now it’s time to meet them for other people. For others it may be exactly the
opposite: it’s time to consider yourself
a while rather than others. There’s no
one size fits all when it comes to epiphany.
It can come in any number of ways:
in someone’s smile, in the smell of woodsmoke where we thought there
were no houses, in the sudden, unexpected taste of a good wine, in the sound of
voices where we expected to be alone, in the touch of flesh on flesh that
reminds us we are with one another. These
tiny moments bring us out of ourselves and into the wider world.
Like
anything artistic, epiphany can be ruined by over definition. Let’s take a minute of silence to reflect on
what we have been given.
A few days ago one of the residents at my CPE facility mentioned to me that his mother and most of his brothers were coming to visit on Christmas. “And they’re bringing TV dinners with them so the kitchen doesn’t have to cook for them.”
"what can I tell you about nathan myrhvold's modernist cuisine, the forty-pound encyclopedic survey of the pseudo-art form of which ferran adria is the presiding 'genius,' with its 1.1 million words spread across 2,438 pages, its 3,216 photographs and 1,522 recipes? well, I could tell you that I found some of the images--such as a series that shows a row of eggs at the instant a bullet passes through them--to be the most high-octane examples of the food pornography required to titillate the jaded palates of the developed world. I could inform you that being instructed to understand the revolution of modernist cuisine by analogy with impressionism, and talked through a sophomoric analysis of that development in painting, was a destabilizing experience. one expects in life to be talked down to from time to time, but to be patronized by a cookbook? and I could aver that for sheer self-indulgent daffiness, myrhvold's own account of being pulled a 'god shot'--the ultimate and sprititually transfiguing shot of espresso--by daniel humphries of victrola coffee at a seattle trade fair, takes the proverbial biscotti.