We hope that you'll be kind

If you listened to Thursday’s Advent offering, you’ll have noticed that roving mobs of singers demanding wassail also asked for cakes. This would probably be due to the melding of pre-Christian druidic defying-the-winter customs with Advent preparations for the birth of Christ. Recall—Advent in the Christian calendar is meant to be a quiet time, for contemplation and reflection. Rollicking about the village extorting cales and ale (literally), not so much.

However, we got what we got.

And to reflect on that, I’m giving you Sting singing “Soul Cake”. This song is more frequently associated with All Souls Day, which follows Halloween (“All Hallows Eve”) and All Saints Day, a trifecta built on the Celtic Samhain, when the line between living and dead is blurred. Soul cakes are round shortbread-like things given out by householders to roving mobs of singers of extortion like songs. But “souling”, as it’s called, is also a part of Christmastide (which runs from 24 December to 6 January). So it's legit here.

(Note that, in addition to the request for the cake, the song urges the householder to go down the cellar and find some ale.)

And to further celebrate, I’m sharing with you all the cakes I had while in Sarajevo.

(When I texted one of these pix to a friend, I noted that Bosnians give you a teeny fork with your cake—rather like a seafood cocktail fork—so you can't gobble it down in three bites. She replied, "I guess that's when you can pick out the Americans because they just start eating it with their hands.")

 

 

Music of the season

Today’s Advent piece, “The Rebel Jesus”, is a perfect reminder of what things are done these days in the name of saviors, prophets and gods of one stripe or another. Written by Jackson Browne for and performed here with The Chieftains on their 1991 Christmas CD, the lyrics pretty well cover the shift in Christianity in the past few decades.

It’s considerably worse now than it was when he wrote it.

In the case of a baby born in a stable in the backwater of empire, the idea of churches spending millions to cover up long-term crimes against the most vulnerable of their parishes, of televangelists in $3000 suits barely visible behind the pay-by-credit-card logos and of Bible-spewing maniacs spraying innocent people with death on full-auto is just surreal.

Moreover, it’s not clear to me when, exactly”, “spread the word of the good news” morphed into “convert or die.” I mean, Jesus told his disciples to go forth and preach, but if they came to a town where the people weren’t receptive, they should move on and “shake the dust from their heels”. He didn’t tell them to grind the disbelievers into dust.

Maybe it was Constantine the Great’s Edict of Milan in 313 CE, which ended Rome’s persecution of Christians. Or Theodosius’s 380 CE Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. But somewhere between Bethlehem and now, when they became the dominant religion in Western Europe and North America, we got to a woman carrying a non-viable fetus that endangers her life not being able to receive healthcare because Texas Republicans and “Christianity”.

And those Republicans on the national stage have the unmitigated fucking temerity to whine that there’s a war on (white) Christians, and they need government protection from persecution.

So here’s Jackson Browne and The Chieftains, with “The Rebel Jesus”.

 

Joy be to you

Since we’re halfway through the second week of Advent, I reckon that folks are pulling up their big-boy pants and cranking up the Christmas machine. Lists, stores, traffic… You need a break.

And probably some alcohol.

So today we’ll have one of the approximately 12,347 variants of seasonal songs about mobs forming to rove villages in search of booze.

Wassail, in case you are a little unclear, is one of the approximately 12,347 variants on mulled cider or wine or beer or mead. Mulling involves heating [mead, wine, beer or cider]; adding spices such as ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and the like; and topping it with a slice of toasted bread, as a sop. (Sop: you know—like the toasted slices of baguette or croutons on the top of soup. Think: French onion soup.)

Oh, and it’s drunk from one big, communal bowl. No germ theory here.

Wassail the drink dates back to Medieval times. I don’t know when all the spices started to be added, because they would have been extraordinarily rare and prohibitively expensive during that period. And I’m not sure about the significance of the toast being white; white flour and bread were also very expensive, and therefore only the very wealthy could afford it.

I’ve never had wassail, to my knowledge; at least, never anything that announced itself as such. But every year around this time, I like to have a mug or two of Glühwein, which is pre-spiced red wine that’s served at Weihnachtsmärkte throughout Europe.

There is nothing like being out on a freezing December night, with a mug of Glühwein in your hand, wandering up and down aisles of stalls with Christmas gear of all types, and watching children go gaga.

The custom of wassailing—roving around the village singing and demanding booze—is bifurcated. In apple and cider country in the west of England, you go out to the orchards in mid-winter, raising a ruckus to, you know, wake them up. To serve notice that the trees will have to shake off their winter sleep in a couple of months, and get back to work, because those apples are key to the local economy.

Wassailing through the village focuses on a kind of jolly-faced exchange between the peasants and the landlord class: here we’ve come to wish you well (wassail comes from Old English, and means “be thou hale”), oh—and have you got any food and drink on you? Great. Hand it over.

This explains all the verses in the songs about wishing the master all the best: a good year, a good piece of beef, a good Christmas pie, a good crop of corn, blah, blah, blah. Just the slightest bit on the toadying side, but hey—it’s Tradition.

Our wake-up-and-smell-the=mulled-wine offering today is by Appollo’s Fire, a baroque orchestra in Cleveland. They look like they’re having a good time.

 

 

Kingdom of harmony

Today is the feast of Saint Lucy, a Sicilian martyr of the Diocletian persecutions in the Third Century. When you hear the term “Christian martyr” applied to a woman of the early years of the Church, it’s almost always a young woman whose only defense of her virginity against pagan lechers is death. And so it was for Lucy, also known as Lucia, who was burnt at the stake in Syracuse. Although she did not die until given Christian rites…

Ah, good times, eh?

Well, interestingly, Saint Lucy (whose name derives from the Latin lux, lucis; light) was taken up big time by the Nordics. Interesting, but not really surprising. For one thing, when you live in areas enshrouded by darkness for months at a time, anything relating to light is highly valued.

For another, it turns out that, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, 13 December was dedicated to Lussi, a kind of female demon, who led her followers around wreaking havoc on everyone. In the period between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits (possibly joined by spirits of the dead) roamed the land and committed all manner of mischief. Lussi could come down the chimney and take naughty children away.

So you can see why folks might want to wrap a saint rumored to have taken food and supplies to refugees hiding in caverns (wearing a wreath of candles on her head, so as to leave both arms free for schlepping stuff) around the Old Ones’ Lussi.

As an aside, driving back the winter darkness with lights, fire, prayers and making a lot of noise is a major theme of holiday celebrations. At least in the northern hemisphere. (People down under probably do it a lot around July-August, but their PR machine didn’t get the word out the way we up here did.) There’s more than a little blustery defiance in a lot of these activities, although it’s not framed that way for Saint Lucy, focused as it is on young girls.

(Although, I dunno—virgin sacrifice? I wonder about that because of the red sashes you see on these girls’ white robes.)

The traditional song for Saint Lucy is “Santa Lucia”, a traditional Neapolitan song, translated into Italian in the first stage of Italian unification, mid-nineteenth century. The lyrics are about light on the ocean, sung by a boatman and inviting Lucy to come join him on his boat . Scandinavians have adapted that theme of light for a particular celebration—you know, overlaid on Lussi.

Here's a choir in Sweden singing it. And that’s all I know about it.

 

 

 

When all our dreams come true

If anyone could have been said to burn his candle at both ends, it would be Shane MacGowan. He started drinking alcohol at age five and spent large chunks of his life in rehab and psychiatric hospitals as a result of his drug use. So it seems kind of a gift that he lived as long as he did—he’d have turned 66 on Christmas Day, but died from complications of pneumonia on 30 November.

Born in Kent, England, to Irish parents, MacGowan was a songwriter, singer, musician and poet. His extraordinary talent pretty much made the success of The Pogues, where he fused punk with Celtic folk music. His songs spoke to the Irish experience with both love and fury, and they resonated with the Irish at home and in diaspora.

As the news broke last month of his death, people all over Dublin, in pubs and on the streets, sang what may be his most iconic song, “Fairytale of New York.” (It’s set in a New York City drunk tank on Christmas Eve. Very seasonal. But you'll also see the weaving of Irish themes into the melody.) They sang it again as his horse-drawn hearse began the final journey from Dublin to his funeral in Tipperary on Friday. And they sang it again at the funeral, as members of his family danced.

I’m giving you two versions of it—the first from A Very Murray Christmas.

The schtick is that on Christmas Eve, Murray’s in his hotel in Manhattan, waiting to broadcast a live show (hello? Scrooged?), which he needs to do for the money. But a blizzard of Biblical proportions strikes, screwing everything up. He can’t cancel, but…well, a whole lot happens (including a power failure) and he, his crew, a wedding party, and miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam end up in the hotel bar, doing what you might expect in a Manhattan bar during a blizzard on Christmas Eve.

There’s drinking, crying, fighting and singing. All the usual elements of holiday festivities.

There’s something about this ensemble’s cover of “Fairytale” that I just love. Pro tip: watch it to the very Murray end.

But I’m also giving you this performance from MacGowan’s funeral—Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill leading, as MacGowan’s family dance.

Note: the Very Murray Christmas version cuts a couple of verses whose lyrics are pretty rough. But that's the way MacGowan wrote—rough and true.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: You'll fall asleep

 

Today’s Advent song is about gratitude, which is appropriate for Gratitude Monday. It’s not specifically a Christmas or Advent piece, but it was featured in a Christmas movie, and written by Irving Berlin, which is good enough for me.

“CounYour Blessings” reminds us that we do much better to remember how much in our lives is good, and to do that especially when the not-good seems to overwhelm us. It’s why I have made the practice of gratitude a conscious part of my daily life, and I’ve found (as have had a whole bunch of studies) that it really does help.

For example: Saturday's laundry/cleaning day for me, and most of my focus is inside. But right around 1700, as I was about to toss out one final handful of seed for the ground feeding birds, I saw this in the sky. It was glorious, and definitely a blessing. An unexpected grace. And I am big-time grateful for it.

This time of year in particular, with all the holiday winding up, all the focus on closing out the fiscal year, all the high, impossible expectations of what should be…pulling back and naming all the graces in our lives brings real peace and joy. And maybe a good night’s sleep.

So, here’s Diana Krall singing “Count Your Blessings.”

 

Make straight the way

The second Sunday in Advent is focused on preparation. (You’d think that would be the theme of the first one, but no.) So our song today is “On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry.”

The lyrics to this hymn are not specifically about Christmas, but they do urge us to get our ducks in a row because the Messiah’s on his way. The Baptist referenced is John the Baptist, whose role in the Christ tale was to go around Judea and literally tell people to prepare the way of the Lord. That would be 30-ish years on from the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but it’s never too early to think about preparations.

The text was written by a Frenchman, Charles Coffin, around 1727, originally in Latin. It’s a mainstay of the Lutheran hymnal.

You most frequently hear “On Jordan’s Bank” set to the tune Winchester New, but I prefer Puer nobis nascitum, which predates the 15^th Century manuscript that first documented it. It was difficult to find a really good recording of this combination; this one by the Chandel Choir of the First United Methodist Church in Dallas, was the best I could do.