It’s St. Stephen’s Day, or Boxing Day, or the 26th
of December, so let’s have Eva Cassidy; I’ve chosen her acoustic take on “Wade
in the Water”.
“Wade in the Water” is a jubilee song, an African American
spiritual originating in slavery and collected and sung by the Fisk University
Jubilee Singers in the early years of the 20th Century. A lot
of those songs were about getting through terrible times by holding out hope
for deliverance and salvation.
Not sure, but the first time I heard it might have been
Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, singing it in a
class she taught at American University. And here’s that amazing
group singing it, if you’re interested.
Cassidy’s warm, powerful and steady voice is what I need
today, reminding me that—even when the waters are choppy—we need to wade in. Maybe because they're choppy we need to do that.
For the culmination of Advent, I’m going back to the
beginning. To Isaiah, which to my mind has some of the most beautiful language
in the entire Bible. People like their Psalms, but give me that old prophet any
time.
Isaiah contributed 20 verses to Georg Friedrich Handel’s Messiah,
and I have to tell you that singing those words to that music is a
transformative experience.
I’m not giving you any of the blockbusters for today,
though. I’ve been thinking a lot about the prophesy that the coming of Christ
would bring about huge changes in the world we know—a leveling and a smoothing
as we are all equal under the Lord.
Sounds bizarre, I know, what with our government currently
going to great lengths to show us that we are a Christian nation, which
exercises supreme power by doing the exact opposite of what Jesus of Nazareth
preached, taught and lived.
But that’s what Isaiah 40:4-5 tells us. And that verse is
the entirety of today’s entry, “Ev’ry Valley”.
Here's the Cambridge Choir with tenor Allan Clayton performing it.
I confess I have a love-meh relationship with “Silent Night”.
In the US, it’s the über Christmas carol, closing out just about every holiday
concert from grade school to master chorales. I feel oversaturated with it.
But it’s ubiquitous for a reason: its simplicity gets to
the heart of the Nativity—an ordinary, quiet night, a new couple make do for
accommodation with stable animals, but the birth of the Messiah. A few
straightforward verses, three-quarter time, you can play it on any instrument
around and even little children can master it. (-Ish.) It’s been translated
into probably every language on the planet as a gateway to the whole story; I’ve
certainly learned it in every language I’ve studied.
I’m giving you the Spanish version, sung by Andrea Bocelli,
because it does feel appropriate for this particular Christmas Eve, when people
all over the US are being rounded up and tossed in prison (citizen or not) for
the crime of speaking Spanish. Reenacting the persecutions of Herod—so on-brand.
Today’s Advent piece originated with plainsong back in the
mists of Christianity, so: Latin. The opening lines of “Rorate Caeli” translate
to “Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just.
Let the earth be opened and send forth a Saviour.”
The chant featured in regular Advent services devoted to
Mary, known as the Rorate Mass. I don’t recall ever having attended one (they
were weekday/Saturday masses, and kinda got sidelined during the Second Vatican
Council), but I would like to. They used to be held in the early morning, which
seems to me to be a good way to start out a workday during Advent.
In the Anglican tradition, the opening lines translate to
“Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.”
I believe we could use some of that these days.
This version is by Maîtrise Notre Dame de Paris, which is a
music school in Paris.
Unlike the fir, the holly and the ivy, the citrus is
decidedly not evergreen. (TBH, ivy is actually bloody near indestructible. Come
Armageddon, it will indubitably rule with cockroaches over the blasted
hellscape that planet Earth becomes.) As I discovered earlier this year when
the February freezes torched
my three potted citrus trees, despite me wrapping the bases in bubble wrap.
When my neighbors moved to Seattle, I liberated their
three very large pots (no pix, sorry) and repotted two of the trees; my
gardenia in a larger container than the trees has weathered about seven
winters, so… But around the end of October, I began looking for reinforcement
solutions. I could move the smaller pot indoors, but not the larger two.
I mentioned this to a friend in the UK, and she had a
suggestion:
Friend: What about garden fleece—would that work?
Me: Garden fl—wut?
But, dear reader—garden fleece is indeed a thing; I
ordered some online and then draped it double-strength around both, using clothespins
to secure it. I also brought back the chicken wire enclosure for one of them,
because I saw Scooter
the chipmunk sizing it up.
We’ve had quite the range of temperatures in the past
couple of weeks—from high 50s to the teens—but so far, it looks like my little
trees are surviving. One has some frostburned leaves, but most of it seems healthy.
(The indoor one started flowering after I brought it
inside. I mentioned that to my English friend, all happy about getting lemons,
and she asked, “How about pollination?” Me: “Pollin—wut?” So, as per online
wisdom, I hand-pollinated, and I may get a few lemons.)
This is my gratitude for today. It’s so hard to grow
anything in my backyard, because the only time it gets any sun is after all the
deciduous trees have lost their leaves. I’m filled with joy by these three
potted pals, and by the reminder that we can withstand some big things, when we
have help.
I can find no Christmas songs about citrus, but here’s one about
the apple tree. The text for “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” dates from the 18th Century,
a poem probably written by a “Calvinist Baptist” (later known as “Methodist”)
preacher, Richard Hutchins. It’s been set to music by several composers,
including the ubiquitous John Rutter.
Using the metaphor of the apple tree for Christ may
reference the creation story in Genesis, or it could reflect New Testament
depictions of Jesus as the Tree of Life. Then there’s the pre-Christian British
custom of going out among fruit orchards around the Winter Solstice to offer
(and drink) libations to awaken the trees for their Spring duties.
(I wrote before about this custom in a post
about wassail, which got merged into Christmas, as things often do.)
I personally love the image, especially in the dead of
Winter, and doubly-especially in this ghastly year. We need to remember
that—despite our best human efforts to the contrary—nature will do her best to
bounce back, and life will triumph over death.
Besides, apples make great pies.
The lyrics are so powerful that I think it worthwhile to
set them out for you:
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be,
Compared with Christ the Apple Tree.
His beauty doth all things excel,
By faith I know but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see,
In Jesus Christ the Appletree.
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I missed of all but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the Appletree.
I'm weary with my former toil -
Here I will sit and rest awhile,
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the Appletree.
With great delight I’ll make my stay,
There’s none shall fright my soul away;
Among the sons of men I see
There’s none like Christ the Appletree.
I’ll sit and eat this fruit divine,
It cheers my heart like spirit’al wine;
And now this fruit is sweet to me,
That grows on Christ the Appletree.
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the Appletree.
I am eschewing Rutter and giving you a version set to music
by Elizabeth Poston, a 20th-Century English composer. Here it’s
performed by a group called Seraphic Fire.
Today is Annunciation Sunday, the last before Christmas. It
focuses on the visit by the archangel Gabriel to Mary, to tell her God had
chosen her to give birth to his son, the long-awaited Messiah.
I mean—it’s obviously not the anniversary of the
Annunciation; if Jesus had been born in December, Gabriel would have visited
Mary in March. If the Nativity was in the Spring—as most historians support,
because shepherds and sheep were out in the fields, which they wouldn’t have
been in December—then the angel-woman confab would have been around August.
This is a covering-all-the-bases commemoration, really—using the final Sunday
in Advent to remind ourselves of the Whole Story.
But today is also Winter Solstice—the longest night and shortest day of
the year in the Northern Hemisphere. After tonight, night retreats day by day
until balance is achieved at the equinox, and then the tide turns again at the
Summer Solstice.
Probably since the origins of humanity, people have
celebrated this annual event, giving thanks for the return of the sun,
gathering around bonfires, singing, banging on things, eating and drinking.
Before the domestication of fire to candles, followed by gas lights and then by
electricity, knowing that the hours of darkness would not in fact continue to
grow was comforting in a world full of perils.
The festival we know as Christmas was overlaid on older
traditions; the birth of the Son of God has perhaps more dramatic impact if
it’s celebrated around the Solstice rather than sometime in Spring, which makes
more meteorological and astronomical sense. The early Church accomplished two
goals with the coopting: subsumed pagan sun worship into Christian rites and
gave themselves license to feast away the longest nights of the year. It’s not
a bad deal, really.
And as Christianity co-opted the pagan celebrations of the
Solstice of providing artificial light against the very real darkness, they also
incorporated evergreen vines and branches into their traditions: plants that
hold their verdant color even through the worst of freezing weather.
Evergreens—firs, pines and the like—are of course symbols
of eternal life. Pre-Christian Europeans decorated their houses with evergreen
branches to celebrate the winter solstice. Christians go one step further with
adding lights—candles and then electric—to beat back the darkness. The
ornaments help refract the light into the room. We hang wreaths on doors and
windows; often on the grilles of our cars. (And, in the past few years, some of
those have lights on them, too.)
Along with the color, evergreens bring their scent into our
homes, reminding us that life may appear dormant, but it usually comes back.
(Yes—it always has in the past, but I’m getting a little uneasy about the
future. Still, for now…)
In honor of the Solstice, Mary and evergreens, let’s have “The
Sans Day Carol”, which originated in Cornwall. It’s a variant on “The Holly and
the Ivy”, but since ivy is an invasive species here in the Old Dominion, I’m
not giving it electron space. I’m all holly, all the way.
(You have to cut this one some slack—obvs the holly doesn't bear a white berry, or a black one. They're greenish and then they're red, before flocks of robins swoop down and ravage them. Also, there's no way Jesus was ever wrapped in silk, his entire life. It's poetic and metaphoric license.)
Here’s the English early music group Carnival Band
performing it. I like this version because it hasn’t been whizzed on by John
Rutter, and that’s hard to find these days.
