Since today is Bastille Day,
la fête nationale, I’m expressing my undying love, appreciation and gratitude
to France.
As with the United States (or,
TBH, anywhere), there’s plenty that you could crab about the country, but its
history, wit, diversity, language, flair and geographic beauty vastly outnumber
the flaws. It fills my soul in places where I didn’t even know there were gaps.
I’ve never been disappointed
taking a trip to France. From my first one—straight out of college, with no
credit cards, riding a bicycle from Paris to Santiago de Compostela and staying
in youth hostels, abandoned houses and highway rest stops—to the most recent
involving comfortable hotel beds and some very nice meals—each one has enriched
my perception of the world.
I love the sense of history in
France. Yeah, the French are subject to selective amnesia as much as the next
nation, but coming from Southern California, chills ran down my spine the first
time I stood at the edge of the medieval boundaries of Poitiers, looking across
the plain in the twilight below and just faintly hearing the echoes of the
Moorish armies that encamped there in 732, before Charles Martel drove them
back toward the Pyrenees.
You don’t get that sort of
thing on La Cienega Boulevard. Not usually, anyway. And certainly not without
chemical enhancers involved.
Moreover—nobody knows how to
throw a revolution like the French. Nobody.
Here is the range of
France—the Arc de Triomphe:
(The real thing, commemorating
real events that evoke deep passion in the people.)
I’ve
been thinking about it all week, and I just don’t know what to tell you on
this, the 250th anniversary of our national birthday.
Pretty
sure the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence would side-eye each
other and go down the tavern for a gill of brandy if they caught wind of how
their bold gamble was turning out. They were ready to risk everything—“our
Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”—to break away from Mother England;
they were overwhelmingly men of property, so they had a lot to lose.
And
the men who carefully put together the Constitution, with its first ten
amendments, would be equally gobsmacked. Like the Declaration, the Constitution
was a response to a failed government (in this case, the confederation) and it
was constructed to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”.
(Liberty figured in both documents, but the concern was lawfulness as a basis
for all government actions.) They crafted a form of government that they
intended to live and grow; one that would be immune to feckless rulers, corrupt
judges or petty legislators because of the built-in checks and balances.
They
just didn’t anticipate a circumstance when we would have all three at the same
time.
This
administration has committed many of the crimes in the Declaration’s indictment
of George III, in addition to many others no English king could have imagined.
The Kleptocrat is manipulating global stock markets with his tariff
declarations; building an armed secret police that can be turned against anyone
in the country, citizen or not; declaring war on states, governors, mayors and
anyone who doesn’t sufficiently bend the knee to him; breaking international
treaties; desecrating national monuments; committing war crimes; violating
constitutional provisions; ignoring actual laws; selling off national lands;
enriching his family and friends; alienating our allies and squandering our
soft power; and generally behaving more despotically than anyone since Ivan the
Terrible.
Beyond
that, he is visibly rotting both physically and mentally. We’ve all seen him
falling asleep at official functions any time he’s not actually speaking. We’ve
clocked him staggering and stumbling (on stairs and ramps particularly). We’ve
noted his bruised and spackled hands, bloated face, swollen ankles. We’ve
listened to him brag about taking repeated cognitive tests as though that’s an
achievement, not a warning sign. And—more than anything else—we’ve watched as
his speech increasingly slurs, animated only when he gets to grievances (of
which he has legion), punctuated by the mangling of multisyllabic words. The
guy is the picture of Dorian Gray.
Congress—more
specifically, Republicans in Congress—have utterly abrogated their
constitutional power because they’re terrified that TACOman will sic his
followers on them either politically or physically. They’re willing to kiss the
ring just to hold the title (and those sweet, sweet lobbying contributions and
insider trading opportunities), as they tug their forelocks and murmur, “Yas,
boss” whenever he makes another demand on them. They’ve taken away healthcare
from millions of Americans, thrown billions of dollars at ICE, gutted
environmental protections and given billionaires and corporations more
billions, hustling to get the job done in time to get home for July 4th
fireworks and barbecues with the constituents they’re fucking over.
And
the courts—God bless them, the frontline judges and even most of the Circuit
judges are doing their damned jobs like Trojans, but the most corrupt SCOTUS in
history is in hog heaven, using their court-of-last-appeal power to cut out the
constitutional support for decades of progress on civil rights. They’re barely
cloaking their intent (or their glee) in their rulings. I’m pretty sure they
write “because we can” in all of them and some clerk removes it before they’re
released.
So—that’s
where we are.
But
let me say a few words about what we could be—still.
Tomorrow
is the 250th anniversary of our founding. Which is to say—we’re
celebrating the birth of our nation, dating from the day we drove a stake in
the ground and said, “We declare ourselves independent,” and setting out the
legal and moral case for the American colonies separating themselves from
Mother England. I’ve written
about this before, and it never grows stale.
The
Founding Fathers weighed all their options and agreed that—much as they were
sons of the Enlightenment hoping for a reasonable solution to all the tsuris
they were getting from His Majesty’s Government—force of arms was going to be
necessary to achieving and protecting those “certain unalienable Rights…Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The price of freedom would include both
blood and treasure, and toward that end, “we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
And
when I think of the Founding Fathers and stunningly beautiful political
documents (which you’d naturally think is an oxymoron of the first order, but
it turns out you’d be wrong), I include the Constitution of the United States.
Even though it came nine years and a war later, the Constitution demonstrates
the mindset of the men who wrote it—devising an entirely new form of government
of checks and balances, not easily susceptible to coups, which gave the
people various guaranteed means of seeking redress.
And
beyond that—it was what software product managers would call “a scalable
platform”: it provided for growth and change as the nation did the same. Stuff
happens; they wanted the government to be able to accommodate it, even though
they understood they had no idea what form it might take.
(Yes,
we are once again in what Abraham Lincoln referred to as a great test of “whether
that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” See
the opening paragraphs of this post.)
But
here’s my point (finally) about what just makes me do the happy dance for our
national holiday. Americans—the folks reviled pretty much everywhere at one
time or another in the second half of the last century as being warmongering
minions of the military-industrial complex—celebrate the adoption of
the Declaration of Independence. Not the day shots were first fired; or the day
of the final surrender.
It’s
the day when the representatives of the people (not the generals) resolved that
these colonies should be independent. And by resolving, they made it so.
Yeah—guff
me no guff about them all being wealthy white males, or that they did not
conceive of a time when non-white non-males might be represented in ruling
bodies. (Guff me no guff and see above about the scalable governmental
platform.) And pick me no nits about the actual date-stamp on the actual
signing of the actual document. Sometimes you just have to drive a stake in the
ground and work with it. July 4th was, as they say, close
enough for government work.
And
what we work with is the fundamental idea that the thing to be commemorated—not
with gigantic displays of military might, with tanks, self-propelled guns,
marching divisions and fly-overs, but with homemade floats in community
parades, picnics and barbecues, and children waving sparklers—is not a victory
in battle, but the victory of an ideal.
The
thing about this particular victory is that it’s not one-and-done. It has to be
renewed every day, again and again. Signing the Declaration of Independence,
defeating British armies, writing the Constitution—that was all just the
beginning. The Founding Fathers did their jobs as best they could; we have to
keep doing ours, as best we can. And we can start by celebrating this anniversary like we always do—with barbecues with our neighbors, town parades and local fireworks; not the money-laundering self-referential, tacky displays emanating like a miasma from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
With
all that said, what should be our earworm for today? I’m thinking something
about how immigration not only enriches the American spirit, but makes it. So
Neil Diamond it is.
I have to say that I don’t normally pay any attention to
the notifications I get from Paris Baguette. I just scan the app to accumulate
points whenever I go in for a latte and then redeem the points when they are
enough to get something free.
But this one kind of surprised me a couple of weeks ago:
Yes, I suppose that some percentage of people might not be
celebrating Father’s Day, for any number of reasons. So, okay.
But I don’t recall a similar notification for Mother’s Day
last month, when I’d imagine there are at least as many people who ditto.
It seems appropriate that Memorial Day is a Monday holiday,
because it’s the day we’re meant to reflect upon the sacrifices of the men and
women who defend our country.
You know—to express gratitude in some way for their
willingness to trade their lives for the security of our society.
As a military historian with a focus on the human element
of conflict, it’s always been clear to me that the real cost of war isn’t the
treasure, it’s the blood. It’s the sons and daughters who go into harm’s way
and never return, or who return so altered as to never really find their way
back. As we reflect upon those costs, we really ought to consider the suicide
rate of combat veterans; per Department of Veterans Affairs figures, 17.5
veterans killed themselves every day in 2025. That’s 6500 per year. I’m not
going to talk about drug and alcohol addiction or homeless rates resulting from
PTSD; they’re line items on the butcher’s bill, too.
I wonder what that says about our society that we send
these people out to do terrible things on our behalf and then essentially shrug
our shoulders and avert our eyes when they come back not in bandbox tiptop
condition? Kinda feels like a broken contract to me.
Memorial Day marks the “official” start of summer in the
US; rather like acknowledging the dead who made possible the picnics and
fireworks of Independence Day. I kind of shudder to think what Cadet Bonespurs
will do to mark the occasion, in this, our 250th anniversary of nationhood.
He’s certainly been doing his part to increase the population at military
cemeteries, although of course that’s just a collateral part of his primary
goal, which has always been self-aggrandizement and -enrichment.
But it’s Memorial Day and Gratitude Monday. I’m grateful to
my brothers and sisters who, through the generations, have given, as Lincoln
said, “the last full measure of devotion.” I take it personally.
Today’s Cinco de Mayo, a holiday celebrated more widely in
the US than in México. In my native California, the celebrations will have been
going on for days, involving fiestas, mariachis and copious amounts of tequila
y cerveza.
Also, any number of retail sales.
You may not know that Cinco de Mayo is basically a regional
holiday in México, marking the defeat by forces under Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín
of the invading French army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. The victory didn’t
stop the French, intent on an imperial adventure come what may. Not until 1867,
when the US woke up from our own civil war and started reminding the French of
the Monroe Doctrine, and adding that, gee, we have this whole army hanging
around, trained, equipped and everything…did the French withdraw.
They left behind their ersatz "emperor of
México", Maximilian, who had the misfortune to be an unemployed Hapsburg
archduke (and possible relative of that popinjay Napoleon III), at a time when
France needed a figurehead to legitimize their invasion of México. He was executed
by firing squad on the orders of Benito Juárez on 19 June 1867.
Sic semper imperis.
Cinco de Mayo isn’t actually México’s independence
day—that’s 16 September, when a criollo priest rallied the
Mexicans to drive the Spaniards out in 1810. It’s kind of like the Fourth of
July in the US—there wasn’t a major military victory, but the very act of
declaring that enough is enough is the point at which a nation grows out of a colony.
Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla inspired his countrymen
with “el grito de Dolores” (“Cry of Dolores). This was something along
the lines of, “Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe, death to bad government and
death to the Spaniards!” The Battle of Guanjuato followed a few days later, the
war was on and the Spanish didn’t actually acknowledge México’s independence
until 1821.
But back to the celebration at hand. It’s really a occasion
to revel in the heritage of the Mexican immigrants to this country. I don’t
remember it as a kid in LA, but by the 80s it was big time. At this particular time, it seems to me more important than ever to consider the multiple cultural threads that are woven into the American tapestry.
For me, I might go for just one shot of reposado, to drink
to the death to bad government. That’s always something worthy of toasting.
For Easter Sunday in National Poetry Month, let’s have
something from the Harlem Renaissance. Festus Claudius McKay was born in
Jamaica in 1889. He came to the USA to study at the Tuskegee Institute in 1912
but quickly moved on to Kansas State University. The racism he encountered in
this country shocked him. In 1919 he traveled to the UK, where he was active in
socialist circles. He returned to the US two years later and wrote for various
progressive publications. From 1923 to 1934 decade he traveled and worked
around Europe, North Africa and the Soviet Union. When he returned to the
States, he settled in Harlem.
A relentless atheist for most of his life, McKay fell out
of love with communism (although remaining a social activist and anti-racist)
and converted to Roman Catholicism. His writings—novels, poems and other
pieces—reflect his experiences as a bisexual Black immigrant man in a nation
that was (and still is) afraid of most of those descriptors.
Today’s poem is from 1922, published in his Harlem
Shadows, so it predates his conversion by a couple of decades. But you can see
that, even as an atheist, McKay was swayed by thoughts of the resurrection.
“The Easter Flower”
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;
And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.
For my Easter flower, I give you a dogwood blossom. Not, technically a flower, but a bract; the cruciform bloom is sometimes seen as a symbol for the cross, and thus a precursor to the Resurrection.
Today is Good Friday for Western Christians—commemorating the
death on the cross of Jesus Christ. It is one of the most sacred days of the
calendar, a time for reflection on the sacrifice made to wash away the sins of
mankind.
So I don’t know what blasphemy the Kleptocrat will be
committing, but I imagine he might revive hawking his “God Bless the USA”
Bibles at $59.99 a pop (plush S&H). That was his contribution to the season
two years ago, thus bringing the practice of simony into the 21st Century.
This is a guy who cannot quote a single Bible verse; who
only appears in churches for campaign photo opportunities and funerals, because
services conflict with his own worship, on the golf course. (Although, okay, he
has broken most of the Ten Commandments.) So it is seriously cherce to watch
the video in which he proclaims multiple times that the Bible is his favorite
book and that “religion and Christianity” are what’s missing from this country.
(It’s still out there, but I’m not linking to it. It may even be on the White
House site.)
This was a day after he wished everyone “Happy Holy Week,”
and .shared something allegedly sent to him comparing his travails to the
sufferings of Christ during this time. (People all over the Socials offered to
give him a chance: die on the cross (or, TBH, just die) and if he rises after
three days, okay. I myself would appoint multiple monitors to watch over him
for the three days, sticking pins into random places every few minutes before
I'd accept that he had actually died. This is not personal, I wanted to do it
for Kenny Lay when he evaded prison for his Enron crimes by allegedly dying.)
Anyway, since the crucifixion of Good Friday is the setup
for the resurrection of Easter, today we’re having the old spiritual “Were You
There When They Crucified My Lord.” I can think of no one better to sing it
than Mahalia Jackson.
Well, here we are in April, which means National Poetry
Month. Which means 30 days of poems right here.
We’re also in the second April of the second administration
of the Kleptocrat, and I’m struggling—along with millions of others who have
been hurt materially, psychologically and spiritually by this criminal and his toadies.
I feel a little like ever yoga lesson, when my instructor asks me if I have a
Plough pose in me for that day: we’ll see.
But today, Pesach begins at sundown. Pesach is the
celebration of that time when the Angel of Death passed by Jewish households
when it spread calamity across Egypt. It also marks the joyful but speedy exit
of the Jews from their captivity; in too much of a hurry to let bread rise.
Ergo matzoh.
Pesach is a time for huge family gatherings around the
table, recounting the whole Exodus story, eating (but nothing leavened) and
drinking, talking and singing. Essentially, giving thanks for release from
slavery, for escape from plagues, for the grace of God. It’s kind of the
Ur-Gratitude celebration, and it lasts for eight days (seven if you’re in some
Reform congregations). The meal follows a script set down centuries ago for
both the menu and the conversation.
The Angel of Death has frankly been working overtime in the
Middle East this year, aided by the forces of the United States and Israel. (I
don’t know how this works, but the Angel might better serve humanity by
visiting a residence on Pennsylvania Avenue.) Klepto and his cronies are openly
talking about war crimes, and inviting/threatening our former allies (80 years
right down the tubes!) to join in, because he’s made a mess and needs other
people to clean it up for him. As always.
But they’re basically backing away while the Gulf States "privately" urge him to be their catspaw. As long as they keep flinging him flattery and
flashy trinkets, I guess we’ll do that.
Well, back to Pesach. I definitely get behind having a
ritual meal with roots more than 2000 years old, where traditions flow
seamlessly into the new generation along with matzoh ball soup, brisket and
charoset. Elijah will find many empty chairs to choose from at Seder tables
tonight. But that will not stop the remembrance and the gratitude.
So today my entry for National Poetry Month is a poem about
this holiday by one of my all-time favorite writers, Primo Levi. The second
line is highly appropriate.
“Passover”
Tell me: how is this night different, from all other
nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover, different from other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide, so the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew; under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us; let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate
Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction, the Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and
bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences, in which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed, evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting, far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine, the mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange questions: the wise, the godless, the simple-minded and
the child.
And time reverses its course, today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth. Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat, and crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger. this year in fear and shame,
Next year in virtue and in justice.
Unless you’re Italian or trying to sell a house, you may
not be aware that today is Saint Joseph’s Day.
You remember Joseph? Husband of Mary? Taught Jesus
everything he knew about carpentry and joinery?
Yeah, that’s the sad tale. Poor guy is always losing out:
in the Nativity, it’s all the Madonna and the kid; in cursing it’s always
Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph; in March it’s always Saint Patrick.
Joseph is the patron of, among others, the Church
Universal, workers, families, engineers, the dying, Canada, confectioners,
travelers, those in doubt, cabinetmakers, Korea and Vatican II. Also
of house sellers and hunters, which should make him a pretty busy
fellow these days.
Today is his official feast day—celebrated widely in
Italian communities around the world with altars decorated with flowers, limes,
candles, wine, breads, cookies, pastries and other symbols of the
good life. This is of particular importance when you consider that Saint
Joseph’s Day usually falls in Lent, when consumption is constricted.
(There’s another day, 1 May, dedicated to Saint Joseph the
Worker; but that was invented in 1955 by Pope Pius XII to counter the godless
communist/union/laborer May Day holiday, so you can fuggedaboutit.)
What I remember about Saint Joseph’s Day is that it’s when
the swallows come back to Capistrano—that’s the Mission of San Juan Capistrano,
in the eponymous town in Orange County, California. Turns out that the swallows
usually show up a couple of days on one side or another of 19 March, but
everyone turns a blind eye to those little discrepancies and enjoys
the hell out of the miracle of the swallows.
There are decades of stories about
how Saint Joe helps the desperate sell their homes: you bury a
(plastic/stone/wooden) statue of the saint (head up/head/down/horizontal) in
your (front/back/side) yard and Bob’s your uncle—the house is sold.
You can buy purpose-made statues for precisely this use
from a variety of sources both on and off line, including from some
realtors. Viz:
No clue as to how the saint may help home buyers, unless
there’s some karmic connection that his statue in your yard attracts exactly
the right buyers for this house.
As you know, I am of the opinion that Saint Patrick’s
Day is
largely an Irish-American construct—the kind of thing an under-appreciated
minority puts on to cock a snook at the majority. After all, you don’t really
need to celebrate being Irish in Ireland because you’re in, well, you know,
Ireland. (Although about 30 years ago they wised up to the potential tourist
bonanza it could be and have been raking in the readies ever since.)
You do need to celebrate it in a culture
that looks down on you as a jumped-up ignorant bunch of dirt-encrusted,
drink-swilling lowlifes who take orders directly from the Pope and lower
property values wherever you go.
So not surprising that someone decided to declare Saint
Patrick’s Day an occasion for pretending to be Irish by going pub crawling,
drinking green beer and singing rebel songs.
Whatever.
I myself don’t venture into bars or taverns on Saint
Patrick’s Day because I don’t like mixing with all those amateur drinkers. But
I can still express the sentiment with a song or two.
Here’s one of my all-time favorites, which goes well with a
slurp of Cooper’s Croze—“The Auld Triangle”. Written by Dick Shannon in 1952,
it became famous when it was featured in Brendan Behan’s 1956 play, The
Quare Fella. The play is set in Dublin’s Montjoy Prison, where he was the
guest of the Irish government in his youth and where a triangle signaled shifts
in the prison’s daily routine.
I once walked along the Royal Canal, singing it to myself. As one does.
Here are The Dubliners singing it. Lift a glass for all enclosed
by walls not of their choosing.
Given what a complete load of shite 2025 was, let’s start
out the new year with robins.
I walked into my living room Tuesday afternoon (after
finishing yesterday’s
post on notable deaths of the year) to see two robins drinking from the
birdbath. There were more of them in the trees and on the ground. (It’s been my
observation that robins, like nuns, never travel alone; in fact, if you see
one, it generally means that there’s a squadron of them nearby.)
We’ve had some cold weather in the past couple of days, so
they may have had difficulty finding unfrozen water, but my birdbath is heated.
(No, it’s not like a hot tub; it just keeps the contents from freezing.) So it
may have been their best source in the neighborhood.
There were so many drinking, I had to replenish the water
mid-afternoon.
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.
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.
We’re going from mid-century modern to probably late Medieval
England for today’s Advent piece. It brings up the dark side of the Nativity
story—the part that’s usually left out of the festivities, but which the
current administration is re-enacting every day in and out of season.
On their journey following the star, the three Wise Men
stopped for a spell in Jerusalem and asked King Herod for directions to where
they might find the child about to be born who would rule the world. This
turned out to be a costly mistake, because Herod—so the Gospels tell
us—followed the time-honored Middle Eastern custom of ensuring security of his
administration by ordering the slaughter of all male children up to two years
of age in the vicinity of Bethlehem. (Joseph was warned by an angel, and he, Mary
and Jesus fled to Egypt, where the government did not separate them or put them
in cages or deport them back to Palestine.)
(On a side note, imagine how Mary, having just endured an
uncomfortable journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem and given birth to her first
child, must have felt having to pick up and run all the way to Egypt. No
returning to the comfort of her home and the support of friends. She's got to
manage with a newborn, on that dag-blamed donkey for hundreds of miles, to a
strange country where she doesn't speak the language, and where the hell is she
going to get diapers? We should really hear more about this.)
“Coventry Carol” is from a mystery play put on annually in
the city of Coventry. Not sure about the precise date, but it was documented in
the 16th Century. It’s the only song to survive from that
particular play, and it was sung by three women, representing all the mothers
trying to reassure the children they knew were doomed.
It therefore seems appropriate to have a women’s choral
group singing it, so I’m giving you Anúna.
We’re going mid-century for today’s Advent piece. “Rockin’
Around the Christmas Tree” was written by Johnny Marks (who gave us “Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas”) and recorded by Brenda
Lee in 1958—when she was 13 years old. That chick had one hell of a voice.
To be honest, there’s not a whole lot to this song, and I’m
not a huge fan of rockabilly in general, but it’s energetic and inoffensive.
Why I’m here with it today is because I stumbled across the
Korean acapella group Maytree giving this performance, and I was frankly mesmerized.
So here it is.
Today’s Advent offering should probably come closer to
Christmas, because it’s about the shepherds. But I’m thinking a lot lately
about the people who work in the fields, on ranches and in the slaughterhouses
and meatpacking plants that keep us fed, so…
“Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow” was sung by
African-American slaves in the ante-bellum South. It was first published as “A
Christmas Plantation Song” in Slave Songs of the United States, in
1867. The songs in this collection were gathered during the War Between the
States, and the melody is probably from the coastal islands off South Carolina
and Georgia. A lot of those songs would have been call and response, which is
how “Rise Up, Shepherd” is framed.
Back in those days so glorified now by Republicans, slaves
were property, to be used and disposed of at their master’s pleasure, like
cattle and sheep. White owners, almost always professing Christians, were
conflicted about converting their slaves. In one respect, it made no more sense
than spreading the gospel to their cattle or sheep; property’s property, duh.
But in another, preaching Christ’s teachings was downright radical—all that
talk about all of us one under the Lord kinda runs contrary to the whole
master-slave thing. What if—and bear with me on this for a minute—what if all
those black people got the notion that spiritual liberation should be followed
by, you know, actual physical liberation? Scary stuff, right?
So it was not at all uncommon for colonial legislatures to
enact laws to ensure clarity on this issue: white guys = free; black guys = not
free. Ordained by both God and man; end of. Maryland was the first colony, in
1664, to legislate that baptism had no effect on the social status of slaves.
Southern theologians intoned that slaves had no soul; ergo treating them as
property was copacetic, whether baptized or not.
Just like cattle and sheep.
(For the record, there are no reports to my knowledge of
plantation owners baptizing their cattle or sheep. It could have happened, I
suppose, but they didn’t document it in the parish ledger.)
Generally speaking, slaves were also kept illiterate; no
need to read to pick cotton, tend babies or shoe horses. Also—man, that Gospel;
you do not want anyone in captivity to have free access to
that sucker, to parse and to ponder and to come up with weird-ass conclusions
like Jesus preached to the poor and had no particular love for the rich, and
what do we make of that? No, no—none of that Protestant notion of putting the
Bible into everyone’s hands so s/he can build an individual relationship with
God. You might as well give the field hands guns.
Also, slaves were forbidden to gather in large numbers,
where they might talk with one another, share information about their
conditions and maybe discuss things that property owners would prefer that
their chattel goods didn’t discuss.
So being unable to write or congregate, generations of men,
women and children developed a musical code for communication with one another,
across geographical and chronological boundaries. This code would be spirituals
and gospel music. When you dig into some of these songs, they’re about as
incendiary as it gets; they’re just cloaked in metaphor. “Follow the Drinking
Gourd”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”—they all sound kind of
meek and pious, but they’re built on pain and anger and aspirations.
And so is “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow”. I mean, how on
earth did slaveholders even hear those first two words without the hair on the
backs of their necks standing on end? The response to the call—twice in the
verses and twice again in the chorus—is literally telling the listeners to rise
up. And follow that star to freedom.
This is really clever—the star followers in the Nativity
story were the wise men, the three kings, the guys who’d have been identified
with the slave owning class; not shepherds, who clearly align more with the
slaves. Also, the star in the song is in the East, and the one slaves followed
was in the North, so a bit more subterfuge. No, no, massa—don’t worry your
white head; this song isn’t about slaves escaping or rebelling or anything like
that. It’s all about your blue-eyed Jesus.
The song urges the shepherds/slaves to ditch their
responsibilities to follow that star. I have to admit that it seems
irresponsible and unshepherdly to abandon their sheep; I feel bad for the
animals. But if we’re talking tobacco and cotton fields, I can totally see
slipping away and hoofing it north of the Mason-Dixon line. Massa can bloody
well get up and milk the cows himself. Or pay someone to do it.
In addition to the call/response framework, I also notice
that “Rise Up, Shepherd” has what I call a work rhythm to it. Like sea
shanties—it’s steady with a strong beat, which you could use to coordinate
repetitive labor, like swinging a scythe or pulling ropes. Or packing chicken
parts onto Styrofoam trays on an assembly line.
I do not know why I can’t find a really good recording of
this for you; all the versions out there are way too far removed from the slave
quarters—all laundered and pressed, with no dirt or sweat in sight. Here’s the
best I could manage, from the Christ Church Cathedral choir in Victoria,
British Columbia.
One of my favorite sources for Advent and Christmas hymns
is the Victorian polymath Catherine
Winkworth. She translated scores of German religious works into English,
and boy, did she have a way with words.
Our Advent piece for today is her “Wake, Awake, for Night
Is Flying”. The original was published by Philipp Nicolai in 1598; musical
setting by J.S. Bach. The chorale as he wrote it is fabulously intricate; it’s
all moving parts. And when you sing it in a congregation it is glorious. But
the Dominican Sisters of Mary here take it back to the bare bones and let you
concentrate on the message: be alert, the Messiah is coming, you do not want to
miss this.
