We’re rounding the corner on the big day, so I think we can now
declare the birth. We’ve got today and tomorrow to get our ducks (or partridges
and French hens) in a row; shepherds are minding their flocks; the caravan of
Wise Men is en route (hope they don’t pitch up along the Rio Grande—we could
have a whole new ending to this story), Joseph and Mary are within a day of
Bethlehem…
Yeah—let’s have “For unto us a child is born” from Messiah.
The text (as is most of Part I of the oratorio) is from Isaiah. (Isaiah
9:6, to be precise.) I love Isaiah—the language and imagery are stunningly
beautiful. Pick up any chapter and start reading; that’s balm to the troubled
soul. I particularly am taken by the notion that a son is given…unto us. All of
us, every nation, every condition, every status. This to me is the real promise
of the Christmas story, and I’m sorry that it gets lost in the Christo-fascist
evangtaliban’s ramming their vision of Jesus as a White nationalist, misogynist
purveyor of the gospel of prosperity with a poker up his butt and hatred in his
heart down everyone’s throats.
So listen to the Academy of Ancient Music, VOCES8 and Apollo5 impart
the words of the prophet.
Hmm,
three days before Christmas. Anticipation (and probably anxiety) levels are
mounting, supermarket parking spaces are disappearing; it’s crunch time.
So, let’s
have Jerry Helms singing his 1957 “Jingle Bell Rock”. It’s kind of like doing
CPR to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive”: it helps you get ‘er done.
Let
me frame this by saying that “Jingle Bell Rock” will be forever associated for
me with the opening of that iconic 1987 film Lethal Weapon. So that’s what I’m
giving you:
It’s
been probably a decade or two since I last watched the movie, but I was
instantly struck by how absolutely 80s’ the woman is—hair, makeup and nails.
Talk about yer blast from the past…
We’re at the Winter Solstice, that point in the calendar where
those in the Northern Hemisphere experience the longest night. For millennia,
humans have found ways—physical and spiritual—to defend against the darkness;
one of them is to celebrate the turning of the cycle. 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.
Our
Advent song today is “Jul, Jul, Stralande Jul”,
which—as you may have guessed, is from Sweden, written a hundred years ago. It
expresses the wish that Christmas bring light and peace. It’s performed here by
the Kammerchor Wernigerode, which is composed of singers all over Germany. They
meet about once a month to rehearse and perform concerts and they’ve been in existence
for 20 years.
We’re
going back 150 years for today’s Advent music. Franz Liszt wrote his
Weinachtsbaum Suite in the 1870s, a set of 12 pieces for solo piano. They’ve
also been arranged for two people at the same piano.
Liszt
dedicated the suite to his eldest grandchile, Daniela von Bülow. It premiered
on Christmas Day 1881 in her hotel room in Rome.
Here
are Martha Angerich and Daniel Barenboim playing the four-handed version of one
of them.
We
had angels
yesterday for Advent, so today let’s talk star(s). Is it too early? The one
we know as the Star of Bethlehem, that shown on the shepherds in the fields and
guided the three Wise Men from the East to the manger doesn’t usually make its
appearance until the 24th.
Although,
obviously it had been doing its guiding job for weeks, at least, because those
Wise Men came…from the East. (Question: did those guys only travel at night? If
so, what’s up with that? Or did it also shine during the day? If so, how is it
that no one else remarked upon the anomaly?) And they didn’t actually arrive at
the stable until two weeks after the birth. (Another question: Isn’t two weeks
a long time to bunk in a stable? Is that how long it took to recover from
giving birth? I mean—Mary didn’t have Blue Cross nagging at her to get out of
the birthing place because they were only going to pay for one night…)
But
back to the stars—they’re another metaphor for driving back the darkness. We
who live in light-polluted urban areas don’t really appreciate a clear night
where the stars truly are a canopy of light, so it may be a bit of a challenging
notion for us. But stars were a major element in the world view of humans for
millennia, really. I’ve always wondered how astronomers saw a cow or a woman or
a crab in sidereal arrangements; I feel like I’ve joined the Titans just by
recognizing Orion’s belt (and, actually, it turns out that what I see is the
sword hanging from the belt). Maybe they were distilling wine long before the
12th Century CE.
But what
they saw in the stars guided them in traveling beyond the(ir) horizons, on land
and at sea, so of course stars would figure in the story of the birth of the
Messiah. Stars are critical to us reaching to become better. (Although there is
the danger of putting too much emphasis on their influence; I think we’re still
struggling with that balance.)
So today
we have “Behold that Star”, written by Thomas W. Talley (1870-1952), chemistry
professor, ethnographer and director of Fisk University’s Mozart Society. Fisk
is a Historically Black institution in Tennessee. We don’t know when it was
composed, but when Marian Anderson sang it, it was an arrangement published in
1912.
I’m
giving you a recording of the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus singing it.
At
the “Joyful
Time” party she threw last summer, my friend Jacquie gave everyone an angel,
to carry with us at all times. I couldn’t figure out how to attach it to my
mobile phone, so I hooked it to one of the zipper pulls in my backpack. It’s
next to my Aurora pen, which I bought in a pen shop down the street from Primo
Levi’s house in Torino. So, in a sense, it’s looking after one of my most
treasured possessions, even when it’s not on me.
We
all need angels—whether or not you believe in heavenly creatures, we all need
to know that someone is looking out for us, caring for us. Doesn’t have to be
supernatural or even physically manifested. Just has to be.
One
of my greatest and most constant gratitudes is that I have those presences in
my life—Jacquie’s one of them. Someone who listens with love and makes time for
me. I
And
also—I’m grateful that I can be an angel is other people’s lives. An inept one,
to be sure, but I can listen with love and make time.
So
today’s Advent music is “Angels from the Realms of Glory”, because angels were
all over the Christmas story, from the Annunciation in a house in Nazareth to
the shepherds on the slopes outside Bethlehem and beyond.
It’s
a bit of a challenge to find a recording of “Angels” that doesn’t crib off of the
music to “Angels We Have Heard on High”; this one should rightly be set to “Regent
Square”. And I’m sad to say that the YouTube is infested with arrangements of “Regent
Square” by one Dan Forrest, and they just suck. So this rendition by the First
Presbyterian Church of Davenport, Iowa, in 2009 is the best I can do.
The theme
of the third Sunday in Advent is “rejoice always”. If you remember that this
particular season is meant to be four weeks of quiet contemplation and solemn
preparation for the birth of the Savior, then you’ll see that breaking it up
with one day of joy is a way of helping people get through this period of
mini-Lent. That's why the candle changes color from purple to rose.
Our music
today is based on the fourth movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Nineth
Symphony, the one where he set Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to spectacular
music. Schiller’s poem praises the brotherhood of man (which, in itself, is
something we might think about in Advent 2023), which was something Beethoven passionately
believed in. The Nineth Symphony premiered in 1824.
In
1907, American writer, educator and Presbyterian minister Henry Van Dyke wrote
a poem to be set to the Beethoven music, called “The Hymn of Joy”. I confess
that I rather prefer the original version to Van Dyke’s, but we’re at Gaudete
Sunday and it’s time to bust loose in anticipation.
So I’m
giving you the Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit version. Crank up the
volume.
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.)
(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.")
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”.
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.
