12th Night

     As most of you know the "Hat City" Mummer's Play is a blend of old and new. The old story is the battle where Saint George dies and is brought to life again. Marnen and I wrote the original Hat City Mummer's Play over the phone one afternoon many years ago. Most of it is new material—a re-telling of the old story. But we did leave in certain lines which have been recited for centuries. Yes, centuries. There are hundreds of transcripts of plays from different villages, going back to the early 1700s. Certain lines repeat themselves including "In comes I, Old Father Christmas, welcome or welcome not..."

     I always wondered about the "welcome or welcome not" line. I was aware that Christmas was once outlawed, both in Puritan England and in the New England colonies. While they were having a fine old time down in the Virginia colony, it was against the law to celebrate Christmas in any way, shape or form in Boston. So stringent were the prohibitions that in the Boston and Connecticut colonies "mince pie sniffers" were hired by the local authorities to go about the settlement sniffing out anyone who might be making either mince pie or plum pudding! Now there's a municipal job for you. 

     Suddenly the "welcome or welcome not" line made sense. Oliver Cromwell was the driving force behind Christmas being outlawed in England, and laws were passed to this effect in 1645. In Connecticut the laws went in to effect in 1657. So "welcome or welcome not" speech with the listing of "banned" delicacies is clearly a reference to the odious ban on Christmas.

     Another line which comes is repeated in many of the plays is the wound/found line:

     A doctor! A doctor must be found
     To save him from this grievous wound.

     I suppose it's obvious that "found" and "wound" once rhymed, at least in some dialects. Certainly my Scottish grandfather would have said "foond" rather than "fownd".

Twelfth Night January 5

We will be celebrating Twelfth Night at Flanders Nature Preserve in Woodbury CT at 6 PM on January 5th.
Flanders has an enormous brush pile which will be transformed in to a Twelfth Night bonfire.
Procession of the Three Kings, Candle Dance and Wassailing the Apple Trees.
Marnen will be our musician!!!
Please join us.
Flanders
5 Church Hill Road
Woodbury, CT 06798-1718
(203) 263-3711

December 25

     Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!
     Joe, as always, lit our river with luminaria, just before sunset.
     The  glow of the lanterns reflected in the swiftly flowing water.
     Clear, crisp air and a multitude of stars.
     Half moon, glowing with the same golden glow as the luminaria—at midnight it slid behind the tree line.
     Thinking of our friends who delivered a son just yesterday afternoon.
     Earlier we went to the congregational church just down the road. I had a strong feeling to go there. I love the moment, on Christmas Eve, when all of the candles are lit from one candle and the congregation sings Silent Night. Much to my disappointment there were no candles! I questioned why I had experienced such a strong feeling to go to this church only to miss the candlelight. 
     Then, on the way home we passed a road with a row of luminaria on both sides!!! We rarely travel this route, and did so only because we visited the little church. The candles at the entrance to this dark country road led us in to miles of luminaria lit roads. We wandered for a half hour, enjoying the dark starlit night, and the fleeting beauty of the lanterns. In an era when the Christmas lights go up on Thanksgiving, there's such beauty in the luminaria which are real firelight, and which are lit but once a year. Imagine, if you will, that time before electricity, when the roads were lit with candles for one glorious night a year and the ancient story of Christmas was heard but once. And the only way for the songs and carols to come alive was to sing them.

December 26 Naval History

http://infomotions.com/etexts/archive/ia300028.us.archive.org/0/items/histnavyusa00cooprich/histnavyusa00cooprich_djvu.htm

December 24

     When I was out on the pueblo I was surprised that the rituals didn't have much of an effect on me. It was wonderful to see and to learn, but there was no response on an emotional level. I sat next to a small child at dinner, waiting for the Kachinas to arrive. Suddenly alert he turned to me and said "Did you hear bells? I think the Kachinas draw near..." The Kachinas are a trinity. They are the mountain spirits who live on the sacred mountain. They love, protect and guide the people. They are also the dancers, who don masks and prepare themselves spiritually to be a host for the mountain spirits. It is not dance as we know it, it is movement and the generation of energy. It is prayer in motion. The third aspect of kachina are the dolls. One man explained "You have the Jesus Kachina in your churches..." A sacred symbol that teaches and reminds us of a sacred story.
     This year, when I saw the priest at our local Orthodox Church address the children as Saint Nicholas, I thought, "he is the Saint Nicholas kachina". A grandfather himself, he spoke with them so tenderly that he truly did allow them to encounter the spirit of the great saint. A few weeks later I attended the Christmas pageant at a local church. It was a very beautiful celebration. Mary was played by a young mother who had given birth only six weeks before. As she sat on the altar, beaming down on her new born son, we were all witness to the great love a mother feels for her child. The lights were dimmed and the congregation sang Silent Night. My eyes filled with tears at the beauty of this simple scene and I remembered the depth of love I had experienced when my own child was born—that love so unfathomably deep that we are transformed in a moment. That love that burns so bright and with such ferocity that we would willingly surrender our own life so our child would not be harmed. This story and pageant were so simple, yet more powerful than the greatest homilies I've ever heard. This is what we celebrate at Christmas—the mystery of that love, embodied in a new born child. One of the things parents say is that they are surprised not only by the depth of love they feel for their child, but by the depth of love that young children feel for us.
     I believe in that love. I believe in a force so mysterious that a universe came forth from it and that this force is love.
     And I believe in the great healing stories of my people, the stories we tell year after year. The stories we hear for the first time before we are old enough to remember them in words. We remember them in the same way. They evoke emotions which we cannot put words too, but which are strong and important. No matter how much I learned about the people of the pueblos, I would never have the advantage of the child who, in complete belief, whispers to a stranger "do you hear bells? I think the kachinas draw near..." The mountain spirits are in his heart, they are rooted in his soul. But Saint Nicholas is rooted in mine. I thank and bless the people who allowed themselves to be vessels this season so the spirit of Christmas could come through them. The kindly priest, the young mother and her beautiful baby, the deer dancers in my woods—they were all vessels for spirit. They were all kachinas.
      Merry Christmas. Amen.

December 22

     One last luminaria was still lit in my yard as I sat down to write this. I woke twice in the night. The candles were still glowing in the night, under the stars. In the pale light, before the sun rises, the luminaria cast a golden light against the blue of the snow. I walked back along the path to the woods with the now silent dog. The luminaria still lined the trail where the horn dancers emerged from the forest on the longest night. This short trail led out to the stone wall, which I stepped over, to follow the path I walked on the eve of the solstice. 
     All around, in the wood behind my house, the snow was still undisturbed, except for my footprints. As I turned to head up to a formation of rocks called "The Three Kings, I looked down at my feet, and saw hoof prints in the show, along with my own prints from a day and a half earlier. The deer had walked in my footprints. Or else, I had walked their trail, unknowingly, on the eve of the solstice.
     I'm sure the last luminaria has sputtered out now. I don't need to go see it.

December 21 - Two wonderful medieval collections

http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibOnlineThumbs.asp?id=OnlinePoyetHH
http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibOnlineThumbs.asp?id=MedHunt