Traditional Yuletide Food and Drink

(Image from starofthebards.com)

Blessings of the Solstice to you all! I have been somewhat remiss in posting to this blog in recent months and I hope to be back here more often from here on in.

This Yuletide, I've been reading a fascinating book written in 1973 by Tristram Potter Coffin called An Illustrated Book of Christmas Folklore. It's well written and very well researched. It covers the history of the holiday from its humble beginnings (yes it mentions Mithras, the Celts and the ancient Romans!) and looks at many customs and traditions regarding foods, agriculture, greenery and rituals and celebrations.

It's particularly fascinating to read about the customs of decorating with trees and greenery, as holly, ivy and mistletoe all have specific folkore attached to them. Yule was time of welcoming back the sun, of course, but also a time to celebrate life, abundance, and fertility in the dark time of the year. Today's customs of celebratory eating, drinking and gift-giving are based in the countryside traditions of people of all social classes sharing their wealth with servants, peasants and all their neighbors. Hence the many traditional songs wherein people appear to be asking for coins, food or drink, and offering a blessing in return.

Of course, one well-loved dish is the boar's head, prepared in Merrie Olde England in a very labored manner. It even has its own song, sung when the dish is brought to table! When prehistoric wild boars became extinct, the dish started to fall out of favor but is apparently still served at one of Oxford's college every year, complete with ritual procession and singing of "The Boar's Head Carol":

"The Boar's Head in hand bear I,
bedecked with bays and rosemarye!

The Boar's Head as I understand,
is the rarest dish in all the land!"

And so on, with a stentorious chorus in Latin.

Not sure where one would get a boar's head these days, but I recently saw a post on the Garden Rant blog about a New York state pig farmer who raises pigs in a humane and natural way, so that is a good place to start. I am always happy to see farmers raising their meat for slaughter in a humane fashion, and think we should all support them when we can.

I also enjoyed reading about the origins of wassailing, and wrote a post about it last year here. The apple orchards were an important source of food and drink to agrarian cultures in the British Isles and Europe, so it is not surprising they were included in the rituals of blessing at Yuletide.

Apparently there is a real rising interest in this custom today, as seen in this article from The Wild Hunt blog last year, and from the looks of events like this one at an orchard and winery in Wisconsin. Wassailing has a long tradition in England, where it's traditional to do it on Twelfth Night.
(Painting by Henry Justice Ford, "The Sun Hero Guards the Apples of the Sun" from Victorianweb.org)
American pagans seem to enjoy making it part of their Yule traditions. I'd certainly love to see this tradition on the rise in the United States, as more and more people plant backyard orchards and try to support local farms. It seems to me a most pagan custom, and surely one that will insure a fruitful yield, if you believe that talking to plants helps them grow better (and I do).

This chant is sung at the "Wassailing the Apple Trees" event in Carhampton, Somerset:

"Old apple tree, we wassail thee,
And hoping thou wilt bear
For the Lord doth know where we shall be
Till apples come another year.
For to bear well, and to bloom well
So merry let us be,
Let every man take off his hat,
And shout to the old apple tree!
Old apple tree, we wassail thee,
And hoping thou wilt bear
Hatfuls, capfuls and three bushel bagsful
And a little heap under the stairs,
Hip, Hip, Hooray!"

How could the orchard not be heavy with fragrant, juicy fruit after being thus blessed?
(Painting by William Holman Hunt, "Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides" from Victorianweb.org)

Cider Renaissance in New England

This story on National Public Radio explores the growing and exciting hard cider industry in the New England States. Cider and apple fans in the Northeast have already been able to attend workshops on cider making, cider tastings and dinners featuring hard cider at the annual Cider Days festival in western Massachusetts.

So, is hard cider brewing poised to be the microbrewing of the new millennium? Please let it be so. This blog seems to be forging ahead with plenty of great information and anecdotes. American apple growers, who used to be able to sell their drop apples for cider making, now have to deal with the fact that cheaper Chinese imports are now the main source of cider apples in the United States. So some orchards are feeling the pinch from this lack of livelihood.

Hard ciders are best made from flavorful apples high in acid. These varieties are often unsuitable for fresh eating or baking. The antique varieties have delightful old world names like Ashmead's Kernel, Roxbury Russet (which originated in the Boston area), Muscadet de Dieppe, Newtown Pippin, Sweet Coppin, Harry Masters Jersey, Tremblett Bitter, Kingston Black, Hudson's Golden Gem, Brown Snout, and Foxwhelp. There are a number of tree nurseries that specialize in such antique cider apple varieties, including the Raintree Nursery, Trees of Antiquity, the the Greenmantle Nursery,and Burntridge Nursery.

So get out there and support hard cider brewers! Remember, they keep orchard businesses thriving.

A Poem for Samhain

This poem was writen on the plane from Amsterdam to Boston, after a weekend spent in Leiden for a conference. It was a wonderful weekend, with a very small group of scholars (thirty or so) giving talks in one room (on The Erotic in English Poetry), and we even had a terrific evening of poetry and song. Great food, beautiful city, made some new friends and had one of the best Samhains I have ever had, despite not formally celebrating the holiday. The capital city of Holland is both very ancient and very modern: at night, through my window open to the street below, I only heard footsteps, bicycles, occasional hoofbeats and the occasional soft voice or click of a lighter. Very civilized and peaceful. I can't wait to go back.


Transplendent We

It's deceptive, this light at Hallows.
A mask of wind and water, spinning, sparkling,
like silver spokes, or falling leaves, or candy floss,
or false conviviality, too-fast friends.
As the river curves to meet us, we shamble along,
soaked with mist, parched for ale,
like troubadours, or troubled ghosts,
on our way to a midnight market,
there to choose cakes and berries from the goblin stalls,
in the shadow of forbidden castles and glowing maples,
the walkways bright as coins beneath our feet.

Here where the sloping banks converge,
the trees lean in, as if to kiss,
thorned and black on the right, airy and golden on the left,
Bacchus, Hecate, Apollo, Aphrodite,
nuzzling, glancing approval as we invent words
to mark this season of harvest.
No yellow moon, no sheaves of wheat, no bawdy lyric,
but ploughshares swinging,
hoofed beasts clocking over wet grey streets to sleep in tranquil barns.

The red blush creeping up your throat surprises us all,
like brazen hollyhocks that suddenly realize
they've reached the second floor.
Dizzy with drink and drunk on autumn's ether,
we find the otherworld we've sought all evening.
Its hollow hills ring, empty as dessicated bulbs,
yet bright with color, flowing with nectar,
its great halls lit with rustic lanterns,
candles set in carved-out turnips, meant to keep spirits at bay,
and yet soon the very air is keening.
The sky is slowly tinted green.
Our tongues are slippery with juice.
The clock strikes three, three times,
and we are younger than we were.

I started to like you, your small hands like Proustian sweets.
I started to like you, you and your words like dark abundant rain,
poppyseeds poured out on cobblestones.
Simple folk we, laughing long songs like books of fruited verse.
There where the cats consider the canal,
the moon at last emerges, and we become
more and more unfashionable by the minute.
I conjure a forest from a single tree:
like ardent sloths, we hold fast to its mutant trunk,
hard, rough, pulsing with faint heat.
It multiplies into a fairy-tale wood, varied as Paradise,
thick with English bluebells and rhetorical mushrooms;
it smells of sex and stagnant water,
hashish, leafmold, bile and burnt sugar, rotting velvet,
and tobacco that ought to be Turkish.

We could be anywhere: a Holland of the Mind,
or drowned Ys, forgotten Brittany,
a temple of jewels in Morocco,
a chalk hillside hewn by pagan muralists,
a Danish bog stuffed with dead druids,
a green field in America,
Constantinople, Brigadoon,
or a fragrant churchyard that beckons in dreams,
like mementos from a love lost in war-time,
coal-dust in your hair, violets in your pocket.

The veil between the worlds is thin, they say, tonight.
And if we walk now to the marketplace
(we fancy it built of fog and fireflies)
the goblins will smile, cry hail and welcome!
They nod their heads, stroke our hair, grasp our fingers,
whisper, yes, the veil grows thin, grows thin.
They hand us three lengths of shimmering cloth,
dyed the colour of winter plums, smelling of old roses.
We give them all the gold we have.
We wrap ourselves in purple.
We wake, and seven days have passed, or seven years.
Our fingers are torn, stained red with fruit.
Our lips are bruised, and taste of truth.
I touch your mouth, and it is the sun.

Leiden, Samhain, 2006

This poem was first published in Goblin Fruit Autumn 2007.

Poetic thoughts for September's New Moon

(Photo taken by me at Brushwood Folkore Center in Sherman, NY in September 2008)

September, like the advent of school, seems to arrive determined to educate us in the ways of deja vu and that most human emotion of melancholy. The days and nights struggle for balance as the equinox approaches: between light and dark, cold and warmth, color and sere greyness. I crave words that will make sense of it all and often find myself scribbling bits of verse or seeking out obscure and near-forgotten prose and poems. John Updike, one of my favorite writers, was my thoughts this week when a New England friend mentioned that her close friend is his daughter. Reading The Widows of Eastwick a few months ago, not knowing Updike was struggling with cancer, I found myself thinking more than once that this might be his last novel, and it was.

Updike studied to be a painter before he became a writer, and his novels and other writings overflow with stunning, thoughtful imagery. Like this short piece, called "September."

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

Wordsworth also wrote a poem called "September":

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.

And this piece by Thomas Parsons captures the unique happy melancholy of the month:

Sorrow and scarlet leaf,
Sad thoughts and sunny weather.
Ah me, this glory and this grief
Agree not well together!

- "A Song For September"

And these endlessly evocative words that I was compelled to sing one morning this week to greet the blue-gold day:

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and a callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow...

- Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt

Want to read more? Check out one of my favorite websites for quotes about nature and the seasons.

Summer hiatus end at last!

Hello friends.

It's been a few weeks since I last posted in this blog, and mostly this is due to haveing been away for much of July at the Brushwood Folklore Center, and then being busy or beaten down by ennui since my return! Ennui may be too strong a word; I had a bit of post-festival, post-camping depression, which was not helped by the solid week of rain that occurred when we got home, after having already lived through a solid week of rain before that. Yes, Starwood was wet, horribly so. I may yet post a review of it and of Sirius Rising on Witchvox, so stay tuned...I did get some lovely photos!

Just to let you about a couple of things I'm up to...

I'm organizing a Samhain/Hallowe'en/Hallows ball/dance/costume party (it will have a definitive name soon, promise!) this fall, hoping for October 24th, in Albany. I haven't reserved the space yet but am hoping it will take place at the Woman's Club of Albany, who have a gorgeous Edwardian mansion on Madison Avenue, complete with a ballroom, verandah, fireplace and beautiful furnishings. I've created a new blog for the event and for what I hope will be future events...

I've been wanting to get some sort of pagan events happening in this area, mainly because there is so little going on here. The two main local groups seem to have a bit of a witch war going on, and the city itself doesn't seem to have any centrally-located events happening, not after the demise of one space in my neighborhood. And many of the local pagans seem to live outside the city and don't have much reason to come in. Well, I have been trying to work on that. I started a Pagan Night Out a few months ago, and it's been relatively successful. I've also created a blog for that as well, to keep folks informed of any events.

And finally, my friend Byron Ballard and I have created a new blog that may speak to many of you: Pagan Foodies! Hope you'll visit us there and share your own thoughts, experiences, cravings and recipes!

Wife Swap seeking Pagan or Wiccan families

I received the following email this week:

Hello,

I hope you are doing well! I am a casting producer for ABC's "Wife Swap" and we
are looking to feature a Wiccan or Pagan family on the show. If you are
interested or know someone that might be interested in the following
opportunity, I'd love to hear from you. Please review the announcement below for
more info :)

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing
from you!


Best,

Jessica Jorgensen
Casting Associate Producer
RDF Media USA
100 6th Avenue, 3rd floor, Suite 3-29
NY, NY 10013
P: 646.747.7947


So, there you have it, If you or someone you know is interested in this opportunity, feel free to forward this contact information to them. I've seen at least one episode of this with a pagan family and it was fascinating, to say the least.

Blessings of the New Moon and Solstice

It's been hard to connect with the solstice energy to an extent, because it's been so cloudy and rainy for weeks now. I haven't posted here much lately, but have been doing a lot of online writing in various other places. My dear friend Hannah came to visit for the weekend, and we got lots of work done on our four different book proposals. We also had a wee solstice toast in the backyard with some nice rose wine and lit a candle and left some wee glasses of wine for the fey folk.

The new moon energy does feel palpable today. We sent off our proposal to a publisher on solstice day and that seemed a powerful day to start a new venture. Now I'm trying to think of something I can do to celebrate this new moon. It's in Cancer, and that always means food preparation to me. I made a great dinner of baked chicken, mashed potatoes and green salad, and baked a batch of brownies that I'll be selling at the farmer's market tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I'l make cookies and cupcakes for the market.

Maybe it's time to search for some freelance writing gigs online and send off some queries. The new moon is good for new ventures. Oh, and for fasting! But I may be too late for that today after that filling dinner.

Hope everyone has had a powerful solstice and new moon week. Oh, and a Happy Father's day. That is still sad to me since losing my dad three years ago.I like to think he's there, still enjoying the change of seasons and the food and garden traditions he loved so much. My love of these ways helps him live on in me.