• Category Archives Holidays

  • And so it ends, on the Twelfth Night

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide ends, Day 12: The Epiphany, Twelfth Night

    Wednesday gratefuls: Anger. Trust. Feelings. Love. Rigel. Kep. Kate. The comforter. Cooler. Murdoch’s journey. Christmastide. Pagans. Seekers. Mountain Waste. The stars in their courses. 30 Coins. Eyes. Ears. Brain. Heart. Feet. Hands.

    If you’ve followed these, we are at the end, the Twelfth Night of Christmastide. The Orthodox celebration of the incarnation. The three kings came, found the Child of Wonder, left. But on their way out they spoke with King Herod. Yes, the Child exists. Yes, he’s a king. Then left by another route to return home, to say they had found their way to this signal of a new age.

    Herod takes the news hard. No infant kings allowed. Male babies under the age of two must die. And so the slaughter of the innocents which we acknowledged and whom we celebrated on Day 3, Children’s Day.

    In Merry England the Twelfth Night was another time for the emergence of the fool, for the inversion of roles, for letting go of the amazement of Christmastide in preparation for the now imminent return to ordinary time. We saw this same impulse on Distaff Day and in the male equivalent, Plough Monday.

    Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, follows these themes with an exotic setting, gender role reversals, and a role for Feste, the fool. Written in 1601, it was for a performance on Twelfth Night.

    Matthews offers another Robert Herrick excerpt:

    Ceremony on Candlemass Eve

    Down with the Rosemary, and so

    Down with the Baies, and Mistletoe:

    Down with the Holly, Ivie, all.

    Wherewith ye drest the Christmas Hall

    That so the the superstitious find

    No one least branch there left behind:

    For look how many leaves there may be

    Neglected there (maids trust to me)

    So many Goblins you shall see.

    Any needles or leaves left in the Christmas Hall would, on the day after Twelfth Night, turn into goblins. A sound reason to finish taking down all the decorations.

    Mine are all stored away except two: a shelf sitting Victorian Santa and the string of colored lights over my south facing loft window. Not sure whether I’ll leave them up or not.

    If we take the other thread, the pagan/supernatural thread, during Christmastide, Yule, this marks farewell for the Solstice, too. We now know the Sun has committed for another year, the crops and the livestock will feel the heat, the warmth, the energy, the vitality. Whatever fears we had as the nights grew longer and the days colder, have given way to confidence that Spring and Beltane will come once again.

    We integrate in this new year the lessons of the darkness. The going deep within ourselves, down to our roots, considering ourselves and our Souls in the most radical way, will nourish our accomplishments in the light of the world.

    I hope Christmastide has a somewhat new meaning for you. And that your new year, this ordinary time, will bless you and yours.

     


    Commentary on Religion Great Wheel Holidays Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Distaff Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide, Day 10: St. Distaff’s Day

    Monday gratefuls: CBE services online. Kate’s sisters. Bridgerton. Writers. Books. Ovid. Tolstoy. Ford. Cather. Oliver. Shelley. Whitman. Emerson. Camus. Berry. Electricity. Lights. Darkness. Stars. Ruth’s wisdom teeth. Out today. 16 days. Farewell, so long. Auf wiedersehen. Please be a stranger. Welcome, sanity.

     

     

    Distaff day. Not sure about the St. That sounds like a Catholic appropriation to me. A quick search indicates that’s correct. There is no St. Distaff. The addition of St. to this more ancient day reveals patriarchal and misogynistic appropriation. Not to put too fine a point on it.

     

    Partly work and partly play
    Ye must on S. Distaff’s day:
    From the plough soon free your team,
    Then come home and fodder them.
    If the maids a-spinning go,
    Burn the flax and fire the tow;
    Scorch their plackets, but beware
    That ye singe no maidenhair.
    Bring in pails of water, then,
    Let the maids bewash the men.
    Give S. Distaff all the right,
    Then bid Christmas sport good-night;
    And next morrow everyone
    To his own vocation.

    Robert Herrick, Hesperides

     

    Written in the 17th century by poet and cleric, Robert Herrick, this poem gives you the essence of Distaff Day. On this day the Midwinter festival came to an end. Women returned to spinning and weaving. Hence, distaff day. The men, a few days later, would celebrate Plough Monday when they returned to the fields with their teams of oxen.

    A return to ordinary time. To domestic and agricultural labors. But not without some play. On Distaff day the men would set fire to the flax or wool the women tied to their distaffs for spinning. The women would have buckets of water ready. To put out the wool and flax, yes, but also to dump on the rowdy young men. Not sure, but it seems neither gender was quite ready to give up the play of the festival time.

    Plough Monday, the traditional start of agriculture in England, fell on the first Monday after the Epiphany. This year Plough Monday falls on January 11th. A plough might be pulled through the village by young men, one dressed as a Fool and another as a purser.

    The purser would go from house to house collecting money. If the money received seemed adequate, the young men would plow an acre, then dance around it. If the villagers were miserly, they would plow up the street.

    I’ve been readying my space for a return to ordinary time after Christmastide. Each morning I’ve taken down a bit of the decorating I did. This morning I removed two wooden bowls in which I’d placed Christmas ornaments. On other days I’ve returned Santa globes to their shelves, folded up Christmas cloth and packed it away.

    Tomorrow: the Eve of the Epiphany


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  • Evergreen, Pine, and Conifer

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide, Day 9: Evergreen Day

    Sunday gratefuls: Coffee. Cold coffee. The Denver Post. All print newspapers still at it. An informed citizenry. Trump, for exposing our weakness. 17 days. Buh, bye orange one. 2021. 2020 in the rear view.  Tara. Marilyn. Rabbi Jamie. Lobster and ribeye.

    Vega in the snow

    Once again. Pine, Conifer, Evergreen. This is our day in Christmastide. This day and the Snow day have no festivals associated with them, so we celebrate aspects of midwinter that bring us joy.

    Matthews cites an interesting Cherokee story about the origin of the evergreen. The Great Spirit created plants and wanted to give them each a special gift, but could not decide which gift would go to which plants.

    Second and third year cones. Cones have a lot of resin.

    Among the trees, the Great Spirit decided on a contest. He asked all of the trees to keep watch over creation for seven days. After the first night, all the trees remained awake, excited at the opportunity. On the second night some fell asleep, but woke right back up.

    As the nights went on, most of the trees began to fall asleep, unable to stay alert for so long. By the seventh day, all but the pine, the cedar, the spruce, the holly, and the laurel had fallen asleep.

    “To you,” the Great Spirit said, “I shall give the gift of remaining green forever. You shall guard the forest even in the winter when all your brothers and sisters are sleeping.” And so they do to this day.

    At our elevation the Lodgepole guard the Aspen whose golden leaves in the fall proceed their winter sleep. At lower elevations the Ponderosa, the Spruce stand guard. At the treeline ancient Bristlecone Pines patrol. In other parts of Colorado the Douglas Fir, the Engleman Spruce, the Pinon Pine, the Rocky Mountain Juniper, and the White Fir watch. The Great Spirit reminds us each Winter of the Evergreens special gift.

    Here is a special Solstice salutation from Italy’s sixteenth century:

     

    I salute you!

    There is nothing I can give you which

    You have not.

    But there is much, that while I cannot give,

    You can take.

    No heaven can come to us, unless our hearts find

    Rest in it today.

    Take Heaven!

    No peace lies in the future which is not

    Hidden in this present instant.

    Take Peace!

    The gloom of the world is but a shadow.

    Behind it, within our reach, is joy.

    Take joy!

    And so at this Christmastime, I greet you,

    With the prayer that for you, now and forever,

    The day breaks, and the shadows flee away!

    Matthews, p. 200


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  • Let It Snow

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide Day 8: Snow Day

    Saturday gratefuls: Rigel’s sleeping habits. Keps. Mine. Kate’s. All different. Dogs to feed. Humans to feed. The night Sky. The International Space Station speeding past Ursa Major this morning. The waning full moon. Sleeping through the night. Amazing. Writing, back to Jennie’s Dead. A new schedule. Working. Ribeye and Lobster, today. Held over.

     

    April 2016 Shadow Mountain

    Remember Frau Hulda, aka Mother Christmas, from Day 2? Also called Frau Holle in Germany. Midwinter Snows are the feathers shaken from her bedspread. We’ve still got a few feathers on the ground here.

    Today we celebrate Snow.

    Got into Jack London as a boy. Read Call of the Wild and fell hard for his descriptions of the North. Remember Buck? I fantasized about Pine Trees, Lakes, Dog sledding, and, Snow. Snow that lasted. Snow that did not turn into the slushy melt of Indiana Januaries. Winter as a real season, not a sometimes cold, sometimes chilly, sometimes wet, sometimes icy season.

    We had family vacations that took us to Stratford, Ontario for the Shakespeare Festival on the banks of the Avon. Our journey often took us to the MS Norgoma ferry from Tober Mory, Ontario, across the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and onto Manitoulin Island.

    In Stratford we camped in the Ipperswich Provincial Park, also on Lake Huron. Those travels plus Jack London’s novels put living among Pine Trees and Lakes as a stronger desire than I realized while the impressions formed.

    2012, Andover

    As an adult, when I got the chance, I moved to Wisconsin, Appleton, and from there on to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I lived in the north for over 40 years, a place Jack London and Lake Huron had taught me to love.

    The Winters were real. That first Winter in Appleton the temperature dropped to well below zero for a full week and we got a foot of Snow over one weekend. I discovered engine block heaters and knew folks that took their batteries out at night and brought them inside. This was 1969.

    Minnesota is cold. It Snows, yes, but the big difference there is that the snow sticks around. The temperatures remain well below freezing for weeks, months. And the Sun hangs low in the Sky. When the Winds howl and the Snow blows, it can, as friend Tom Crane observed, blot out all the boundaries: fences disappear, roads, roofs, front yards and back yards.

    January, 2015. Shadow Mountain

    After our move to Colorado, we’ve experienced a different Winter. On Shadow Mountain, the second Winter we were here, 2016, 220 inches of Snow fell, four feet in one storm. Minnesota typically gets between 40 and 50 inches.

    But. After the Snow in the Mountains, we get warmer weather. Often, a Snow fall, no matter how big, disappears in less than a week. The Solar Snow Shovel. The Sun’s angle is a bit higher than Minnesota and we’re a good bit higher at 8,800 feet. Colorado’s blue Skies mean we get a lot of Sun shine even in the deepest midwinter. This is the arid West. Humidity outside today is 19.

    What’s your Snow story? Today’s a good day to go out and play in the Snow if you have some. Perhaps a Snowball fight. A Snowman. Skiing. Snowshoes. A hike.

    Tomorrow: Evergreen Day.


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  • Here’s to Thee, Old Man Apple Tree

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide, day 7: New Year’s Day

    Friday gratefuls: Sherlock Holmes. Cribbage. Ribeye and lobster. Mashed potatoes. Deli salad. Tony’s. Cold. Snow. Low wildfire risk. Rigel between us, sharing her head. Kate’s pillow. Mine. Kep at his spot. 19 days til 1/20 at 9 am. See the back of his head. Tom’s mother, Evelyn. Tom. His sister.

     

               Andover, 2012, Bees and Apple Blossoms

     

    Paul, here’s an English New Year’s ritual for you. Wassail. You may have heard the word used in relation to wild parties. That’s good too of course. But. In England folks go out to the oldest apple tree in their orchard, usually around noon, and pour cider from a bowl around this tree.

    In Devon and Cornwall they add bowing three times to the “Apple-Tree Man.” I like this. The idea is to encourage a large and healthy crop for the fruit season. Pieces of cake and toasted bread were hung from the branches. This was called wassailing the tree. Wassail comes from wase haile, or good health.

    They sing:

    Here’s to thee, old apple tree

    Whence thou may’st bud and

    Whence thou may’st blow.

    And whence thou may’st

    Bear apples anew.

    Hats full, Caps full, Bushel,

    Bushel sacks full.

    And my pockets full too?

    Huzzah

    Or.

    Blow, bear well,

    Spring well in April,

    Every sprig and every spray

    Beat a bushel of apples against

    Next New Year’s Day.   

    Matthews, 193 for both

     

    Another New Year’s custom from the Faery Faith involves dressing the wells. In the ancient Celtic way artesian springs were considered dwelling places for faery folk and pathways to the Otherworld. Like some Native American nations, prayer rags tied to trees and shrubs near the well were common. Also, bouquets of flowers, small candles.

    In 1995 I visited St. Winifride’s Holy Well in Holywell, Flintshire, Wales. Called by some Catholics the Lourdes of Wales, her well has a stone well casing about three feet high and a large pool which the well fills. When I was there, wheelchairs and crutches lined one of the walls.

    St. Winifride’s Holy Well is one of the few locales mentioned in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Sir Gawain goes there on his journey to find the Green Chapel. Winifride was a Celtic legend long before the Roman Church and the connection to the tale of the Green Knight involves her beheading by Caradoc, a jilted lover.

    The spring rose from where her head hit the ground. Her uncle Beuno, probably a Druid, reattaches her head, and healing became associated with her well.

    May the healing power of Beuno and the well of Winifride wash over this new year, this new decade. May our 2021 heal as much as it can, cheer as many as it can, especially on January 20th at noon.


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  • New Light. New Year. New Hope.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide, Day 6: Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve

    Thursday gratefuls: Tony’s Market. Easy Entrees. Subway. Resistance work. Cardio. 5:30 am wake up. Jon, Ruth, Gabe. The folks who write dramas like Ray Donovan, Janet King, His Dark Materials, Raised by Wolves, Professor and the Madman. Actors, too. The Internet. Servers. 20 days until January 20th at 9 am. Vaccines. Covid. Trump.

     

     

    Ding, Ding, Bells o’ the Barony!

    Ding! Ding! Hogmanay harmony.

    Naebody greets for the year thats awa’

    W.D. Cocker, the Auld Year   p. 188, Matthews

    (This ditty seemed particularly apt for this decadal turn)

     

    Hogmanay is a word of unknown origin. It’s not well known outside of Scotland, but there, it gets celebrated with energy. Christmas is An Nollaig Mohr, the Big Yule, and New Year’s, An Nollaig Bheag, the Little Yule. Yes. But in Scotland it’s the little Yule that gets the bigger celebration.

    Folks throng the city streets, drinking early, then drinking all the while it takes to ring in the New Year, and disperse with good cheer not long after.

    It’s a day for tending to unfinished business. Mini-spring cleaning. Debts paid. Borrowed items returned. Stockings darned. Tears mended. Clocks wound up. Musical instruments tuned. Pictures hung straight. Brass and silver polished. Fresh linens on the bed.  F. Marian McNeill, the Silver Bough.  Matthews 189.

    I like the tradition of first-footing. Darken the house. A family member, or a friend, has a candle, a live flame, and goes outside at the stroke of midnight. A knock on the door and fire crosses the threshold both of your home and the New Year. If you want to go the whole way with this idea, put candles in several rooms and follow the first-footer as they go from room to room lighting the candles.

    You might say something like: (Matthews, 190)

    Welcome to the light of the New Year

    And Welcome is the one who brings it here!

    As friend Tom Crane rightly observes, there is no real New Year. The poison and toxicity of the last twelve months will not recede into the past just because the ball drops in (a quiet) Times Square. All the various New Year designations, and they vary a lot by season and date, are human signposts that acknowledge the orbit of our Earth around the Sun.

    Yet. Artificial constructs though they may be, New Years acknowledge two important things, at least for me. The first says, yes, our spaceship (thanks, Bucky Fuller) has carried us all the way round our Sol one more time. Unscathed. In this it also acknowledges, even if indirectly, the solar systems flight to the stars, our Milky Way galaxies flight toward Andromeda, and all the other fast movement around us that we cannot even see. Including the earth’s rotation.

    The second important thing, symbolized above by first-footing and finishing the unfinished, is that we can start anew. Even though the past is not vanished, neither does it have to determine our future. We can come into the present moment by bringing in fresh light. We can come into the present by getting rid of matters left undone that weigh on us. We can change years by changing ourselves each New Year.

    Of course, in this sense, each day, each hour, each moment comes anew. As indeed it does.

    Having said all that, and meaning it, I also say, Good Riddance to this bastard child of time, the year 2020. Let’s bring all the bright, original, light we can to this new year, 2021!

     

     

     


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  • The Grim Boar’s Head Frowned on High

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the full Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide Day 5: Bringing in the Boar

    Wednesday gratefuls: The full Moon of the New Year hiding in the West behind the Lodgepoles. Chilly weather, a bit of snow. Mountain high. Spiritual and emotional nourishment. 21 days only. See the bad man leave the house. And go away. All dogs. All people who love dogs. Vaccines. Covid. Page turning. Black Lives Matter. Radical police reform. Economic justice.

     

     

    An interesting day, day 5. It celebrates the bringing of a boar head to a great feast.

    Then the grim boar’s head

    Frowned on high,

    Covered with bay and rosemary.

    Sir Walter Scott Marmion

    Frowned indeed. And odd that it featured/s for so long in the Twelve Days of Christmas. Why? Because boars were apparently extinct during the reign of King Henry II. He died in 1185.

    I say features because bringing in the boar’s head still takes place Queen’s College in Oxford. As it comes, verses of this carol are sung:

    The Boar’s head in hand bear I

    Bedecked with bays and rosemary;

    And I pray you, my masters, be merry

    Quot estis in convivo. (so many as are in the feast.)

    The Boar’s head, as I understand,

    Is the rarest dish in all the land

    When thus bedecked with a gay garland

    Let us servire cantico. (let us serve with a song)

    Matthews suggests leaving an apple or an orange at the backdoor in case the bristled one comes by.

    Sæhrímnir, the ever renewing boar of Valhalla, feeds all the einherjar, those Vikings fallen in battle and delivered to the great feasting hall by the Valkyries. He dies each night, is eaten, then revives. In this sense there is some link between the boar and resurrection, much like the einherjar themselves, brought from death to life. The einherjar will join Odin in the great final battle of the gods, Ragnarok.

    If you had the chance to read Gawain and the Green Knight, you might remember the hunting expeditions of Bertilak de Hautdesert. The boar is the third and final hunt. Bertilak dismounts and fights him in the water, driving his sword straight into the great beast as it attacks.

    Boars were considered as dangerous as a human foe with their sharp tusks, more than human strength, and a wiliness that made them difficult to kill.

    Even pagans have a conflicted relationship with nature. Yes, she provides soil for crops, rain and sun from them to grow, and game to supplement domesticated animals like goats and cows and chickens. But she also had predators in the wild like wolves and game animals like the boar, who killed many hunters.

    Bringing in the boar’s head, in this context, would signal a human victory. A sort of Roman General’s triumph. And, at the same time, it honors the boar as a worthy foe, symbolic of both the danger and the bounty found in the forest.

    Tomorrow: Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve)


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  • Childhood

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year

    Christmastide, Day 3: Holy Innocents, Children

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient ones on wonder. Wonderfull. High humidity outside. Another weather change on the way. 23 days until he has to come on down. 4 days till 2021. Back to workouts today. Covid. Trump. The Absurd. Authenticity. Living into the abyss. Haislet’s poem.

     

    Murdoch’s last day at his birth home

     

    First. Don’t start anything important today. As was well known a while ago, nothing started on Holy Innocents ever turns out as hoped. In the Middle Ages kings would not be crowned on this day. Two kings, French King Louis XI and English King Edward IV would not conduct any court affairs.

    You have been warned.

    This day commemorated the children killed by Herod in his slaughter of the innocents and added, over time, an emphasis on all children.

    Ruth’s final day at Swigert

    There were odd rituals. Parents beat their children with fresh evergreen branches. Sometimes children would beat the parents. Masters, servants. And, servants, masters. They would say: Fresh green! Long life! Give me a coin. or, Fresh, green, fair, and fine, Gingerbread and brandy-wine! I don’t know. Go ahead if you want.

    Take this as a day to honor the children in your life. Grandchildren. Your own children. Text them. Call them. Let them know, again, what they meant to you. In the wonder and strangeness of growing up, both us and them, we can forget to acknowledge each other as individuals, as amazements. Let this day encourage you to do it now.

    Another facet. Childhood. Consider your children’s, your grandchildren’s lives when they were young. What was it about them then that made them special? That either prefigured traits they have today or that disappeared in the process of becoming older. Pleasant or precious memories. Hopes you had for them.

    Seeing Joe in Colorado Springs

    I remember Joseph at t-ball. Hitting the ball off the t and then the scrum of kids from all positions heading toward the ball. Many, many trips to baseball card shows. The rookie card of Kirby Puckett he bought when we took the train the wrong way out of St. Louis and had to wait for the next one. Driving with him into St. Paul from Andover. Picking him up from the plane. How he made and kept friends.

    Another facet. Consider your own childhood. Honor the child you. What made you special? Pleasant or precious memories.

    The garden spider mom and I watched for a whole summer. She had spun her web on the window frame just above our kitchen table. My stack of comic books I kept under my bed with some Superman comics hidden among them. (forbidden) Listening to the 500 mile race in the family car, rain pounding down. All those kids on my block. Games. The coal chute in the basement of our apartment. And the augur which fed the furnace. A dragon, I thought.

    Childhood. And, the folks who care for children, too. Like pediatricians. Teachers. Nannys. Their friends.

    At Domo

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  • Truth

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Moon of the New Year (and, Christmas Eve)

    Thursday gratefuls: Alan. CBE. Jamie. Marilyn. Tara. Kate. Rigel’s clean bowl this morning. Christmas Eve. Our best present only 27 days away! Nordic Advent Calendar. Santa Claus. Magic and wonder. Young children. Another big present only 7 days away. 2021.

     

    Kate’s had a long Sjogren’s flare. Started on Monday or so. Low grade temp. Fatigue. Little nausea, which is good. Drains away energy, leaves the slows. Unusual for it to last this long, often gone in a day.

    We had a tough, sad, necessary talk on Tuesday. It came after a scam call about our Amazon account, after Rigel’s refusal to eat, after Kep threw up, after Option Care failed again to deliver the bags Kate uses for her tube feedings.

    Pierced my calm. Frustration leaked out. Not angry. Momentarily overwhelmed. Got us to talking about this new normal. What we can reasonably expect of each other.

    The tough and sad part. I’m not getting better.  It’s taken me months to accept that, to accept this. She put her hand up, indicated a long, slow decline.

    I know. I just… I know, too. Wu wei. We flow with this. But, it makes me sad.

    Me, too. I used to wonder which of us would die first. Now, I know.

    Maybe not. Heart attack. Stroke. Car accident.

    Maybe not. But, probably.

    There it was. On the table. The dining room table, where, I imagine, most of these conversations happen. Laying things out, saying what’s been unsaid. Right where the plates and the knives and spoons and forks go.

    Acceptance, though. Has its own power. Increases intimacy. Clears the haze away. No one is dead. No one is dying quickly. And, we’re all dying anyhow, every day closer.

    OK. Not a cheery Christmas message. Maybe not. But the divine with us came out and walked the room while we talked. Reminded us of evanescence. Of the joy of being together. Of the time we have, rather than the time we don’t have.

    Brought us together, appreciating each other even more. A gift of a long ancientrail, marriage and love and steadfastness.

    It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious night of old.


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  • Green

    Posted on by Charles Comment

     

    Winter and the Moon of the (highly anticipated) New Year

    Tuesday gratefuls: The great conjunction of Jupiter-Saturn. Bertilak de Hautdesert. Gawain. Morgan Le Fay.  Arthur. The Celts. Germans. Swiss. English. Irish. Joseph’s new job. Hawai’i. Maps. Friends.

     

     

    Sir Gawain and the Green Knight summary.* This long poem is part of the Arthurian tales, perhaps the best known outside of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.

    The Green Knight is the most important figure in the poem for our Solstice purposes. Sir Gawain takes on the heavy burden of showing the contradictions between courtly love and chivalry. His role is less significant for Solstice thoughts.

    Here a few lines from the poem itself.

    “Great wonder of the knight

    Folk had in hall, I ween,

       Full fierce he was to sight,

    And over all bright green.

    the hair of the horse’s head was of green, and his fair, flowing locks clung about his shoulders; and a great beard like a bush hung over his breast, and with his noble hair was cut evenly all round above his elbows, and the lower part of his sleeves was fastened like a king’s mantle. The horse’s mane was crisped and gemmed with many a knot, and folded in with gold thread about the fair green with ever a fillet of hair and one of gold, and his tail and head were intertwisted with gold in the same manner, and bound with a band of bright green, and decked with costly stones and tied with a tight knot above; and about them were ringing many full bright bells of burnished gold. Such a horse or his rider were never seen in that hall before…” wayback machine

    He and the horse he rode in on. Green. Green. Green.

    At Camelot the great New Year’s feast only awaits the exchanging of gifts to begin. The knights of the round table, Arthur, and Guinevere sit at long trencher tables, chatting and drinking. Their anticipation fades when a commotion erupts. A knight on horseback has ridden into the hall on his horse.

    Arthur, not wanting Camelot to look cowardly, agrees to the Green Knight’s challenge after silence in the hall. Cut off his head tonight. In a year and a day find him and offer your neck in return.

    Sir Gawain, not wanting Arthur to put his kingship at stake, takes his place. Off comes the Green Knight’s head. It rolls toward the head table and after a bit of searching the green, headless body finds it, and jumps gracefully back on his saddle.

    On New Year’s day a year hence Gawain, after a long search starting on All Saint’s Day, finds the Green Chapel. I am known as the Green Chapel Knight, he told Gawain.

    The Green Chapel though is no church building. It’s a green mound with openings, like a burial mound. The Green Knight appears.

    After three swings, two missed, and one knick on the neck, the Green Knight declares Gawain’s pledge satisfied.

    I see two related, but different, relationships to the Winter Solstice in this story. The first, perhaps obvious, perhaps not, concerns the turning of the Great Wheel.

    The Green Knight comes to the festive hall on New Year’s eve, not long after the Solstice. The world is still cold. The sun low. Plant life browned and enervated. Chopping off the head of the Green Knight corresponds to the harvest. Even after losing his head, his body, his roots, can find it. He lives yet. Just as plants whose bowed stalks and brown leaves live on underground, ready with stored food for the coming of spring.

    All the eating, even the feasting, of the fallow time cannot kill the vegetative life represented by the Green Knight. On the Solstice we stay in the depths, in the darkness, but we also know that on the coming night the light will begin to overtake it. Slowly. Gradually. Until all the Green Heads previously fallen pick themselves up again.

    The second correspondence concerns Morgan Le Fay, the withered woman contrasted to the fresh young wife of Bertilak de Hautdesert. A witch and half brother of Arthur, it is Morgan Le Fay who turns Bertilak de Hautdesert into the Green Knight.

    Magic. Earth Magic. The green covered burial mound is a chapel. The place of Morgan Le Fay, and the Green Knight may represent the older, nature focused magic, a magic that honored the chaotic reality of the natural world. A magic that confronts the civilized world of revels and knights and governments and agriculture. The organized world. Which can only understand death as finality, not as part of an ongoing cycle.

    Christianity adopted a linear view of time. You can see it in a world ending second coming somewhere in the distant future. You can see it in the ominous nature of death. A time of testing, of being sorted, wheat from chaff. Fearing death makes sense if eternal judgment awaits.

    Earth magic and the vegetative power of renewal that the Green Knight displays remains in the cyclical world of the Great Wheel. Death. Then, life. Life. Then, death. Decomposition and decay as a good, a way of transforming death into a process, a part of the ongoingness of the Great Wheel.

    In both of these interpretations a more ancient, wilder world stands against human conceit. Buildings. Honor. Kings. Not necessarily to displace them, but rather to disrupt them. To remind them of the context of their lives.

    Whatever layers we create that push away from the natural world: skyscrapers, airplanes, medicine, family and corporate farms, highways and cars, the natural world is always foundational. Inescapable. The necessary in a contingent world.

    Maybe this New Year’s, at a feast near you, a Green Knight will ride in on his Green Horse asking you to cut off his head. What will you do?

     

     

     

     

    *The Green Knight came into Arthur’s hall and asked any one of his knights to trade blows.

    Sir Gawain accepted this challenge and he was allowed to strike first. He cut off the Green Knight’s head. The latter calmly picked it up and told Gawain to meet him on New Year’s Morning for his turn.

    On his way to this meeting, Gawain lodged with a lord and each agreed to give the other what he had obtained during each day of Gawain’s stay. On the first day, when the lord was out hunting, Gawain received a kiss from his wife which was duly passed on. On the second day, he received a brace of kisses which were also passed on. On the third day he was given three kisses and some green lace which would magically protect him, but only the three kisses were passed on.

    Having left the lord’s residence, Gawain arrived at the Green Chapel where he was to meet the Green Knight. He knelt for the blow. The Green Knight aimed three blows at Gawain, but the first two did not make contact and the third but lightly cut his neck.

    The Green Knight turned out to be the lord with whom he had been staying and he said he would not have cut Gawain at all had the latter told him about the lace. The Green Knight was called Bertilak and he lived at Castle Hutton.


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