MIDWINTER MAGIC
SPREAD THE PLEASURES OF CHRISTMAS THROUGHOUT THE SEASON, SAYS GILLIAN MONKS – AND RELIEVE SOME OF THE PRESSURE ON THE ‘ BIG DAY’ – BY NOTING OLDER CUSTOMS AND RITUALS
Ihear people talking about the ‘big day’, meaning Christmas Day on 25 December. Apart from the fact that Christmas is so much more than just one day, it’s courting disaster to place so much emphasis on a single event. Advent isn’t celebrated as a time of preparation – the slow building of the magic – anymore. The festivities, which once lasted for weeks or months around the central celebration of Midwinter*, and latterly for at least the 12 days of Christmas, are all condensed into what was originally a time of anticipation and preparation, while everyone also desperately tries to do their Christmas shopping, wrapping, decorating and baking. All to have everything ready for the ‘big day’. How many arguments begin on Christmas Day, after the presents have been opened and the dinner eaten, when the hype and excitement come to an abrupt end? A lot of the pleasure is in the anticipation. Build the excitement and expected pleasure slowly. Take your time. Dream, plan, prepare. Look forward to things. Making and taking pleasure in smaller – and possibly quite trivial – occasions around Midwinter spreads the excitement, diffusing some of the huge expectations placed on the 25th. In the weeks leading up to Midwinter, and within the 12-day period, there are seasonal customs that can provide inspiration. Use these to indulge in a little true magic and learn to fall in love with life as it is, every day. Recalibrate your perception of the average and ordinary and turn it into something sparkling and magical. Live and work with the seasons and cycles of nature, which are more natural and less stressful. Everything in its allotted span… everything in good time.
A MODERN SOLSTICE
The winter solstice, Midwinter, takes place on 21 December, the shortest day of the year. We go out into the woods, taking yule log cake and flasks of hot mulled wine. Around a campfire we gather to sit and share Midwinter memories and dreams for the coming year. There is laughter, storytelling and the singing of carols, and silence and stillness as we watch, wait and listen. We pour steaming spiced elderberry juice into cups and toast the land, the blessed darkness and absent sun. We munch contentedly on biscuits. One doesn’t have to actually do very much to mark the solstice – it is enough to simply be. »
THE JOY OF JUNIPER
In Scotland, around Hogmanay, people traditionally collected boughs of juniper and brought them into the house alongside buckets of fresh spring water. The juniper was dried and, in the morning, the head of the household took the first drink from the water and sprinkled everyone else with drops from his bucket. Then all the doors and windows were shut tight, the juniper was set alight and then paraded through the entire house. This most certainly dates back to an ancient cleansing ritual. You could try cleansing and blessing some water by leaving it outside overnight at full moon before storing it in a clean, dry bottle with an airtight top. Use this to sprinkle around your home. You could also ignite dried juniper needles in an incense burner, or purchase some juniper incense and carry that around your home – or simply leave it to smoke in your main living area.
CREATE A CALENNIG
The Calennig is a Welsh New Year’s custom, recorded as far back as the Middle Ages and still practised in some parts of Wales. The word itself is thought to originate from the Latin calends, or ‘first day of the month’. It’s sometimes used to describe the New Year’s celebration where people gather for fireworks or organised festivities.
The Calennig itself was traditionally an apple stuck with three wooden legs in a tripod form with a fourth wooden ‘handle’
“Use seasonal customs to indulge in a little true magic and learn to love life as it is, every day”
stuck in the back of the apple by which it could be easily carried. A small candle or a sprig of evergreen was pushed into the top, and the sides of the fruit were decorated with nuts and ears of dried grain from the previous harvest. In some areas, cloves and dried fruits were used.
It’s easy to make a Calennig by gently pushing a red candle into an apple until it stands firmly. Push three cocktail sticks or skewers into the apple to form a tripod of legs before decorating.
This gentle custom was for children at New Year, out early on the first morning, and sometimes carrying on until after dusk. They would travel from house to house singing traditional rhymes to ‘let in’ the coming year and to wish the occupants health, wealth and happiness.
SMUDGING NIGHTS
Our ancestors practised the four ‘smudging nights’ when people carry lighted smudge sticks or incense around their property to cleanse and protect them from evil. Traditionally, these were the nights before Saint Thomas’s day (21 December), Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Epiphany (6 January). Make a smudge stick by cutting 30cm lengths of fresh herbs: use rosemary, sage, juniper, mint, lavender or whatever you have to hand. Bunch them together and, starting at the top, wrap a generous length of string around the herbs, winding as tightly as possible along their length, and tie off tightly at the opposite end. Hang up to dry somewhere warm and well ventilated and leave for a week or two. Trim both ends and decorate the ‘handle’ end with dried flowers and coloured ribbon. To burn, ignite the leafy end, allow to blaze for a few seconds and then blow out the flames. The stick will smoulder and smoke profusely, ready to cleanse.
MAKE YOUR OWN YULE LOG
The name ‘ Yule’ is derived from the Saxon
hweol, meaning wheel, and refers to the cyclical nature of the seasons, as well as the sun’s circular motion. The term ‘ Yule’, first recorded in the early 900s, was the 12-day celebration of Midwinter for the peoples of northern Europe. The yule log was the largest and best log, ceremonially brought indoors to be burned during the festival. Once lit, it had to last for the whole 12 days. And there had to be a portion left to light the Yule fire the next year.
With many now having no recourse to harvesting a wooden log, let alone burning it, there are a few alternatives you can try. To keep a fire burning throughout the Midwinter period, you could purchase one of the big, long-burning church candles. Making sure it is somewhere it can burn safely; you could light it for a period every day – rather like an Advent candle. Keep the stub to relight the next year and light a new candle from. »
Or you can make a yule log decoration. Look out for a nicely coloured, interestingly shaped log and decorate using dried leaves and flowers, fresh evergreen foliage, acorns, beech masts and gilded nuts (use metallic spray). A candle or candles can be added. It makes a lovely centrepiece for the Christmas table or as a decoration. It’s also a good present with the added benefit that it’s wholly recyclable.
EVERYDAY TREATS
Give yourself and those around you a treat; bring a dull day purposefully alive. Find something to celebrate – an anniversary of something or just something nice that happened to you that you wish to share. There are lots of simple things that you can do that take neither a lot of time nor money. Share a pot of tea or coffee, or a jug of hot chocolate, or steaming mulled wine or hot spicy fruit juice. Make a food snack and set it out nicely on a cloth with a lit candle or little posy of flowers. Have that special hot drink, mulled wine or honey herbal, just for yourself, or with your children, family or friends. Add a lovely squishy cake if you wish, or a plate of favourite biscuits, or hot buttered crumpets or toast dripping honey. Set the scene, if not for yourself, then for someone else.
It’s a nice idea to have 12 little gifts – one gift for every day of Christmas. They only need to be small things – for a child you might give a little colouring book or some modelling clay, or stickers to put in a book. It helps to perpetuate the anticipation, the magic. The idea can be used for an adult, even if it is only 12 tiny pledges…. An early morning cup of tea, or a single chocolate biscuit, perhaps. It is the thought and love that it shows – and a few moments spent opening and chuckling over something inconsequential – that can bring two people much closer; a gift in itself.
Adapted from Merry Midwinter: How to Rediscover the Magic of the Christmas Season by Gillian Monks (Unbound); gillianmonks.com.