Have you noticed that, though post-agricultural cultures are mostly patriarchic and often grossly misogynistic, much if not most of ritual, imagery, and myth is centered on women? This is because the major pagan celebrations, those that form the bones of our ritual calendar, largely honor female deities, or, if they are male, then they’re only vaguely human, usually with large doses of goat.
The king of the gods may be a male sky-god, but most of the narrative and energy is devoted to female gods, mostly of the hearth and home. Vesta, the principle deity of the highly patriarchal Roman Empire, is a prime example. Her Greek counterpart, Hestia, is known as the “first of the gods” in a culture that only nominally recognized women as sentient and rational beings. Hindu myth has many swashbuckling heroes and powerful, if shadowy, creators; but the deities that receive daily adulation are female. They are also usually the saviors in any given myth. And then there’s Amaterasu… the sun deity who is so central to otherwise male-dominated Japanese culture that she is centered on their national flag.
Tonight we celebrate the birth of the Christian god in human form. This story was included in the selected writings from that time period — and the resulting ritual calendar — fairly late in the evolution of the religion and the Book. There is scant reference to the mother of god anywhere else in the Bible except this lovely story of the hidden Chosen One born to commoners in a lowly stable. How is it that this atypical story became second only to the crucifixion in importance and arguably more significant in the broader context of world culture?
Because this is the story of the goddess.
She will come through every myth, even those that deny her existence. Mary is the Queen of Heaven, the Star of the Sea, the Rose of Galilee, the Mother of God. She is eternal and magisterial, but also gentle and loving, watching over and tenderly caring for even the least of her children of Earth. Her original name is from a Hebrew word meaning “beloved”, but the name given to her in translation has the overlain sense of “marine” or “drop of the sea”, a name that has far too many parallels with the Mediterranean sea-born goddess of love to be mere happenstance. Mary is a very old story of deep love.
The pagans would not accept a faith that expunged their Mothers, a triple deity honored during the darkness of the winter solstice for millennia. This is Mothers’ Night, Modranacht, the night when North Europeans remembered their Mothers, the ancestors and spirits that created and preserved their very being. The Roman Catholic Church resisted Christmas for centuries but finally included the myth of the holy birth in order to win the hearts of those given to the goddess. Not only the Germanic and Celtic peoples, but myths throughout the Mediterranean are echoed in the birth of a savior deity from a virgin, complete-in-herself, mother. This is an old and powerful story, one that will not be abandoned to the sky gods.
And so we have Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child. We have shepherds and angels, donkeys and sheep. We have Magi, who were not kings, but Persian wizard-priests. We have a midnight birth and a harrowing escape. And we have a fierce mother who gives her child life and protects that tiny flame against all the howling winds of humanity.
In Looking for the Hidden Folk, Nancy Marie Brown tells the story of an Icelandic matriarch who did not wake her household to do the evening work of midwinter because she was away dreaming. In her dream, the woman came to the elf-land, into a large hall filled with people. The woman was brought to a lady’s bedchamber and saw an elven woman struggling in childbirth. The woman understood that she was to be midwife to the elven lady and her baby. The human farmwife delivered the elven child and soothed the mother, setting all right with the world. And then she woke.
Brown notes that there are variants of this story in cultures all around the world. But in Icelandic it takes on special significance. The Icelandic word for “midwife”, ljós-mo∂ir, is literally translated as “mother of light”. The midwife brings light into the world.
Brigid, the Irish goddess turned saint, is a mother of light. She is the midwife to god. In a very similar story, Brigid falls asleep and is transported to a stable in Bethlehem where she finds Mary in labor. Being a practical Celt, Brigid sets about preparing for the birth. She makes a cradle from a feed trough and tears strips from her own gown to make swaddling for the newborn. She tends to Mary and keeps the stable warm. In some versions of the story, she even prepares food (after a bit of very Brigid-like thievery).
At midnight all the animals in the barn turned and bowed to the emerging child of light. Brigid caught the baby as he came from his mother. She deftly wrapped up the child, kissed his brow, and placed the baby in Mary’s arms. Then she awoke in the cold North.
This is a time that is thick with the mothers of light. The old women, the midwives, the grandmothers. The light is struggling and the wise women must help smooth the delivery.
The thing to think on at Midwinter is that there will always be a child of light. And there will always be Grandmother to wisely and lovingly ease that light into the world.
This is Modranicht, Mother’s Night. Bede tells us that the heathens honored their triple goddess on this night of the sun’s renewal. By Bede’s day, the late Romans had turned their solstice new year celebration into the birth of their new god. The actual day of the solstice had already shifted substantially earlier than 25 December, but since the focus had also shifted away from the unconquered sun it didn’t matter so much which long night was considered holy. Apparently, either Bede was confused in his dating or the Northern peoples also left their solstice rituals at the antique Roman date because Bede very clearly states that the heathen new year began on 8 calends of January, 25 December; and the night before the new year was dedicated to the triple goddess, the Mothers.
Many choose to imagine these pagan deities as young women. But I’m not sure that my ancestors even considered their gods to be human. They staunchly resisted all Roman attempts to make images of the gods in human likeness. But the Mothers were certainly not young. Even in the southerly stories of this archetype, the spinners of fate and weavers of fortune, they are powerful old women. I might even call them the Grandmothers. In my mind, they are the wise elders who guide us through the perilous liminal night between years and bring about the annual renewal of time. They preside over the rebirth of the sun and of all that comes from the sun’s strengthening. They midwife the light.
This night of the Mothers was always the sacred time. The day itself was denouement. The child was born in the night, the sun rose, the new year’s threshold was crossed, and time reverted to the quotidian, albeit without normal obligations. It was a day of release and jubilation. People gathered together for gift-giving and feasting to celebrate the relief of once again coming through time. But all the ritual observance, the prayers and vigils, songs and libations, all took place in the darkness as the Mothers brought the child into the world.
Though it is no longer the new year nor the solstice, Christmas Eve is still the holy night, a night of quiet solemnity and mystery. So many centuries of tradition are heaped on this night that it is suffused with significance, though we are vague on exactly what that might be. Some look to magical gifting from a fat old man. Some seek out romance. A few even tell stories of ghosts creating change in the cold hearts of men, bringing benevolence and generosity and goodness into the world. I remember the Mothers, the Grandmothers, the wise elders who tenderly guide us through pain and darkness. For me this is Midwinter, the night that gives way to the growing light. The worst of winter weather may still be ahead, but nevertheless, this is the midpoint. Nights will no longer grow longer, and sometime soon, the sun will rise early enough to go about morning work without candles.
For now, the Midwinter revels are at their peak. The next Twelve Days are given over to celebration. We’ve once again made it through the night.
If you are like me, I am sure you want nothing more to do with holiday music by now. Or perhaps you want nothing to do with what this culture considers holiday music. All these greedy, grasping stories of getting mountains of stuff under the tree. And even more songs about finding romance, or perhaps, more accurately, finding validation of your worth through romantic encounters. Nothing at all about light. Nothing about wonder and beauty. Certainly, nothing about mothers and midwives. These tunes are all as shallow and vacuous as the latest trends found on shop racks in tired malls.
But there is such beautiful music for Midwinter. Even contemporary music. Here are a few songs that are worthy of the time.
Josquin des Prez, O Virgo virginum (recorded by the Orlando Consort)
Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma team up for the traditional Wexford Carol
Luciano Pavarotti singing O Holy Night with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and then Ave Maria with The Three Tenors and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter sung by Tenebrae and then again by Voces8
And quite possibly the most beautiful song for winter ever created, For Now I Am Winter, written by Ólafur Arnalds and Arnór Dan, here arranged and performed by Voces8, and then reworked and performed by Nils Frahm
©Elizabeth Anker 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 
Thanks for the list of music suggestions—though I no longer attend church, I love the traditional (I guess you’d call it) Xmas music, usually from long ago. Like those from the Oxford Book of Carols. I used to sing in an ensemble that performed these during the holiday season and I miss those opportunities so much. Certain tunes bring me to tears (like the Wexford Carol); I don’t know why. Thanks so much for your post; beautifully written.
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