The Daily: 5 January 2024

Take down all your Christmas ornaments by Twelfth Night to avoid bad luck for the rest of the year.
     — The Magpie and the Wardrobe
          by Sam McKechnie & Alexandrine Portelli

I don’t actually do this. I used to fret because I did not, or was not able to… because there are all these admonitions, you see. Repercussions ranging from faery mayhem and spoiled butter to frowny faces from Grandma.

But I figured out something recently. These rules about putting away the past season instantly — and it more or less has to be done instantly if you are to celebrate the whole season and pack it all up within a few hours of the last toast — these rules are made by people who don’t actually do the work. And they are made mostly to make those who are obliged do the work feel bad when they can’t get the work done for themselves… mostly because they are doing work for the people who make the rules.

These rules are of the same cut as the rules against doing work in certain times. On Monday, Plough Monday, the holiday ends and “normal work” resumes. To be fair, this has some validity in a farming community in a temperate climate. There isn’t much to do around the winter solstice; it is a natural down time, a resting time, and therefore a holiday. But then, this far out from the solstice, it begins to be a good time to maybe start to get back into the rhythms of daily tasks. A little. It’s time to celebrate the plough, not actually to use the plough (though I think it really should be the seed… I mean, who does all the work…) It’s time to start thinking about getting the tools sharpened and oiled. Time to think about what will be planted and where and when. Time to think about the work to come, and maybe do some of the indoor tasks… also… time to start keeping a close watch on pregnant ruminants. But still… the real work may be far off yet. This is the time to anticipate your needs for that work after you have gone for many days in time outside of work time. Holy time… the time when no work should be done.

And it’s that should that is a red flag to me. I think these rules about stopping work have, like many things in puritanical hands, become tools for punishment. I am very much in favor of the idea of taking a day to rest each week and a good long break in the days around the solstices when not much needs to be done for the body. These are good rules. These should be rules for all bodies, not just ruling bodies. But in the hands of elites, the idea of the holy rest day has become a bad rule, not very much about rest and much more about exhibiting worth.

There are some tasks that can’t be put aside, not even for a day. If you don’t feed the kids, they will sicken. Maybe die. If you don’t clean up the messes, at best, there is going to be twice as much mess to clean up the next day. At worst, this is another effective way to make sick bodies. If you don’t put fuel on the fire, the fire will go out. Again… really efficient way to harm the body. Now, note that most of these body care tasks, jobs that can’t be put off even for a day, are done by women… or other slaves…

This is not unrelated…

Admonishment against work is an elite thing, just as all scheduling is. Only those who don’t have necessary work to do can take days off all work. These traditions and rules about when or when not to work, derive from law books that applied only to men, and mostly just elite men, those who did not take care of the household, the children, or the livestock.

A day of rest to honor gods, holy days, ritual observances — all this was for the beings that were supposed to have souls that needed the nourishment of holy ritual. Women and children and men of outsider status had no souls. They were categorized as animals, base matter. They were not allowed to sully the holy places with their unclean bodies and were largely kept out of holy time.

This had two effects on those deemed lesser than elites. First, transgressions committed against these unclean bodies didn’t count. A souled body could do anything to the unsouled and remain free of any punishment or castigation. In many cases, harming the unsouled was deemed obligatory. The second effect of this hierarchy was that any law-breaking done by these unclean bodies — including doing work on the holy days — was taken as proof that they were unclean. They were punished mercilessly — because unsouled bodies don’t need or deserve mercy. But just the very fact that they continued to do necessary work on sanctified days was all the explanation necessary to justify their low status and the harm that came from that low status.

If you worked when you were not supposed to, this was why you did not have the favor of the gods. This was why you were hungry, poor, and abused. If you regularly broke the laws of men — even if done to tend to the needs of men — this explained why you were inferior to men. Always. I suspect a good many of these rules were created explicitly to justify male ownership of female productive work.

The day of rest was only a day away from the important tasks of men — those that had little to do with physically caring for bodies and everything to do with increasing the status of the rule-making bodies. If you kept working on that day of rest, you were low status. Even when you were forced to keep working on that day of rest by the high status people. (Doesn’t this circularity make your head hurt…)

Next Tuesday is Distaff Day, the day when women’s work is resumed after the holiday. I am not entirely sure that this tradition was not created by women. Making textiles is surely one thing that women can set aside for a few weeks without any biophysical repercussions… other than less time to get the clothes made. Still… this was one job that women could give up for the holidays. Maybe they decided to give themselves that little respite. “No spinning at Christmas” or Perchta would rain down calumny upon the household.

But it does seem a paltry break from normal… one that doesn’t involve any real rest… especially when all the extra work done for the holidays is taken into account. It is not no work. It is no fluffy, superfluous, not-terribly-well-understood-by-men, women’s work. Women still have to do all the cooking, cleaning, feeding and tending and mending, all through the holy days. And that women still do all this right through the holy days is evidence that women are inferior and reason for that inferiority.

Of course, if they stop doing all this, they’re beaten for negligence also.

And so it is with low status men… Unless you are an elite, if you stop working on rest days, you are punished. And if you keep working on rest days, you are punished, and this shows that you deserve your inferior status and punishment. You have earned it. Or some sky god has given it to you… instead of rest…

In any case, I have no truck with sky gods. I think they are silly and stupid and so very obsessed with themselves. I tend to the body. I believe that work is done only for that tending. And it follows its own necessary schedule.

I don’t have time to put all the Christmas decorations away immediately on January 6th. Nor do I really want to… I like having the lights up in the January darkness; and many Midwinter themes are valid, applicable to the time, until about Candlemas. But mostly, I am the body that does that work… and I don’t deem it necessary.

Bully for me.

Tonight is Twelfth Night, the last night of Christmas and the long night before Epiphany, the festival of the Wise Men. This is the night when all the drummers show up along with a veritable cacophony of birds; a party of lords, ladies and colorful others; and quite a few cows. I’m not sure I would be favorably impressed if an admirer sent me the list of things from that carol. There might be restraining orders by New Year’s Day. Victorians did have odd predilections. Still… thirty lords a’leaping would be awkward no matter your tastes. Never mind all those swans and whatever they were swimming in.

Now twelve pear trees, with or without partridges, that might draw my favor.

I’m thinking about pear trees and other orchard-y things today because I have to go out there and do some serious pruning in my jungle and growing orchard. This will start in the next couple weeks. Maybe even next week if it continues to be warm (and why wouldn’t it…).

But I’m also thinking about the orchard because this is the traditional day to go out and wassail your prize trees. We tend to think that the wassail bowl was made for humans — because isn’t everything about us? But the fact that it is a bowl, not a cup or mug, and usually one of gigantic proportions, should be a clue that maybe we’re not meant to be drinking from it. We can wish each other “good health” (wassail means “wæs hail“, “be in good health” or “be fortunate”) and raise a glass of cider (hard or not), but we’re not likely to want to share a communal vat.

The bowl is more of a libation vessel. People dipped their mugs into the bowl, but a good deal of it was poured out on the roots of the oldest or most productive fruit tree in the lord’s orchard. (And it almost always was a lord’s orchard. There weren’t many productive communal fruit plantations.) Usually there was a caroling parade to the manor house with many stops along the way. It was not uncommon to have to refill the bowl many times on the way to its final destination, so each house had their own wassail warming on the hearth. What might have started out as a bowl of lamb’s wool might transform into mulled wine before the end of the night, with many admixtures of family favorite recipes along the way. I imagine the parade was rather high spirited by the time they rang the manor bell.

Perhaps because of this commotion the lords tired of the tradition because the custom seems to have died out in the 18th century — or it could be that Enclosure meant that folks just weren’t inclined to toast an orchard that they neither owned nor worked. In any case, by the early 19th century, where there was still wassailing, it had turned into a farmhand drinking party with a great deal of noise and manly stomping about. The “libation” was guns fired into the branches more often than not.

I’ve never poured wassail on my fruit trees. I’ve a feeling that would draw ants even in the dead of winter. But I do take a glass of warmed cider or mulled wine out to my trees and drink a toast on Twelfth Night. I don’t know if the tree cares much, but it’s a lovely way to say a quiet thank you for the harvest and to wish for good fortune in the coming year. Plus, there is always something interesting happening in the night skies in early January. Stars, snow, moon, meteorites. Sometimes I forget why I went out there.

The Victorians discovered wassailing and deemed it compellingly quaint. However, they don’t seem to have had very clear ideas on what it was. Like they did to many traditions from former times, they refashioned the entire thing into a children’s party. The wassail became submerged into a night of games and presents and perhaps literal tons of sugar. There may have been small amounts of alcohol in that bowl, but it wasn’t the grog of yesteryear. There was also no longer a parade to the orchard. The parties were contained in the parlor. There may have been mummers to entertain the crowd, but there was no caroling door to door through the whole town. By these times, “town” was no longer a safe place where everyone knew everyone. For that matter, town was no longer a place with orchards.

So Twelfth Night has come down to us with all sorts of blended and confused traditions. The good thing about that is you can pick your favorite bits out of the stew pot and just leave what you don’t like. In past years, I’ve put out knitted socks for la Befana and spent a quiet evening reading to my kids. I’ve gone to theatre and musical performances. I’ve hosted and attended various Twelfth Night parties, from all-adult (nominally) to all-munchkins. But even when that hoopla is going on I try to slip out into the night.

These days I lean toward chamomile tea, but the intent is still a warm salud to tree and stars and a good harvest. Tonight, I might take a pass on going all the way to the pear trees. COVID, you see. So I’ll wish my young orchard trees a jolly wassail from the porch. And when the virus relinquishes its hold, I’ll head out with the pruners.

Lamb’s Wool for Wassailing

Here is my old recipe for Lamb’s Wool. I haven’t made it in years, though I discovered an un-warmed version in a New Hampshire pub. They called it a Snake Bite and dispensed with the “wooly” bits, but it was still a bit too delicious for my own good. In any case, here’s the recipe I remember.

Ingredients

1 quart true ale (hoppy beer)
1 pint hard cider
4 large apples
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp orange flower water (or 1/4 cup fresh orange juice)
a tea strainer or coffee-filter sachet filled with:
     2 tsp cinnamon
     1 tsp allspice
     1/2 tsp ginger
     1/4 tsp cloves

Instructions

Wash and core the apples, but don’t peel them.

Bake the apples in a 325°F oven for about 45 minutes until the fruit is very soft.

Let cool a bit then press the apples through a strainer or food mill, separating skin from pulp. Discard the skins.

Warm the ale and cider with the spices, orange and vanilla. Don’t boil the liquid as this burns off the alcohol and makes the mixture too bitter.

Fluff up the apple pulp to make it frothy (“wooly”) and add to the warmed liquid.

Serve immediately.

You may want to add sugar. I prefer mine a bit bitter.

You might also add a few apples of some small, tart variety — crabapples or cider apples are good. Remove the cores but leave the skin on. Float the fruit in the frothy pulp. This is mostly for visual effect, but the tart fruit will add to the flavor. I’ve also seen cored apple slices and sliced oranges still in their peels floated in the warm liquid. I tend to think that this is more work than necessary, but if you go in for presentation it makes a delectable wassail bowl.

©Elizabeth Anker 2024