It seems like once the holiday season begins, when Thanksgiving is over and the decorations are up, time, which was already flying by, goes supersonic. Here we are at the week of Christmas already. Activity at our house was lively, but since the California Shilligs, and the Utah Kuprovs arrived next door and Josiah arrived home on Friday, it has been nonstop. The baking, gift wrapping, music making, and game playing seems only to halt when we’re all asleep. It is joyous – and it will get even better when the Thayns and the Fosters arrive this Thursday to join us.
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| Making cookies. |
Living in a family full of excellent bakers, I don’t do much baking myself, but on Tuesday I did. I love fruitcake, a love that began way back in my earliest Christmas memories. I can remember those early fruitcakes down to the design of the box that they came in – a hinge-lidded rectangular box, white with a silver and blue pattern printed on it and a red label and inside a beautiful cellophane wrapped fruitcake, moist and spicy and filled with candied fruit and nuts. I never could understand why fruitcakes are so maligned. I just assume the people who mock them never had a good one. It took me most of the morning to make mine, what with soaking the fruit, sifting, mixing, and a long baking time. When it was done and cool, I glazed it, wrapped it, and set it on the shelf on the back porch to age. Fruitcake is always better after it has aged a bit. Mine will be ready for Christmas Eve.
We will pass the solstice on Tuesday and winter will officially begin. In many ways I celebrate the shortest day of the year more than I do the longest. Knowing that on the day after the winter solstice, daylight will start to increase again as we head toward warmer days is a happier thought than at the summer solstice in June when, in the midst of all the growth and glory, I realize we’re headed back toward darkness and cold. I love that we celebrate during these dark days by decking the world in lights.
Here at the winter solstice, with the garden asleep and all the colors reduced to shades of brown, I have flowers in the house. I have several different Schlumbergera species growing in pots. One of them is a Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) with red flowers that just finished blooming. Two pots hold Christmas cacti (Schlumbergera bridgesii), both of them with pink flowers. One of them is in full bloom right now and the other has buds forming. Their bright flowers make me happy. The other flowers in bloom are a pot of paperwhite narcissus (Narcissus tazetta). Several weeks ago Sarah sent me a bag with four bulbs in it. I put them in a pot and set them on the shelf among my other houseplants in the music room. They sprouted leaves right away and now they are blooming. They are beautiful. They are also very fragrant. The smell can be overpowering if you put your nose right in the flowers. They are best smelled from a distance. Even from a distance, Stacey and Hannah don’t like the smell. I love them. They are like having a little pot of springtime in the room.
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| My Christmas cactus. |
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| My paperwhite narcissus. |
It seems like every few days a particular Christmas song or carol out of all the ones playing in our house gets stuck in my head. The past day or two that carol has been the Medieval carol In Dulci Jubilo which set me on an adventure to find out all I could about it. The title is Latin for “In sweet rejoicing” and most know it with the English words “Good Christian Men Rejoice.” In its original setting, the carol is what is called a macaronic text with the lines alternating between Latin and German. [I had to look up what a macaronic text is – it means it uses a mixture of languages and, oddly enough, comes from the Italian word maccarone, “dumpling” – the same word we get the name for the elbow shaped pasta from.] We usually sing it in John Mason Neale's 1853 version, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice,” but I also learned the first verse of it in its original German/Latin version when I was studying German in high school and I’ve also sung it in a quartet that performed an English/Latin version by Robert Pearsall. Johann Sebastian Bach even composed a chorale prelude based on the tune (BWV 729).
I especially love it because of the story of how it came to be. Legend says that it was written by the German mystic Dominican friar Heinrich Suso (1299-1366). According to folklore, one night Suso dreamed that angels came and danced for him and they sang the carol as they danced. He joined them in their dance and when he woke up, he wrote down the carol. I love the image of the humble friar dancing with angels to this lovely carol. In 1831 Heinrich Suso was beatified (made almost a saint) by Pope Gregory XVI.
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| Heinrich Suso from a Medieval manuscript. |
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| Suso dancing with angles from one of my carol books. |
by Heinrich Suso, c.1328
Nun singet und seid froh! now sing and be joyous!
Unsers Herzens Wonne Our heart’s bliss
Leit in praesepio; rests in a manger
Und leuchtet wie die Sonne and shines like the sun
Matris in gremio. in his mother’s lap.
Alpha es et O! You are the alpha and omega.
nach dir ist mir so weh. my heart aches for Thee.
Tröst mir mein Gemüte, Console me in my heart and soul,
o puer optime; o best of boys;
durch alle deine Güte, through all your good,
o princeps gloriae, o prince of glory,
trahe me post te. draw me to you.
Nirgend mehr denn da, Nowhere more than there
da die Engel singen where angels sing
nova cantica new songs
und die Schellen klingen and the bells ring
in regis curia. in the courts of the King.
Eia, wärn wir da! Oh, were we only there!
o mater lenitas oh gentleness of the Mother
wir waren gar verdorben We were stained
per nostra crimina: by our crimes:
So hast du uns erworben thus Thou hast for us acquired
coelorum gaudia. the joys of heaven.
Maria, hilf uns da! Maria, help us there!
Here is a link to a gorgeous performance by the Choir at King’s College.
One morning last week I realized we were out of milk, so I drove over to the dairy just as the sun was rising. It wasn’t one of those vibrant fiery sunrises we sometimes get in the winter. The colors were subtle, pearly pinks and grays, but I marveled at the sky as I drove to the dairy and back. I love being out at sunrise.
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| From my morning milk run: leaving the house at dawn. |
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| At the dairy. |
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| When I got home. |
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| Fading color. |
For most of the week our weather was strange – warm and rainy, not wintry at all. Thursday our temperature hit 62°! That doesn’t happen very often in December. Things changed on Saturday when the temperature dropped and the rain turned to sleet and ice and then back to cold rain again. During the night it got cold enough to turn the rain into snow, but there isn’t much, just a thin crust and I don’t think it will last til Christmas. From what the forecast says, it looks like our Christmas will not be white unless some unforeseen storm arises.
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| A bit of snow this morning. |
Today was the Christmas program at church. I was asked to put something together last week and I used a program I wrote in 2018 with some revisions. It was mostly scripture read by two narrators and lots of carols. One of the carols, Once in Royal David’s City, was performed by an a cappella quartet of Miriam, Hannah, Josiah, and me. The rest were sung by the whole congregation. Our congregation usually numbers around 30 most Sundays and, this being Christmas Sunday, you’d think there would be more as the seldom-attenders often come out on that day, but not this year. We only had 23 people there. So the Christmas program is over and done and we are moving on into the week towards the big day. Excitement will build as we draw nearer and more family arrives. I love this time of year. I love the traditions – the lights and decorations, the special foods we eat, the music, and being with family. But most of all, I love remembering that precious baby whose birth we celebrate. This is part of the Christmas program I wrote:
And so the Son of God was born in the lowliest of circumstances – in a stable, laid in a manger, adored by humble shepherds. From that humble beginning, Luke tells us simply: “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” That humble baby would grow to be a man and at age thirty would begin a ministry of three years, walking among the people, teaching them His Gospel, instructing them in the ways of salvation. Then He would be arrested and tried, mocked, beaten, and crucified. He would take upon him the sins of all mankind and offer Himself as an atoning sacrifice to allow the repentant to be saved. He would conquer death, allowing all mankind to rise from the grave to live forever.
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| After church today. |
Merry Christmas from our house to yours!
