(This was written for Holidailies.)
Annie Lennox – God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
interview with Lennox
My husband can’t help but cry every time we play this tune. He’s moved by the inclusion of Father Christmas and other “pagan” symbols in the video alongside the traditionally Christian lyrics.
Loreena McKennitt – The Holly & the Ivy
You’ve probably heard this song before, but never quite like this. Loreena put the familiar lyrics to a different, unfamiliar medieval Celtic tune, creating a haunting song that, again, incorporates elements of Christianity and paganism. You can read more about the song itself here, including the masculine symbolism of the holly and the feminine nature of the ivy, and how the lyrics compare the holly to the role of Jesus Christ, while the ivy no doubt refers to the church, often referred to in the feminine pronoun.
Burning Logs in Fireplace (nearly 2 hours!)
The Yule log is a particularly dense natural piece of wood that is used especially for such a night as this, a tradition most popular in Eastern Europe but a fixture in fireplaces all over the northern hemisphere. Its most practical applications are of course light and warmth on the longest night and shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice. In a world where only candles, bonfires, and kitchen pit fires kept the darkness of the night at bay, it was reasonable to ensure a fire’s longevity by providing it a log that would take hours upon hours to burn away to ash. Historians aren’t quite sure where the tradition part of it took off, but established its usage to Britain in the late 1700s.
The Yule-log-as-video idea came along in 1966 when the then-president of New York City television station WPIX gave his company a gift by airing a multi-hour video of a modest fire in a fireplace without commercial interruption on December 25. He gave his employees the chance to spend the day at home with their families, and also provided a cheesy substitute for those individuals in the area who lived in apartments and other dwellings without fireplaces, but who owned a television somewhere in their residence. It’s been an on-again-off-again phenomenon through the years, and now through the magic of the internet you can have your Christmas Day parades and your Yule log too.
I’m having a hard time finding a song that features mistletoe, but an entry like this wouldn’t be complete without that particular element! This modest plant blooms in winter, at odds with most of its vegetative brethren. In the 1800s, it became a common custom for a man and woman, standing beneath a bough of the shiny, waxy green leaves and red berries, to smooch under the common holiday decoration. There wasn’t much to the custom, it was just a Thing.
The poinsettia is also a winter-blooming plant. Already a popular decoration in Latin America during celebrations near the Winter Solstice, Franciscan friars in Mexico included the plants in their Christmas celebrations. They likened the star-shaped pattern of leaves to the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color to the blood sacrifice of the Christian savior.
Even the Christmas tree has roots (haha) that precede Christianity. In the area now known as Germany, ancient tribes told stories and repeated legends of the Donar Oak, which stood for traditional values such as truth, longevity, and loyalty. In the middle ages, those who resided in the region erected evergreen trees in public spaces, decorating them with delicacies, candies, and sweets for children. The crazy westernized Christians began putting candles in there, and privatized the whole affair to the households of individual families. And likely burnt down a lot of said homes.
I have to work, and cannot spend much more time describing familiar elements of the season that are not particularly Christian, or started out as symbols for preexisting religions, legends, and customs. Here are links to more information that you’re welcome to read at your leisure:
And here’s a left-over song that isn’t Christmas-related, but rather tells the story of the Duke of Bohemia (a Czech territory) somewhere in the early 900s, the high middle ages, as he set out stomping about in the snow. The Wiki article is here:
The Irish Rovers – Good King Wenceslas