Radical Honey: Of Starlight, Distraction, & Miserable Self-Denial: the Seventh Day of Christmas

Friday, 3 January 2020

Of Starlight, Distraction, & Miserable Self-Denial: the Seventh Day of Christmas

Fir-tree & twinkle lights, Wiki Commons

There is a Midwinter fairytale by poet & author, Hans Christian Andersen, which seems to me to be perfect for this time of year; a time when the clamour and clang of the demands of our Western culture are almost wholly inconsistent with the quieter, deeper, and older, pull of the earth beneath our feet, a pull which is perfumed with the intoxicating scent of evergreen trees; the pine, the spruce, the fir.

The Fir-tree by Hans Christian Andersen, 1844 (abridged)

Down in the forest, where the warm sun and the fresh air made a sweet resting-place, grew a pretty little fir-tree; and yet it was not happy, it wished so much to be tall like its companions— the pines and firs which grew around it.

The sun shone, and the soft air fluttered its leaves, and the little peasant children passed by, prattling merrily, but the fir-tree took no notice. Sometimes the children would bring a large basket of raspberries or strawberries, wreathed on a straw, and seat themselves near the fir-tree, and say, “Is it not a pretty little tree?” which made it feel more unhappy than before. And yet all this while the tree grew a notch or joint taller every year. Still, as it grew, it complained, “Oh! how I wish I were as tall as the other trees."

The tree was so discontented, that it took no pleasure in the warm sunshine, the birds, or the rosy clouds that floated over it morning and evening. Sometimes, in winter, when the snow lay white and glittering on the ground, a hare would come springing along, and jump right over the little tree; and then how mortified it would feel! Two winters passed, and when the third arrived, the tree had grown so tall that the hare was obliged to run round it. Yet it remained unsatisfied, and would exclaim, “Oh, if I could but keep on growing tall and old! There is nothing else worth caring for in the world!”

In the autumn, as usual, the wood-cutters came and cut down several of the tallest trees, and the young fir-tree, which was now grown to its full height, shuddered as the noble trees fell to the earth with a crash. After the branches were lopped off, the trunks looked so slender and bare, that they could scarcely be recognized. Then they were placed upon wagons, and drawn by horses out of the forest.

In the spring, the stork told the young fir-tree that he had met several new ships when he flew from Egypt, and they had fine masts that smelt like fir and was sure that they must have been the forest trees. He said that they had looked, "very stately." The fir-tree didn't know what the sea was but he very much wished that he was tall enough to go too.

Christmas-time drew near, and many young trees were cut down, some even smaller and younger than the fir-tree who enjoyed neither rest nor peace with longing to leave its forest home. These young trees, which were chosen for their beauty, kept their branches, and were also laid on wagons and drawn by horses out of the forest.

“Where are they going?” asked the fir-tree.

“We know, we know,” sang the sparrows; “we have looked in at the windows of the houses in the town, and we know what is done with them. They are dressed up in the most splendid manner. We have seen them standing in the middle of a warm room, and adorned with all sorts of beautiful things,—honey cakes, gilded apples, playthings, and many hundreds of wax tapers.”

“I wonder whether anything so brilliant will ever happen to me,” thought the fir-tree. And he scarcely noticed the bright life inside him nor that he grew taller every day. And, in winter and summer, his dark-green foliage might be seen in the forest, while passers by would say, “What a beautiful tree!”

A short time before Christmas, the discontented fir-tree was the first to fall. As the axe cut through the stem, and divided the pith, the tree fell with a groan to the earth, conscious of pain and faintness, and forgetting all its anticipations of happiness, in sorrow at leaving its home in the forest. It knew that it should never again see its dear old companions, the trees, nor the little bushes and many-colored flowers that had grown by its side; perhaps not even the birds. Neither was the journey at all pleasant.

The tree only recovered itself while being unpacked in the courtyard of a house. Then came two servants in grand livery, and carried the fir-tree into a large and beautiful apartment.Then the fir-tree was placed in a large tub, full of sand; but green baize hung all around it, so that no one could see it was a tub, and it stood on a very handsome carpet. How the fir-tree trembled! “What was going to happen to him now?”

Some young ladies came, and the servants helped them to adorn the tree. On one branch they hung little bags cut out of colored paper, and each bag was filled with sweetmeats; from other branches hung gilded apples and walnuts, as if they had grown there; and above, and all round, were hundreds of red, blue, and white tapers, which were fastened on the branches. Dolls, exactly like real babies, were placed under the green leaves,—the tree had never seen such things before,—and at the very top was fastened a glittering star, made of tinsel. Oh, it was very beautiful! “This evening,” they all exclaimed, “how bright it will be!”

“Oh, that the evening were come,” thought the tree, “and the tapers lighted! then I shall know what else is going to happen. Will the trees of the forest come to see me? I wonder if the sparrows will peep in at the windows as they fly? Shall I grow faster here, and keep on all these ornaments summer and winter?” But guessing was of very little use; it made his bark ache.

At last the tapers were lighted, and then what a glistening blaze of light the tree presented! And now the folding doors were thrown open, and a troop of children rushed in as if they intended to upset the tree; they were followed more silently by their elders. For a moment the little ones stood silent with astonishment, and then they shouted for joy, till the room rang, and they danced merrily round the tree, while one present after another was taken from it.

And then the children received permission to plunder the tree & they rushed upon it till the branches cracked and, had it not been fastened with the glistening star to the ceiling, it might have been thrown down. The children then danced about with their pretty toys, and no one noticed the tree, except the children’s maid who came and peeped among the branches to see if an apple or a fig had been forgotten.

When they were exhausted, the children cried, "a story, a story!" and settled down beneath the trees branches to listen to tales of magic and adventure.

The fir-tree looked forward joyfully to the next evening, expecting to be again decked out with lights and playthings, gold and fruit. And the tree remained quiet and thoughtful all night.

In the morning the servants and the housemaid came in. “Now,” thought the fir, “all my splendor is going to begin again.” But they dragged him out of the room and up stairs to the garret, and threw him on the floor, in a dark corner, where no daylight shone, and there they left him, and days and nights passed and no one came near him, and when at last somebody did come, it was only to put away large boxes in a corner. So the tree was completely hidden from sight as if it had never existed.

“It is winter now,” thought the tree, “the ground is hard and covered with snow, so that people cannot plant me. I shall be sheltered here, I dare say, until spring comes. How thoughtful and kind everybody is to me! Still I wish this place were not so dark, as well as lonely, with not even a little hare to look at. How pleasant it was out in the forest while the snow lay on the ground, when the hare would run by, yes, and jump over me too, although I did not like it then. Oh! it is terrible lonely here.”

After many lonely nights some little mice came and settled amongst the fir-tree's branches. He told them tales of the wood where the sun shines and the birds sing. And then the tree told the little mice all about its youth. They had never heard such an account in their lives; and after they had listened to it attentively, they said, “What a number of things you have seen? you must have been very happy.”

“Happy!” exclaimed the fir-tree, and then as he reflected upon what he had been telling them, he said, “Ah, yes! after all those were happy days.” But when he went on and related all about Christmas-eve, and how he had been dressed up with cakes and lights, the mice said, “How happy you must have been, you old fir tree.” “I am not old at all,” replied the tree, “I only came from the forest this winter, I am now checked in my growth.”

“What splendid stories you can relate,” said the little mice. And the next night four other mice came with them to hear what the tree had to tell. The more he talked the more he remembered, and then he thought to himself, “Those were happy days, but they may come again."

One morning people came to clear out the garret, the boxes were packed away, and the tree was pulled out of the corner, and thrown roughly on the garret floor; then the servant dragged it out upon the staircase where the daylight shone. “Now life is beginning again,” said the tree, rejoicing in the sunshine and fresh air.

Then it was carried down stairs and taken into the courtyard so quickly, that it forgot to think of itself, and could only look about, there was so much to be seen. The court was close to a garden, where everything looked blooming. Fresh and fragrant roses hung over the little palings. The linden-trees were in blossom; while the swallows flew here and there.

“Now I shall live,” cried the tree, joyfully spreading out its branches; but alas! they were all withered and yellow, and it lay in a corner amongst weeds.

The star of gold paper still stuck in the top of the tree and glittered in the sunshine. In the same courtyard two of the merry children were playing who had danced round the tree at Christmas, and had been so happy. The youngest saw the gilded star, and ran and pulled it off the tree. “Look what is sticking to the ugly old fir-tree,” said the child, treading on the branches till they crackled under his boots. And the tree saw all the fresh bright flowers in the garden & thought of its fresh youth in the forest, of the merry Christmas evening, and of the little mice who had listened to his stories.

“Past! past!” said the old tree; “Oh, had I but enjoyed myself while I could have done so! but now it is too late.”

Then a lad came and chopped the tree into small pieces, till a large bundle lay in a heap on the ground. The pieces were placed in a fire under the copper, and they quickly blazed up brightly, while the tree sighed so deeply that each sigh was like a pistol-shot till at last it was consumed.

Now all was past; the tree's life was past, and the story also, - for all stories must come to an end at last.

This story of the little fir-tree who endlessly compared himself to others, failed to notice what he had until it was gone, and constantly wished for more with blind and foolish optimism ~ to the point that he lost his roots entirely, seems to me to be the perfect tale for New Year.

I love New Year as an opportunity to emerge from, the often over-abundance of, Christmas, into a simpler starlit landscape, both literally and psychologically, but I also remind myself that it's just a little bit made up.

I have never enjoyed New Year spent with others. I prefer to spend New Year's Eve in reflection and New Year's Day in long walks and hot baths. We are still in the deepest winter dark, with only the slightest hint of the lighter days to come and are quite justified in feeling that our own rebirth into activity and hustle and bustle is some way off yet. Yet we are encouraged to go on diets, think of our 'summer beach bodies', and the shops are full of Easter eggs! Again, we are distracted from what-is into some never-quite-arriving future, and again, this colonisation of time which I have written about before. We all want 'something more'. We are encouraged to.

It's true that it can feel hopeful to make New Year's resolutions, to project our minds into our future selves that we can be if we can only stop being who we are now. But, so often, we are setting ourselves up to fail, and at a time when we feel most tender too.

I think about this more & more; about how we deny ourselves what our bodies need & crave in the winter because of the arbitrary calendar date of 'New Year'/January 1st that really means nothing to our bodies at all.

In the winter dark we are like seeds. We feel the Solstice, the pull of the growing light, but the calendar is just a mark on a page. That's one of the reasons why I like to keep the 'old' days of our religious festivals before the Gregorian calendar was (slowly) adopted from 1582 and we 'lost' 11(ish) days. This means that 'Old Christmas Day' is on January 6th and Old Twelfth Night on the 17th, a traditional date for wassailing the apple orchards.

I love these old festivals but noting them also reminds me of the arbitrary nature of our calendar ~ the first imposed by a Roman Emperor, the second by a Pope! My mind likes to play with these dates. My body knows nothing of them at all.

And yet it's most often our bodies, still curled into their animal selves and sleepy from winter rest, that are brutalised by being too quickly shaken awake. It's no wonder then that we struggle to make, often huge, changes on January 1st, and then punish ourselves for not being 'good'. Easy too for us to become prey to the dieting industry, who no doubt revel in our inability to persuade ourselves to do what nothing in nature would ever think to do at this time of year.

Instead, we might adopt Spring/Lent as a time for 'stripping ourselves back', cleansing the, by then stagnant, energy of winter, and for waking the blood through hot-leaved and peppery new growth green tonics freely offered to us by the earth.

How much more joyous & health-giving self-denial might be if we could see around us vibrant signs of all that we are invited to embrace to fill the space made; nettle tops and cleavers, garlic mustard and cuckoo-flower, dandelion and ramsons. For now, they are still sleeping, or at least too small to disturb. We might offer ourselves the same courtesy.

I muchly value these wise words on 'miserable self-denial' from One Mile Bakery in Hale, Cheshire, who advocate returning to the old ways of eating using fresh ingredients, wild yeasts, and I would add locally sourced ingredients, as much as we can. Gentle movement and eating food that our body recognises as home is enough whilst we wait for the light to return. And it feels so much better than denying ourselves. The earth tells us so. If not for ourselves, for the little fir-tree who lost his roots.

Let's give ourselves a break; good bread for now, loving ourselves through the winter dark.