My favourite way of emerging from the cosy nest of Christmas festivities is to take part in the Walk of the Kings, which raises money for the Rainbow Centre here in Folkestone. Not only does the event entail walking by the sea in January, which certainly wakes the mind and the body, but it also invites me to turn from my inner world to thinking about those who are more vulnerable in the town I live in than I am. It's a good way to start the year and this was my third time walking. It was the most beautiful sunny day and so I thought that I might share something of it with you.
We began our walk on the seafront at Hythe here on the Kent coast. This year our walking group was me, my friend Richard, and his grandchildren, Jack and Toby. A little later we were joined by Theresa and her lovely dog, Gibson.
The Rainbow Centre, which was founded in 1985 as the Folkestone Family Care Centre, changing its name to the Folkestone Rainbow Centre in 1992. The charity works to support and offer hope to individuals and families suffering deprivation in our local area. It does this through its homeless support service (including a winter shelter), the Shepway Foodbank, and FoodStop, a mobile soup and sandwich providing service that hopes to support those who are vulnerable but hard to reach with more traditional support, at least to begin with. The Rainbow Centre is a wonderful and heartening small charity and it feels important to support them.
Toby & Jack found 3 mermaid's purses!
But, as we have the company of children, our Walk of the Kings rarely involves just walking. This year Jack and Toby both found mermaid's purses; Toby found two! Mermaid's purses are the empty egg cases of sharks, skates, and rays. They are made of collagen protein strands and most look and feel quite leathery. The majority contain a single embryo and are deposited in kelp forests or on rocky seashores until ready to hatch. This can take anything from a few months to over a year! They can be identified by their size and the shape of their 'horns'. I think that these are the egg-cases of the small-eyed ray. An exciting find!
At the tideline, Toby also found a crab shell!
And it was joyous to be outside, especially after far too many days of being indoors. We saw a cormorant sunning her wings, marvelled at the sparkle of granite rocks, and examined cuttlefish bones.
We walked past a beachfront house, all painted in seaside blue and white, whose wall was draped with Christmas holly and mistletoe. So lovely to see!
What a joyous sight! And I love too that this was on the wall at the end of their garden & far from the house itself. It felt like an offering of generosity and festive spirit to strangers; so much of what Christmastime is about.
And all the time the sea was beautifully blue. I feel blessed to live here. Even on this seemingly tame coast the sea is a wild being, ebbing and flowing, breathing out, breathing in.
Then we turned away from the sea and began to climb Folkestone's 'Zig Zag path', which means passing this quote from science fiction writer, H.G. Wells, who lived at Sandgate, very close to Folkestone, from 1901 to 1909; "It was one of those hot clear days that Folkestone sees so much of; every colour incredibly bright and every outline hard." This was certainly one of those days.
The Zig Zag path winds its way from the beach to the Leas, a Victorian-style promenade with a proper bandstand, managed flower beds, a giant chessboard, a concert hall, and a memorial to the victims of WWI which plays songs and poems from that era. The fence carries a tide of knitted poppies; red, white, and purple. It's very touching.
The Zig Zag path is formed from manmade rocks called 'Pulhamite', after the landscape gardeners, James Pulham & Sons, who built the path in the early 1920s. The work provided much needed employment for soldiers returning from the war. Pulhamite is basically rubble bound with special concrete that has glass and pottery mixed into it.
I love the Zig Zag path but I was very glad to reach the town beacon at the top!
Then it was off to the Rainbow Centre for bread & soup, plus a slice of traditional 'King Cake' ~ Galette des Rois (of which more in my next sharing), and a simple thanksgiving Epiphany service.
I want to end with a prayer from the Epiphany service which seems perfect for these times, no matter what our spiritual path.
The Pointed Epiphany Prayer
God of grace, thank you for every Epiphany that will happen today,
for every one who drops a weapon because there are no enemies,
for every one who breathes in the scent of cedar and is cleansed,
for every one who drops the heavy bundle of resentment,
for every one who is guided by generations as yet unborn,
for every one who is contented at the end of a journey,
for every one who falls on their knees before a baby,
for every one who senses the webs that connect us,
for every one who follows a sign from heaven,
for every one who remembers to give gifts,
for every one who is bowled over by love,
for every one who recognises the holy,
for every one who dances with joy,
for every one who says a prayer,
for every one with stars in their eyes.
Amen.
I am chuffed to say that I was able to raise £115+ for the Rainbow Centre, to be added to the amounts raised by my fellow walkers. Thank you so much to everyone who sponsored me. It really helped me to keep on walking on my wobbly way. And what a blessing it is, always, to turn for a while from our own worries and concerns and offer the hand of friendship and solidarity to another. I hope for many more opportunities to do so in the year ahead. And I hope too that it will be less and less needed as the seed of justice grows.
And I will just add an extra thank you to Jack and Toby who ensured, as ever, that I returned home with my rucksack filled with mermaids' purses, crab shells, damp gull feathers, and seashells. What could be lovelier? Life is full of treasure just waiting to be found.
Star of Bethlehem flowering at the 1,000 year church, April 2017
As we come closer to Epiphanytide, which begins on the evening of January 5th; the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we begin to live by starlight. If we take our Christmas decorations down then our homes can feel stripped bare and empty, cold as we sometimes imagine stars to be. But we also become open to the sky. There is nothing between us and forever, and eternity is at our fingertips.
To sink ever more deeply with our starlit journey we might watch this beautiful timelapse film by Harley Grady.
Stars have become more and more important to my own spiritual path and I hope to share something of that over Epiphanytide if I can find the words. But, for now, I want to share something of the star that is most important in the coming days; the Star of Bethlehem.
Epiphany remembers the visit of the Wise Men, or Kings, to the Christ child, having followed the Star of Bethlehem to find him. There is a belief that our Christmas decorations, especially those representing stars or light, shouldn't be taken down before Epiphany Eve as it might prevent the Wise Men from finding their way. I love that, in folk belief, there is only now; the Wise Men are always travelling, and each Epiphany they arrive, with a little help from the twinkling star trail we put out for them. This is no small thing; we are not irrelevant, no matter how small we feel. Our smallest action is the pivot around which the universe spins. And when our fairylights have been put away and the stars have shifted, there is a little white flower who comes to remind us that that remains true, no matter what.
It's said that the Star of Bethlehem first appeared on the night of Christ's birth to guide the Wise Men, whose journey was made complicated by their maps and charts, to the child. When its work ended it burst into thousands of brilliant fragments and fell to earth. Where it came to ground a blanket of milk-white flowers grew.
You will know that you have found Star of Bethlehem when you see a flower with six white petals surrounding six stamens, each with a yellow anther. They bloom in the spring from early March until late May or early June. The flowers open in the early morning and are usually closed by noon revealing a beautiful green stripe on their underside, hence some of their common names; sleepydick, nap-at-noon, star-at-noon, johnny-go-to-bed-at-noon, and eleven o'clock ladies. When the flowers have died a three-celled seed capsule forms containing several black seeds.
Star of Bethlehem, Wiki Commons
Her genus name, 'ornithogalum', comes from the Greek words 'ornis' for 'bird' and 'gala', meaning 'milk', and was named and described by Dioscorides (40 to 90CE) in his 'De Materia Medica' due to her abundance of white flowers that 'when opened look a lot like milk'.
In herbal healing she is known as the 'comforter' and is a gentle companion in sitting with the after-effects of shock, even those received long ago in childhood. She has been described as the 'Guardian of Grieving', and used in the treatment of those who are suffering from suicidal depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, offering a light to lead the afflicted out of the darkness. Indeed, she does that work for us all, blooming at the beginning of spring and reminding us of the need to come into the light after the dark winter months. She is the way-shower, a guide for the lost, just as she guided the Wise Men through the vast silence of the desert. Generous indeed for a star who has herself has been broken into pieces; the archetypal 'wounded healer', just as Christ is. I would never trust a spiritual path that didn't know how to honour the parts in all of us that are broken.
I find the image of the star fallen to Earth deeply moving and have often thought of her as a teacher, showing us that it's possible to follow diverse spiritual paths, whilst still being part of one wild and beautiful truth. In her myriad mirrored fragments, her many white petals, her brilliance of being, the Star of Bethlehem reflects them all. There is no 'other', just broken parts of one great beating heart. Perhaps that's why she is sometimes called the 'Reconciliation Star', the star of at-one-ment. And it does feel that there is much to reconcile, and to atone for. There is mending to be done, but we have our guide and she is pulsating with the energy that drives the universe towards justice.
But it doesn't feel that there is too much justice in the world just now; not when the President of the United States, who we might remind ourselves is also made of stars, appears to be wilfully driving us towards WWWIII, a war which many of our sisters and brothers would be justified in saying started many years ago. The world truly does feel shattered into a thousand sharp and ragged pieces.
Three years ago, in the wake of several star-shattering world events, a poem came whilst I was writing about the healing properties and folklore of this little white flower. Much of this piece of writing is based on that. If you would like to read it you can find it here. I continue to pray, as I did then, that by the time she returns in the spring there will be much healing between us to be held out in offering to her. Epiphanytide is our opportunity to realign ourselves with the star who, like Christ, fell to Earth to help us mend.
Star of Bethlehem is tired
of dragging around the baggage
that we try to hide,
divisions that won't be reconciled,
the willful non-seeing of the so-called wise.
Wakes bright with morning,
asleep by noon,
offers guidance with maps and tea;
pours milk, leaves not bags,
her best bone china
slips from her exhausted hands,
smashes into a thousand shards of stars
on her kitchen floor,
reads the auguries in their constellations.
Weeps for the weight of what she sees
swept under the carpet.
Star of Bethlehem carries diversity
as a prayer in her shopping bag,
walks with Jah, Allah, Shekinah
wearing goose feathers in her hair
in the stews of the Liberty.
Keeps a torch by the back door,
shines a light on intruders ~
Guantanamo, Yemen, Syria,
the housing of the poor,
a nail bomb on Electric Avenue,
knows that she can't take much more.
No amount of bleach in her bucket
will make this pure.
No amount of soap will scrub this whole.
And her batteries are running out.
She may have to brave the dark.
Star of Bethlehem hangs her head
in the churchyard
closes in on herself at shadow fall,
offers her flesh for the breaking of bread,
ties her scarf more tightly round her head.
Tuber or tumour, hate or hope.
The murder of the innocents,
child radicalised,
drowned on the refugee boat,
finding belonging in the EDL,
bleeding out in the stairwell in Peckham Rye.
Herod turns his head, shuts his eyes,
she opens her petals wide.
And she is growing wild,
escaping the confines of the flower bed.
Sinking her roots into holy ground,
gathering up the pieces that she let slip,
knows it's time to get a grip.
She weeps for mercy, grieves for grace,
what we might have been, what we are.
Yet still she loves the pilgrim soul in us,
the spark that journeyed
from the furthest star
and fell to earth forged in fire.
She puts the kettle on.
~ Jacqueline Durban, 2017
Star of Bethlehem flowering at the 1,000 year church, 2017
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.
Wares from our ethically sourced local food market
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
One of my most vivid memories from childhood, and I have a terrible memory, is of the excitement I felt when our artificial green & silver tinsel Christmas tree with metal fold-out arms came down from the loft, along with boxes of ancient and familiar decorations. They had their own special smell that I have never found anywhere else. My favourite decoration was a pipe cleaner Father Christmas but there were also incredibly fragile glass baubles that I didn't dare to touch.
I remember the tree being decorated, and then that magical moment when the lights went on and a Christmas wonderland suddenly appeared! I used to sit cross-legged in front of it for hour upon hour, absolutely enchanted. To me, it was every bit as beautiful as the 'Tree of Souls' in the film 'Avatar'. I remember being quite shocked when our first family Christmas tree reappeared years later, having been replaced by a much more realistic (but less magical) tree, and I saw how small it actually was.
Above is a photo of my mum, probably before I was born, drying her hair in our old house with a quite lovely Christmas tree by the telly. I remember that hair dryer. That fascinated me too, and it always smelled of burning! This looks like a real tree, which I don't remember having at all. Our tree was more like the one below, but green. We were sophisticated like that! Happy times.
I am writing this on the Fifth Day of Christmas & four days ago, on Boxing Day, the Reverend Kate Bottley posted an image of a, still green and vibrant, 'real' Christmas tree propped up next to a bin. She commented that now is the time for driving around and rescuing lonely, discarded too soon, trees by taking them home. I always feel sad when anyone says, often with some pride, that they have taken their decorations down on 26th December, but in the case of a tree this seems particulaly sorrowful. I am so glad that there are Christmas tree rescuers abroad.
There is so much that we do now because 'that's just what you do'. We throw coins into water, cross our fingers, and engage in all manner of superstitions without knowing why; retaining the behaviour but losing the meaning. And so, of course, we have a tree at Christmas. It's 'just what you do'. I find our continued enacting of these superstitions affirming; what we once knew is just under the surface waiting to be refound, and so it might re-enchant our relationship with these magical trees to know that our ancestors have been bringing evergreens inside in winter for millennia.
Hedgehermitage evergreen wreath, 2018
Evergreen wreaths and garlands symbolised eternal life in ancient Egypt, China, and in the Middle East. During the Roman festival of Saturnalia houses were decorated with evergreens, and the people of Northern Europe held trees in the highest honour. That they were revered is evidenced by the story of 8th Century Anglo-Saxon missionary St Boniface felling Donar's, or Thor's, Oak; a tree sacred to the Germanic Pagans. The tree was said to have fallen in the shape of a cross and the wood then used to build a church dedicated to St Peter; a desecration indeed for so many venerable trees to have been cut down in the name of any god. But also a telling of how deeply loved trees were, how a people could be broken by taking their trees. For example, I remember only too well that one of the first acts of the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government in 2010 was to begin selling off our national forests to huge public outcry, which I'm sure shocked even them.
It may seem strange then that Christmas trees have become such an important part of the Christian feast of Christmas. But, as we explored during Celtic Advent, there are often older and deeper tides at work. We could learn to trust them.
Our modern Christmas trees appear to have originated during the German Renaissance of the 15th and 16th Centuries, the first dated depiction being from 1576. They are sometimes linked with Protestant reformer Martin Luther, who is said to have been the first person to put lighted candles on an evergreen tree ~ possibly in an act of one upmanship against the beautiful cribs that were to be found in Catholic churches. As a species, we are so drawn by beauty.
By the early 18th Century Christmas trees had become popular in towns of the Upper Rhineland, but not yet in rural areas. Because the Lower Rhine was mostly Catholic, & Christmas trees were considered Protestant, it took a very long time for them to spread further.
It wasn't until the latter half of the 19th Century that the custom became established elsewhere. By this time, Christmas trees had become an expression of German culture & of Gemütlichkeit (warmth, friendliness, and good cheer, much like the Scandinavian 'hygge') amongst those who had set sail for other lands. We all need to take home with us in one form or another. Even so, the decorated tree remained a preserve of the nobility and upper classes. Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816. By 1840 the custom had spread to France. And Hans Christian Andersen published 'The Fir-Tree', a fairytale about a little tree being cut down for Christmas, in Denmark in 1844.
These first Christmas trees were originally decorated with coloured paper roses, apples, wafers, sweetmeats, and tinsel. I was stunned to learn that tinsel was invented in Nuremburg as long ago as 1610 and was originally made from extruded silver in order to enhance the flickering of candles.
Marcel Rieder, 1898, from Wikipedia
Modern Christmas trees have been said to symbolise the 'Tree of Paradise', or the Tree of Life, which once appeared in mystery plays given on Christmas Eve. This was also a day dedicated to Adam & Eve, and so the trees were decorated with apples to represent the Garden of Eden and its forbidden fruit, and with wafers to symbolise the redemption found in the Eucharist. Soon, these trees were taken into homes and the rosy apples replaced with red baubles.
In the British Isles the tradition of decorating homes and churches with evergreens at Christmas was long-established, but it was unheard of to decorate an entire tree until the 1840s. Our royal family had been doing so since 1800 when George III's German-born wife, Charlotte, provided one for a children's party. In 1848 their popularity spread when an engraving of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their children enjoying Christmas around their tree was published.
Queen Victoria & family in 1848, Wikipedia
However, as in the Rhineland, it took a very long time for the idea of a decorated Christmas tree spread here. They remained something that only the well-to-do considered. That this had changed by the 20th Century is clear as, in 1906, a charity was set up to ensure that poor children in the slums of London could at least see a Christmas tree. By the 1920s everyone had them.
'Glad Jul' by Viggo Johansen, 1891
The Christmas tree's relationship with mainstream religion has been more difficult. In Russia they were banned after the October Revolution of 1917 and only returned as a secular symbol of New Year in 1935. By that time the star on top of the tree had become, not a symbol of the Star of Bethlehem, but of the Red Star of Communism.
Although the 'Hanging of the Greens has been a tradition in churches for many years, it wasn't until the beginning of the 20th Century that Christmas trees began to appear. Sometimes these take the form of a 'Chrismon Tree', which is a Christianised version of the traditional tree decorated with clear lights and gold & white symbols of Christ; a dove, a Celtic cross, a shepherd's crook.
During the 'Hanging of the Greens' Biblical passages and other readings are employed to explain the Christian significance of the holly, mistletoe, tree, and any other decorations; as though being part of the Earth and the season wasn't enough. No doubt this is to avoid accusations of syncretism; the merging of different religious traditions or schools of thought.
Personally, I have never quite understood the problem with syncretism, religious or otherwise. It's only challenge can be to those who have a power base to protect by controlling the thoughts and actions of their group of believers, which is all the more reason to embrace it.
The accusation of 'syncretism' is often used as an insult to imply that one is in some way weak willed or 'impure' in one's beliefs. It is seen as a betrayal, rather than as a sign of a healthy living system. And, of course, critics of syncretism must assume that their own chosen faith was originally discrete, or separate, something which is virtually impossible. No, like life on this planet, religion grows on an ever-expanding, contracting, and refining web of becoming, with filaments that weave, separate, and reweave, in ever more beautiful patterns if they are allowed to. Much like the roots of a tree; grounding, exploring, nourishing.
Perhaps it was my own long contemplation of our little family Christmas tree as a child that led me to this strange path of faith that I am on now. If so, I am grateful. My prayer for the year ahead is that we will all fall back in love with trees, and that they will lead us to a way of being more deeply rooted in ourselves and in a wild and holy diversity of belief.
And perhaps next Christmas there will be fewer trees abandoned by Boxing Day.
Christingle at Canterbury Cathedral, December 28th, 2019
The fourth day of Christmas commemorates the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, or to give it its Old English name, Childermas.
Childermas, which has been part of the church year since the 5th Century, remembers the story found in Matthew's Gospel (2: 16-18) that, at the time of Jesus' birth, & fearing a challenge to his own power, King Herod of Judea ordered the massacre of all male children under two years old in the vicinity of Bethlehem.
Some estimate that between 6,000 and 14,000, or even 144000, children were murdered, although when considering the size of Bethlehem and surrounding settlements, it is more likely to have been a few dozen, if the event happened at all. Whether it is historical fact is debated, especially as it echoes Pharoah's attempted murder of the Israelite children in Exodus when he is warned that the birth of Moses will become a threat to his crown.
The beautiful but haunting 16th Century 'Coventry Carol' refers to the massacre of the innocents, and is a lament by a mother for her doomed child.
In the Middle Ages, Childermas was taken as an opportunity for role reversal, with teachers and pupils changing places and church services being presided over by 'boy bishops'. And it was once the custom to refrain from work on Childermas day and to avoid work on that day of the week for all of the following year; being taken as an opportunity to play perhaps. This playfulness is echoed in Spain where the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents is a time for pranks, much like our April Fool's Day.
And at Canterbury Cathedral the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents is a day for their annual Christingle. This service raises funds for the Children's Society which works to support vulnerable children in England and Wales. It brings shame on us all that so many children in this country, the fifth richest in the world, are living in poverty and peril.
Canterbury Cathedral Christmas tree, 2019
In March, 2019, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) estimated that there were 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK from 2017-18 (9 in a classroom of 30). By 2022 this is expected to have risen to 5.2 million. 43% of children living in a family with three or more children are living in poverty. 45% of children from minority ethnic families are living in poverty, so too are 47% of children from lone parent families. 70% of children living in poverty are in working families. When a Government minister was recently asked about these appalling figures he replied that we could 'argue about the definition of poverty'. We might shudder when reminded that, in 2016, the Government abolished their own child poverty unit.
But then to keep children in poverty suits our Government because it provides fodder for their lucrative war machine. In Britain, 16 year olds can’t vote, drive a car, or drink alcohol, but they are able to join the army. No other country in Europe recruits at such a young age. Only 17 other countries in the world allow it, including Zambia, El Salvador, and Iran.
Between January and October 2017 more than 19,000 under 18 year olds applied to join the army folliwing the controversial 'This is Belonging' campaign, which was run in partnership with private recruitment agency Capita & designed to attract young people from working class and poor backgrounds, targetting children from deprived areas particularly; they are more desperate you see, more compliant.
In addition, thousands of schools across the UK invite in the military. This despite the UN committee on the rights of the child informing the UK Government in June to “reconsider its active policy of recruitment of children into the armed forces and ensure the recruitment practices do not actively target persons under the age of 18 and ensure that military recruiters’ access to schools be strictly limited.”
And, of course, the army may provide these young people with many good things but statistics show that, although children can’t be deployed on the front line before the age of 18, when they are those who are recruited from 16 are twice as likely to die.
It's estimated that more than 200 children, many who are eligible for settlement in the UK, remain living in terrible conditions in Northern France, with thousands more trapped in Italy and Greece. Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, said: “It’s become absolutely horrible, I do not understand how it can be this hostile, how our country can behave like this, how they keep saying no to this.”
Matt's Bible Blog comments that, "Herod’s shadow still stalks the land.
Only that’s not true, is it? Because Herod’s not our shadow, he’s our mirror." May we all be grateful to the mirrors that show us who we are, not who we wish ourselves to be. And, if we can't bear our own reflection, let us change something.
This is relentlessly heartbreaking, bewildering, and dispiriting I know, and Christmas is so much about joy. But it also unfolds at the darkest time of the year, and it too has its dark side. If anything, Christmas teaches us how to negotiate the tension that we must increasingly learn to hold well if we are to keep our hearts open and be any use; gratitude in one hand and grief in the other, joy and despair, and discounting neither.
But how might we do that? Matthew 2 tells us that, after Herod had made his pronouncement, "what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more”, echoing the same words found in Jeremiah 31:15.
Here, Rachel is remembered as the archetypal mother who mourns and intercedes for her children. It feels significant too that her weeping is for her descendants' suffering in exile from the land of their birth. So many are in exile now, or feel unwelcome in this, their own land. And that is worthy of tears.
Childermas is a reminder to offer love, gratitude, and support to all those who work to make the lives of children better, but also brings an invitation to look deep into the mirror and to mourn, not a tale found in the Bible but the ways in which we fail to protect and love our children now. We must guard against hardening our hearts, and we must honour our tears as strength, not as weakness. Let our tears be the medicine that unlocks the door of compassion for all the world's children.
If you would like to offer prayers for our children I have added some links below. Both relate to the situation in the US where children are being forcibly removed from their parents at the border with Mexico and then detained in inhumane conditions, or returning from school to find their parents who had found a home in the US deported. It is horrific that these prayers are so very easily adapted to our own circumstances here in the UK.
I end with a slightly adapted version of my own prayer, written as part of our Novena for the Fallen Through in December 2017. You can read the full piece here.
Novena for the Fallen Through: Peace on Earth.
Blessed Mari, Hallowed Mary,
Holy Mothers of Peace,
Sisters of Reconciliation,
Singers of the Mending Song.
We stand in solidarity with you at the gates of Birth.
We seek Light in the luminous beauty of Darkness,
in the depths of winter cold.
With you, we follow the silver thread of starlit Hope,
in the midst of anguish and despair.
We seek a Revolution of Love.
We expect Justice.
We speak for Peace.
We will not be shut out.
We will be heard.
Room will be made.
We ask for nothing less than Peace on Earth.
We cling to the stubborn hope of light in the darkness.
We allow our waiting to become a prayer.
Mary, singer of wild songs, mother of the Light,
Mari, drummer of the wild hills, companion of Stars,
we ask for your help in the protection of our children,
suffering in poverty; cold and hungry, even now at Christmas time,
for the protection of our children,
called to war from a life of lack;
of opportunity, of wealth, of hope.
Kept poor to become prey.
We ask for power to come to the peaceful,
for love to come to the lost,
for hope to come to the hopeless.
Blessed Mari, Hallowed Mary,
Holy Mothers of Peace,
Sisters of Reconciliation,
Singers of the Mending Song.
We stand in solidarity with you at the gates of Birth.
We seek Light in the luminous beauty of Darkness, in the depths of winter cold.
With you, we follow the silver thread of starlit Hope,
in the midst of anguish and despair.
We seek a Revolution of Love.
We expect Justice.
We speak for Peace.
We will not be shut out.
We will be heard.
Room will be made.
We ask for nothing less than Peace on Earth.
We cling to the stubborn hope of light in the darkness.
We allow our waiting to become a prayer.
Mary, singer of wild songs, mother of the Light,
Mari, drummer of the wild hills, companion of Stars,
We ask for bright paths to be illuminated for our children,
for lanterns to lead their way to futures
filled with possibility.
We pray for the day when the Feast of the Innocents becomes truly that;
a celebration of the child,
of the innocence of the young and the innocence in us all.
We pray for a time when our innocence is not taken by the things we have seen and what we know.
When we need not stand guard to protect our babies from the machine of war, power, and greed, but can lean back and be supported by the sweet waters of life knowing that they are safe to explore the world in freedom.
We listen for the hoofbeat of the Mari Lwyd,
we listen for the revolutionary Magnificat of Mary,
we look to the Star fallen to earth,
sing the Spirit in,
gather up the pieces of broken hope,
weave starshine in our hair,
stand with the saints with starlight at their brow, knowing that we also shine.
Like all that is born, Sun and Son,
vulnerable and new in the midst of this deepest dark,
May we be undefended and undefeated,
bright with possibility and hope reborn.
Blessed Mari, Hallowed Mary,
Holy Mothers of Peace,
Sisters of Reconciliation,
Singers of the Mending Song.
We stand in solidarity with you at the gates of Birth.
We seek Light in the luminous beauty of Darkness, in the depths of winter cold.
With you, we follow the silver thread of starlit Hope,
in the midst of anguish and despair.
We seek a Revolution of Love.
We expect Justice.
We speak for Peace.
We will not be shut out.
We will be heard.
Room will be made.
We lift the shard of a shattered star.
We hold the vision of a shining light
of protection around our children,
allow innocence to be reborn.
We allow the wild hope of Peace on Earth to sink into our bones, and for our very bones to shine.
