O antiphons

print: Ade Bethune

The early medieval "O antiphons" were sung at Vespers, one each day, during the last week of Advent.    Each antiphon is a name of an aspect of God.  Wisdom, Lord, Root of Jesse, Key of David, East (more poetically "Dayspring"), King of nations, God with us. The letters of the names spell out ero cras, "Tomorrow I will come."

They're now most commonly known as the Advent hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."  The tune now feels strangely dismal for a season of hope, but that's how they rolled in the sixth century.  My favorite verse:

O come, thou wisdom from on high
and order all things far and nigh;
To us the path of knowledge show
and cause us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Third Sunday in Advent

Today is the third Sunday in Advent.

Photo credit: andersbknudsen / Foter / CC BY-SA

Shepherds arise

A great but overlooked English carol.  It really ought to be done with more people and more harmony, and I've since realized that I misremembered the rhythm, but that's the folk process for you.

Shepherds arise, be not afraid;
With hasty steps repair
To David's city: see the maid
With her blest Infant there.

Sing! Sing all earth!
Sing! Sing all earth! Eternal praises sing,
To our Redeemer,
To our Redeemer and our heavenly King!

Laid in a manger view the Child, 

Humility divine
Sweet innocence, how meek and mild
Grace in his features shines.

For us the saviour came on earth,
For us his life he gave,
To save us from eternal death,
And raise us from the grave.

Glow

Photo credit: YlvaS / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

St. Lucia's Day

Happy Lucia Day! Saint Lucia was one of those early Christian martyrs who died rather than marry a pagan. She may or may not have gouged her own eyeballs out. Naturally, we celebrate with candles and saffron buns!

It's the Scandinavians who get really into this. Scandinavia, I can tell you from personal experience, is very dark at this time of year. So I don't blame them for latching onto a December saint's day for a woman whose name means "light". In both homes and public gatherings, they have processions of children in white robes. The tallest and prettiest girl wears a wreath of candles on her head.

Painting: Carl Larsson

One unexpected benefit of winning the Nobel Prize is that during your stay in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, a procession of Lucia girls and star boys wake you with a song. The problem is that laureates are sometimes surprised to awake to coffee and pastry born by singing girls dressed in white and crowned with flame. The morning Sinclair Lewis was thus serenaded, he apparently panicked and hid under the blankets.

Christmas readings

Christmas offers a wealth of opportunities for reading aloud.  If you haven't had books read to you since you were a child, you should rediscover it.  It is the last word in cosiness.

Jeff's family reads the "Dulce Domum" chapter from The Wind in the Willows.

In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, `Now then, one, two, three!' and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.

I'm fond of E. Nesbit's "The Conscience Pudding."

It was sitting in the kitchen, I think, that brought to our minds my father's parting words — about the pudding, I mean. 

 Oswald said, "Father said we couldn't have much of a Christmas for secret reasons, and he said he had told Matilda to make us a plain pudding." 

The plain pudding instantly cast its shadow over the deepening gloom of our young minds. 

"I wonder how plain she'll make it?" Dicky said.

People have strong opinions about O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi."  I used to hate it, but now I appreciate that last paragraph on the worth of generous love.

She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present.  She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result.

"A Child's Christmas in Wales" is just right for reading aloud.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. 

"A Christmas Carol" is long for reading aloud, but totally worth it.  Break it up over a couple of evenings.

His hands were busy with his garments all this time: turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance. 

"I don't know what to do!'' cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. ``I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!''

Happy reading.

Wings

"NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope presents a bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106. It appears in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy. A massive, young star is responsible for the furious activity we see in the nebula. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. The outstretched “wings” of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium."

Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video / Foter / CC BY