Patience

Photo credit: tlindenbaum / Foter / CC BY-ND

(Set to music here.)

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day,
That sees December turn'd to May.

If we may ask the reason, say
The why and wherefore all things here
Seem like the springtime of the year?

Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like to a mead new-shorn,
Thus on the sudden?

                                Come and see
The cause why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is born whose quickening birth
Gives life and lustre public mirth
To heaven and the under-earth.

We see Him come, and know Him ours,

Who with His sunshine and His showers

Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

— Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Fourth Sunday in Advent

Today is the fourth, and last, Sunday in Advent.

Photo credit: mschmidt62 / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Spiral dance

Per NASA: "Though the universe is chock full of spiral-shaped galaxies, no two look exactly the same. This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. The arms are lined with pink star-forming regions of glowing hydrogen, newborn blue star clusters, and obscuring dust lanes that provide the raw material for future generations of stars. The bright nucleus is home to an older population of stars, which grow ever more densely packed toward the center. NGC 3982 is located about 68 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major."

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

Winter Solstice

Photo credit: Cheng I / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  Where I live, we'll get just over 9 hours of daylight today.

In the very far north, the sun doesn't rise at all in the weeks surrounding the solstice.  This short film shows the new year's first sunrise in northern Greenland, where the return of the sun is an important event.

Heaven and earth

There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;

For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space.
          - English, c. 1420
            Benjamin Britten arrangement

(I love the idea of pregnancy as "heaven and earth in little space.")

Photo credit: nexus6 / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Cherry Tree Carol

One of those lovely apocryphal stories that cast the Holy Family in a more human light: the Cherry Tree Carol.  A pregnant lady with food cravings, an irritated fiance, a miraculous tree, a talking baby: it's got everything.

Joseph and Mary walked through an orchard green,
They saw berries and saw cherries, fair to be seen.

As Joseph and Mary walked through the wood
They saw cherries and berries, red as any blood.


O then bespoke Mary, so meek and so mild:
‘Pluck me one cherry, for I am with child.’
O then bespoke Joseph, with words unkind:
‘Let him pluck thee a cherry that brought thee with child.’

(Ouch.)

O then bespoke the babe, within his mother’s womb:
‘Bow down then the tall tree, and give my mother some.’
Then bowed down the cherry tree unto his mother’s hand;
Then she cried, See, Joseph, I have cherries at command.

Then Mary plucked a cherry, as red as the blood,
She went home with her heavy load
Then Mary took her babe all on her knee,
Saying, My dear son, tell me what this world will be.

‘O I shall be as dead as the stones in the wall;
O the stones in the streets shall mourn me all.
Upon Easter-day uprisen I'll be;
O the sun and the moon shall both rise with me.’

Another take on this carol here.

Snowflakes

Honestly, when I see paper snowflakes I think of the morning last December when I walked into my internship at the mental hospital and found every window covered in paper snowflakes. Mania can manifest in different ways, and apparently one of them is cutting out 300 paper snowflakes.

I still love them, though.  Here are instructions for making six-pointed snowflakes.

Photo credit: miheco / Foter / CC BY-SA

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

The Annunciation

One of the most interesting parts of the Christmas story to me is that of Mary's pregnancy.  There's so much drama there: the angel messenger, the shock of her observant Jewish family and neighbors, the embarrassed fiance.  The start of that story is the Annunciation, when Gabriel visits Mary to tell her she has been chosen.

The angels of the Bible were not fluffy Victorian angels.  From Gabriel's instruction "Fear not," we can imagine that the sudden presence of a heavenly entity offering to change her life must have been, in a word, terrifying.

The angel Gabriel from heaven came
His wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.
- Basque carol

Painting: Henry Ossawa Tanner

She did not cry, "I cannot, I am not worthy," 
nor "I have not the strength."
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
                                          raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
                              consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
                          and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
              courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.

- from "The Annunciation", Denise Levertov

Second Sunday in Advent

Today is the second Sunday in Advent.

Photo credit: ~ Martin ~ / Foter / CC BY-NC

Chanukah starts tonight

More holidays with family, singing, and candles?  Yes, please.

Last year when I worked at a psych hospital, the chaplain held a dreidel-decorating session.  All the patients who attended were Catholics.  My favorite patient painted layer after layer of paint on her dreidel, so that the table had swirls of color on it after she'd spun it.  The guy with no impulse control ate all his candy as soon as he got it.  People were smiling and laughing.  Towards the end of the session, the patients spontaneously broke into, "If I Were A Rich Man," apparently the most Jewish song they knew.  It's my favorite memory from the hospital.

Photo credit: Sarah Ross photography / Foter / CC BY-NC

Apple Wassail

The apple wassail is a custom from the orchard country of Southwest England.  At the end of the Christmas season, people adorned apple trees with bread or cider to bless the trees for a good harvest the following year.

Well may ye blow, well may ye bear
Blossom and fruit both apple and pear.
So that every bough and every twig
May bend with a burden both fair and big
May ye bear us and yield us fruit such a store
That the bags and chambers and house run o'er.

                        —  Devonshire, 1805

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

Jewelbox

"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster. The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars.  The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old."

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

French onion soup

Soup weather is upon us.

Photo credit: lynn.gardner / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

French onion soup
Serves 6.  Total time: 50 minutes.  Adapted from Cook's Illustrated.

Chop 5 onions.  Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a heavy-bottomed pot and add the onions.  Cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 30 - 35 minutes.  The onions should be brown and soft.

Add:
6 cups chicken broth
1 cup beef broth
1/2 cup red wine
Some parsley
Some sage
Salt to taste

Let it all simmer together for a bit.  Ladle it into oven-save bowls.  Lay a slice or two of crusty bread on top.  Sprinkle with cheese (Gruyere is traditional; Cook's Illustrated says Swiss and Asiago; I used mozzarella and Parmesan because that's what I had).  Put the bowls on a baking sheet and slide it under the broiler for five minutes, until the cheese is bubbly.