December 25, 2004
Christmas20032002 2001 2000 1999 Merry Christmas! We’ve reached the first holiday with a history of five previous posts. The Arboretum began late in 1999, way back in the Twentieth Century. That seems like a long time ago now, though five years is not much out of two thousand Christmases, but our lives are shorter than our cultural memory. I was groping to find my way in those early posts, and though clumsily constructed, the one from ’99 is notable for containing the closest thing I’ve ever come to an introductory “what’s going on here” statement. It’s a bit obscure now, since part of my explanation involved a passing astronomical moment; not a mystic star, but an instance of the full Solstice Moon at perigree, which gave rise to much internet-distributed speculation about just how big the Moon was going to look. In fact, it didn’t look any bigger than usual, but I used the intense scrutiny given to an aspect of the natural world that we normally take for granted as a model of the level of attention I meant to bring to my observations in Central Park. At the time, I promised to look as closely as I could, and to make report of what I found for at least one year. One year having become five, I’d like to think the project has found some success. Sometimes I’ve strayed from the Park, what with war and disaster, and the mere personal disasters of Life, but I’ve tried never to leave behind the specificity of Nature’s phenomena or the guiding voice of the Western Tradition. In 2000 I presented a photo-essay of some of the more ornamental sights to be found in the Park in Winter; in 2001 it was a poem in praise of evergreen endurance. In 2002 I answered the Cherry riddle of the Spring in the form of a Christmas card, while last year’s card was rather more straightforward, as I’d had the good fortune to obtain an unusually unobstructed photo of one of our wintering Owls. I should also note the 2002 post from the twenty-fourth, in which I discussed what it’s like to be born (or at least to have a birthday) on Christmas Eve. That coincidence may have something to do with my warm feelings for this season, but as I’ve said, Christmas is our preeminent holiday, however we construe it. And now it’s here again, and what have I to offer? A cup of cheer, or rather, a bowl. This year’s card comes out of the old tradition of the Wassail. The Wassail is both a drink and an activity, ancestral to our Christmas caroling. Revelers would wander the countryside with a bowl of intoxicating brew and sing seasonal songs from house to house, in hopes of being invited in to refill the bowl. The traveling songsters remain a part of our Christmas imagery, but the custom, like much of Christmas, has deeper roots, extending into a pagan past. Originally the songs were sung not to neighbors, but to the trees. In particular the Apple trees, whose cider provided the basis for the wassail itself: the inebriating liquor that kept the singers warm as they went about “traveling the mire.” The songs were really in the nature of prayers; blessings bestowed on the orchards in order to ensure a bountiful crop for the New Year. We last saw the Apple on May Day, as the blossoming branch of another seasonal custom. Since then the flowers have come to fruit, and the harvest is in. Pressed into service and pressed into liquid, the cider (with perhaps some fortification) serves as the season’s sacrament, the blood of the tree as potent as the blood of any god. So here’s this year’s card: the Wassail Bowl offered around in the spirit of the old songs. The Gower Wassail is a good example, and from it I take my motto, a magical incantation of time and place: We know by the Moon that we are not too soon; We know by the Sky that we are not too high; We know by the Stars that we are not too far; We know by the Ground that we are within sound Pinioned between these points of Heaven and Earth, we will find that we are exactly where and when we ought to be. Sing strong; Drink deep. |
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"... The Wassail Bowl. A drink and a song,n behalf of the trees...." |
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