In Alpine lands, these are the Smoky/Hairy/Rough Nights. Smudge all rooms of the house with incense or juniper boughs to smoke out the rough, hairy monsters abounding at this time.
December 31: New Year’s Eve
This is Moving Night for Icelandic elves, so keep the Christmas lights twinkling and leave offerings of food outside the house. Those who decide to Sit Out at the crossroads and question the elves do so at their own risk.
Another curious feature of the old Icelandic New Year’s Eve was “pantry drift”: a magical white frost that trickled in through the pantry window, if it was left open, on the last night of the year. Pantry drift was supposed to taste like sugar and bring good fortune. If you wanted to partake of it, you had to stay up all night in the pantry and collect it in a pot. A cross had then to be placed over the mouth of the pot or the “drift” would disappear.
Midnight on New Year’s Eve was the hour when a Finnish maiden might gaze into a candlelit mirror or, better yet, two mirrors placed opposite each other on a black cloth. There, she would hope to see the image of her future husband wandering in the uncertain light.
Stroke a piglet tonight, and you’ll have good luck all next year.
Float a fresh ivy leaf in water inside a soup tureen on New Year’s Eve. Put the lid on and don’t disturb it until Twelfth Night (January 6). If the leaf remains green, you can look forward to a healthy year. If it is spotted, take comfort in the fact that reading ivy leaves is a notoriously unpredictable method of predicting the future.
January 1: New Year’s Day
Be careful whom you let in the door first today. If you plan to interview first-footers ahead of time, look for tall, dark, handsome men, and remember to ask them if they were born feet first. Redheads need not apply.
Of course, if you can possibly arrange to have your chimney cleaned first thing today, that would be the best luck of all.
January 5: Epiphany Eve
Epiphany Eve is generally but not universally synonymous with Twelfth Night. If you counted Christmas Day as the First Day of Christmas, then Twelfth Night will fall on the night of January 5. If, however, you didn’t receive your partridge in a pear tree until December 26, then Twelfth Night is January 6.
At Epiphany, homeowners in eastern and central Europe chalk a magically protective formula over the doors of their homes. It consists of the century followed by the initials of the Three Kings—Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar—ending with the year: e.g., 20K + M + B13. Before the Three Kings rose to fame, it was the Drudenfuss or pentagram that was chalked on the lintel.
In Lithuania, the girl who could stare at the moon’s face for a full hour on the Eve of Epiphany, then wash for another hour before retiring to bed, would be rewarded by a visit from a white ghost. The ghost would answer whatever questions she cared to ask it, including, no doubt, whom she would marry and when.
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside again, the Nordic Yule Buck is back, capering behind the Star Boys in the village street.
Any lingering elves should be moving along today. Take down your Christmas decorations, and they’ll probably take the hint.
If your stocking wasn’t filled on Christmas Eve, you can hang it up tonight and the Italian witch Befana will do the job.
Stick to fish, pancakes, or dumplings for dinner on Epiphany Eve or run the risk of Frau Berchta coming and slitting open your stomach.
If you have apple trees, anoint the roots of the oldest one with hard cider. Pinch off any unseasonal blossoms but leave one apple on the tree for the fairies or the Apple-Tree Man.
January 6: Epiphany or Twelfth Night
Today is Perchtentag in Austria. Represented by both her pretty and ugly servants, our White Witch, Perchta, has her last hurrah.
January 13: St. Knut’s Day
Scandinavians take down their Christmas trees today. The Yule Buck comes knocking once more in the form of Nuuttipukki, the Finnish St. Knut’s Day Goat-man. Offer him beer in return for a final blessing.
February 2: Candlemas
This is your very last chance to take down your Christmas decorations, green or otherwise. If you keep them up any longer, then you probably deserve anything the goblins can dish out!
St. Tibb’s Eve
If you’ve made it through the whole Christmas season and still haven’t seen any witches, best to go home and wait for St. Tibb’s Eve.
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Glossary
aspergillum: a sort of holy watering can or wand. The original meaning of the word aspersion was a “sprinkling or scattering of water or dust.” The purpose of an aspergillum is to cast holy water, not aspersions, over church, altar, home, and people alike. An aspergillum may be a fancy vessel or be as simple as a brush or leafy twig for dipping in the water.
aurora borealis: Latin, “dawn of the north wind.” See also northern lights.
Balkans: mountainous region north of Greece containing the nations of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. The Balkan languages belong to the South Slavic family, except for Albanian, which is descended from ancient Illyrian.
Baltic: area of northeastern Europe at the easternmost end of the Baltic Sea. Although Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Poland have their own stretches of Baltic coastline, the term is used to refer to the language, traditions, and ancient religions of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Estonian, like Sami, belongs to the Finno-Ugric family of languages, while Latvian and Lithuanian cling to their own ancient branch of the Indo-European family tree, Baltic.
boggart: tutelary, and sometimes troublesome, English house ghost, most often heard but not seen.
box: evergreen shrub with tiny, shiny green leaves that lends itself especially well to topiary. The kind you are probably used to seeing at the edges of well-kept garden paths is actually the slow-growing dwarf or “Dutch” variety; non-dwarf varieties of Buxus sempervirens can grow to thirty feet. In addition to votive figures, the wood, which is smooth and hard, was used to make lutes, printing blocks, and—you guessed it—boxes.
broom: the common, or Scotch, broom, Cytisus scoparius, whose yellow flowers brighten the moors in springtime. Just as boxes were once made from boxwood, brooms were often bundles of broom twigs. Meanwhile, “butcher’s broom,” Ruscus aculeatus, a.k.a “box holly,” was sometimes commandeered as a Christmas green because it bore red berries in December.
Counter-Reformation: the Catholic Church’s answer to the Protestant Reformation. Also known as the “Catholic Revival,” it lasted from 1542 to 1648 and focused on the proper education of priests as well as a return to spirituality and mysticism. See also Reformation.
creosote: the deposit left behind by the burning of wood or coal.
distaff: a stick that, in the thread-making process, acts as the hand-spinner’s third hand. The distaff holds the fluff of unspun fibers that the spinner draws out and feeds to the whirling spindle controlled by the other hand. The distaff eventually became part of that newfangled invention, the spinning wheel, but hand-held distaffs and spindles remained in use for a long time because they were portable: you can’t take a spinning wheel into the pasture or along the road to market.
Elizabethan: pertaining to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who ruled England from 1558 to 1603.
Ember Days: fasting days, occurring one in each season, in the medieval liturgical year. “Ember” here has nothing to do with fireplace embers; the name comes from the Old English ymbrendagas, meaning “periodic days,” because they occur periodically throughout the year. The other Ember Days are the Wednesday following Ash Wednesday, Whitsunday (Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter), and Autumn Crouchmas (September 14). Those born on Ember Days were supposed to be able to see spirits.
Finnic: non-Indo-European family of languages belonging to the broader Finno-Ugric family. The Finnic lang
uages include Finnish, Sami, and Estonian.
flax: Linum usitatissimum, a tall, willowy annual whose stems are the source of both fine linen and of the coarser byproduct, tow. If you are “flaxen-haired,” your hair resembles the stem’s fine, pale inner fibers, which were spun into thread. The flax plant bears delicate, light blue flowers and hard, round seeds, known as linseed.
flue: a passage that conducts the smoke from the fireplace or grate up into the main chimney.
Glückspilz: German for “lucky mushroom,” the Amanita muscaria or fly agaric. The fly agaric has a fat white stalk, red cap, and white spots. Also known as “the little man of the forest,” the image of this hallucinogenic and highly poisonous fungus is an intrinsic part of the German Christmas celebration.
goblin: an ugly, mischievous spirit not unlike a troll, though perhaps smaller. The word goblin comes from Old French gobelin rather than German kobold. Both words, however, stem from the Greek kobalos, a mischievous spirit.
gorse: Ulex europaeus, a thorny shrub of the moors. Unlike its fellow heath-dweller the common broom (see broom), which blooms only in springtime, gorse keeps its cheerful yellow blossoms going all year long. Gorse also answers to the names “furze” and “whin.”
Green Knight: a.k.a. “Knight of the Green Chapel,” antihero of the fourteenth-century Middle English chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Because he is green-skinned, carries a holly branch, and survives decapitation, many take him for a pre-Christian Celtic vegetal spirit.
Hidden Folk: the landvaettir, or aboriginal land spirits of Iceland. When the Norse arrived in Iceland, there were no elves or Álfar on the island, but there were plenty of hidden, or huldre, folk. Soon after settlement, the place started filling up with “elves” as well, and the two terms are now used interchangeably by most translators.
howe: a burial mound, especially one that is so old that no one can remember who is actually buried in it. Howes are usually supposed to contain royal bones and treasure. In England, they are also known as “lows” or “barrows,” but one is only ever laid “in howe.”
Ilsenstein: now Ilsestein, a barren granite mountaintop poking out of the Harz forest in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt. An iron cross was installed at its summit in 1814, but this did not seem to deter Hansel and Gretel’s Nibbling Witch, who lived at its foot. “Ilse” is a German girl’s name, which begs the question, “Who was Ilse?” According to one legend, she was the daughter of a knight whose castle stood on the nearby Westerberg. In another, her father was the Brockengespenst, a giant similar in appearance to the Green Knight but who carried a fir tree instead of a holly branch. In any case, the beautiful Ilse was turned to stone as the result of a love triangle involving herself, a tricky young journeyman, and the resident witch’s daughter, Yellow Trudi.
Jacobean: pertaining to the reign of King James I, who ruled England from 1603 to 1625. James is the English form of the medieval Spanish Jayme, which comes from Jacobus, which is the Latin form of the Hebrew Ya’aqob.
kota: a traditional, tipi-like Sami dwelling that can be set up wherever the reindeer are grazing. In “The Snow Queen,” both the Finmark woman’s and Lapland woman’s houses resemble the kota in that the roofs slope all the way to the ground. Because the Finmark woman’s house has no door, Gerda must knock at the chimney.
Lucifer: Latin for “light-bringing,” instigator of an angelic revolt in heaven, more or less synonymous with Satan, but also used to denote Venus in its role of morning star. The name Lucia also means “light-bringer.”
Magi: plural of Magus, priests of the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia. In popular Greek imagination, the Magi were skilled sorcerers, astrologers, and mirror-gazers—how else would they have known to follow the Star of Bethlehem? See also Three Kings.
Moor: name given by Europeans to an Arabic-speaking person of northwestern Africa or early medieval Spain. The name “Moor” comes from Greek mauros, meaning “black, dark,” and, in fact, the Moor was usually represented as a sub-Saharan African rather than an actual Arab or Berber. The character of the dark-skinned Moor added a note of exoticism to medieval pageants and theatre pieces. The most famous Moor of all is Othello, the humblest Black Peter.
moor: treeless land unsuitable for farming on which such low, scrappy shrubs as heather, broom, gorse, and juniper may thrive.
mumming: costumed cavorting, often door to door, with the participants (mummers) taking care to disguise their identities. Like trick-or-treaters, mummers must be paid off with food, drink, or money. Unlike trick-or-treaters, mummers are usually adults and often perform a short play at each stop.
norns: a class of supernatural women in Norse mythology, the most famous of whom were Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, who sat spinning the threads of destiny at the foot of the World Tree.
northern lights: the aurora borealis—officially, a phenomenon caused by electrical sparks tossed about on the solar wind. Unofficially, there is little agreement about the source of this arctic show of lights. In Lapland, they are said to be the dancing souls of the happy dead, the restless souls of the unhappy dead, and the switching tail of a celestial fox. Although green often dominates in photographs, the northern lights actually come in a whole range of colors. In one of his letters to J. R. R. Tolkien’s children, Father Christmas paints the “Rory Bory Aylis” as a fiery rainbow, though he admits to not having done it properly. Out of respect for the phenomenon’s auditory component—a sort of crackling hiss—the Sami make a point of observing the northern lights in silence. (In “The Snow Queen,” Andersen would have the lights say, “Isch! isch!” as if “the sky was sneezing.”)
Picts: ancient natives of northern Scotland who, in lieu of clothes, tattooed or painted themselves blue and apparently spoke a language unrelated to any other. The Picts’ air of mystery probably stems from the fact that their homeland lay north of Hadrian’s Wall, a region too cold and damp for the Roman recorders to venture into. All in all, the Picts, who had their own kingdom until AD 843, were probably not much different from their Celtic neighbors. The Picts had their own robust, curving artistic style and, judging by the artifacts they left behind, liked to make pictures on stones and silver jewelry as much as on themselves.
pitch: a sticky black substance distilled from pine wood, almost, but not quite, the same thing as tar. In the fairy tale “Mother Hulda” (German Frau Holle), pitch is poured over the stepsister’s head. “Pitch” is the translation of the German Pech, but I think the Grimms should have used Teer, or “tar,” which is much easier to pour over someone’s head. Pitch oozes slowly enough that even a lazybones probably could have dodged it and gotten away scot-free. The German Pech means “bad luck” as well as “pitch.” The opposite of Pech is Schwein, which denotes both a pig and a stroke of uncommonly good luck. See also tar.
primogeniture: the practice of bequeathing all one’s worldly goods to the eldest son.
primstav: “prime staff,” the Norwegian stave calendar, a long, flat stick on which feast days and dates of agricultural importance were marked by pictograms. Most Scandinavian stave calendars also employed runes and required specialized knowledge to read.
Puck: see Robin Goodfellow.
Ragnarök: also Ragnarøkkr, in Norse mythology, the violent, fiery End of the World, gods and all (though a few chess pieces survive). Ragnarök is really nothing to worry about, because a new world will spring up immediately in the old one’s place.
reel: a four-to-six-spoked rimless wheel on which spun thread was wound into a skein. The rotary flax wheel on which thread could be easily wound from the bobbin was not introduced until the 1700s. The handheld skein-winders of earlier centuries were much quieter, so it’s anybody’s guess how Frau Holle might have made the thunder back in the Middle Ages. It’s possible she left it to Thor.
Reformation: religious movement initiated by Martin Luther’s nailing of his “Ninety-Five Theses
on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. Rather than achieving Luther’s goal of reforming the Catholic Church, the Reformation gave rise to the many Protestant denominations we have today. German legend credits Luther with putting up the first Christmas tree.
risir: in Norse mythology, a class of primordial giants who were supposed to be especially beautiful.
Robin Goodfellow: a.k.a. “Puck,” a helpful, yet mischievous, English sprite. He would enter the house at night to do such chores as sweep the floor and grind flour, mustard seeds, or barley grains for beer. In return, he accepted milk and bread but never clothes.
skyr: a homemade, Icelandic yogurt-like dairy product. The making of skyr, along with an older form of the language and a passionate belief in elves, is one of those cultural artifacts that have been kept up in Iceland long after they died out in the rest of Scandinavia.
tar: a black, oozy substance distilled from pine roots. When all the tar and pitch have been drawn from the wood, all that remains is that other essential ingredient of Christmas: charcoal. Tar, which smells strongly of turpentine, was used for waterproofing boats and wooden buildings as well as for sticking feathers to unfortunate humans.
Thor: thunderer, giant-killer, red-bearded son of Odin and the earth goddess Jörd. Though unskilled in magic, Thor was one of the most popular Norse gods, especially outside the aristocracy. He got out of most scrapes by laying about him with the double-headed hammer Mjölnir, the image of which was employed by his worshippers as a talisman and mark of the god’s cult. Thor drove a cart pulled by two goats that could be killed and eaten, then put back together and made to pull the cart again.
Three Kings: Kaspar (or Caspar), Melchior, and Balthasar, who followed the Star westward to Bethlehem in order to present gifts to the Baby Jesus. In Spain and Latin America, it is the Three Kings who bring gifts to children on Epiphany Eve. See also Magi.
The Old Magic of Christmas Page 19
