Carol*

The holly and the ivy,

When they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood,

The holly wears the crown.
“The Holly and The Ivy”, traditional British Carol


From the end of October, until the first of January, you can’t walk into a store or a public place without being inundated with “Christmas Music”. Its quite often modern music (written in the 20th or 21st Century) and almost always badly played. It reverberates in our ears, the tinny dissonance of midi recordings or “Smooth Jazz” renditions and we are so overwhelmed by it that we are forced to tune it out just to survive.

I dearly love Christmas music. It has always been the ultimate expression of the season, songs that are put up as a shield against the darkness of the winter, a cry for the return of Light. I sang them as a child and listened to them on the radio and the record player until my parents thought that they would murder me. By the time I was 12 I had memorized all the verses of all the really popular ones (both modern and traditional) and begun to try and dig up more obscure ones. Then, in my early 20s, I did a spate of working in retail. It almost killed my love of Christmas Carols forever.

The traditional music of the season became background noise to be ignored. It lost its beauty and power. I no longer wanted to sing or even listen to anything connected to the holiday season, in large part because I had to listen to the awful renditions that were piped into the store, hour after hour.

Today, I have reclaimed my love of carols. I find I have little time for more modern songs of the season, but give me “Ther Is No Ros” or “Silent Night” or “The Gower Wassail” and I’m a happy person. And after many years in the Historical Dance community, I’ve found delight in dancing to a few carols as well**. I sang my baby son to sleep with the Coventry Carol and the Christ Child’s Lullaby. I own dozens of Christmas albums and take them out at the holidays to enjoy the music they provide.

How did I recapture that love? To start off, I stopped listening to holiday music at any other time but the holidays. I don’t take out my Christmas albums until the 1st of December and I retire them on the 1st of January. Second, I got picky about the arrangements I choose. I listen to things before I buy and I choose music that I know I’ll like. Since my interests lie in Early Music and Celtic Music, that’s the direction I look in. I tend to stay away from more modern Holiday tunes and performers unless I have a good reason (ie I bought Sting’s holiday album, but I knew about 30% of what was on it and I trusted for the rest, given his current interest in Early Music and my knowledge of the other performers listed). I don’t listen to the radio during the holidays. Its all pop Holiday music and it bores me to tears. I pick music I like to sing and I definitely sing along at every opportunity. That wasn’t something I was allowed to do when working retail. And I incorporate the music into our holiday traditions. We watch the Nutcracker on the evening of the 23rd, we listen to the Messiah on Christmas afternoon. When we trim the tree we listen to Revels CDs, when we drive to Cleveland to see friends over New Years, we most often have the Dr. Demento Holiday CD on, etc.

This year, getting into the holiday season has been particularly difficult. Our family has hit some tough financial times, making celebrating tougher than usual. We will make it through, but it means cutting back on things we love and making do with much, much less. But having holiday music is helping. And I’m hoping by the time the Solstice rolls around, I’ll be out of my blue funk and ready to do ritual, trim the tree and be festive.

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I’m going to put a plug in at this point. If you are interested in Winter Holiday music and traditions, I cannot recommend the recordings by the various Revels organizations enough. Their website has recordings and song books for sale as well as contacts for the various Revels groups across the country. I haven’t been to a show in a decade but I still remember the ones I attended with great love. These organizations have gone a long way towards bringing back my love of the season and reconnecting current Christmas traditions with their pre-Christian roots.





*A carol is defined as a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship.

**Carols were originally dances with words sung in complement. None of the dance done in the Medieval period survive, but several 18th and 19th century carol and hymn writers used dance tunes (extant dances) for their carols. The best examples of this are “Ding Dong Merrily on High” that uses the tune of “Le Branle de l’Offical” from the 1500s and “Masters in This Hall” that used a tune by French composer Marin Marais (1656-1728) to which the English Country Dance “Female Saylor” is also set.

Oak Moon*

Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.

All his leaves
Fall'n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength.
- The Oak by Alfred Lord Tennyson

We are now in the month of the Oak Moon. The oak tree that stands in our neighbor’s front yard has shed all its leaves (too late for the last of our county leaf pick-ups) and its bare branches reach to the sky. Our front lawn is still littered with acorns and the squirrels are busy stocking their winter stores. Oaks are endangered in our neighborhood, they are all suffering from a vascular disease that slowly strangles the tree, limb by limb. The oak next our garage is almost dead. It was scheduled to be taken down this year but the county ran out of funds before they got to it. We may lose it this winter to heavy snow or next summer to the tree surgeon. Either way, its days are numbered. I’m hoping I can recover a mostly healthy limb when it finally comes down to make a wand.

I have always loved oak trees. They are sacred to My Lady and to at least one of the Gods in my personal pantheon. And, I suppose, there is a mystery about them. I grew up with a yard full of locusts and silver maples, but I longed for just one oak. To have deep brown leaves fall in the autumn to mix with the golden yellow of the other trees. I was so happy when we moved to our current house and there were oaks all around. I’ve always felt the Oak was the King of Trees, to stand beside the Willow as the Queen. My own tree sign** is Coll, the Hazel, but we don’t have any in the area we live in and despite its legendary wisdom, it’s never really called to me.

To me the oak has always stood for power. It’s a warrior tree in my mind and a magic tree too. Its Celtic name, Duir, means door and there are legends that the oak was a doorway to the underworld or other world. Mistletoe, the Druid’s most sacred plant, grew on oaks and made them truly special. What is more appealing than the image a tiny faerie crowned with an acorn cap? There is such hidden power in the Oak, if we only remembered how to tap it.

I’ll be sad to see our oak go, even though I can never really remember it being a healthy tree. When we finally lose it, it will be the end of an era. Maybe our oak’s passing is a symbol of a part of my life passing and when it finally falls, it will be a doorway that opens on the next journey. The county will require us to replace the tree once it’s been removed. Perhaps we should put a hazel in instead...









*This moon name comes from the English Medieval naming tradition and I have chosen it because I connect this month with the rise of the Oak King. Other common names are Christmas Moon, Snow Moon and Long Night Moon.

**The Celts used a memory system related to trees which in modern times has become associated with a zodiac of tree months, thanks in large part to Robert Graves, who connected the “Tree Alphabet” to Ogham script.

Cailleach

I sing you of the Old Maid*
With gold upon her toe
Open up the west door
And let the old year go.

I sing you of the Fair Maid
With gold upon her chin
Open up the east door
And let the new year in.

-a personal adaptation of the second and third verses of the New Years Carol, a British Traditional Folk Carol

The solstice is mere weeks away and for Anglo-Celtic Pagans, we are firmly in the realm of our Germanic ancestors. With their boisterous lifestyles and strong male deities, its little wonder that the Winter Solstice and its successor holiday, Christmas, has become dominating by a strong sense of masculine power. After all, we are celebrating the rebirth of solar light, which in many ancient pantheons, fell under the auspices of a God.**

Christmas has always been my favorite Christian holiday and as I began to transfer so many of the traditions I love about Christmas to their older roots on the Solstice, I became aware of just how male dominated the holiday is***. The Goddess has only a small part, as the Divine Mother of the Sun (or Son). Perhaps her absence comes from the idea that, as a manifestation of the Earth, she sleeps through the winter and doesn’t actively participate in festivals at that time. I’m not sure, but for some time it bothered me. I also find it hard to honor her as a Mother when the Earth’s growth cycle is in its fallow time.

For me, the winter is the time of the Crone. Most specifically, it the time of the Cailleach, the White Hag of the Mountains. She is a Celtic deity, said to haunt the peaks of western Scotland in the winter, herding deer, and bringing strong winter storms. And she is intimately connected to Brighid, my matron deity. Many scholars think that they were considered, at least in Scotland, to be the same Goddess, representing winter and summer aspects. There is at least one legend that claims that the Cailleach locked Brighid away in a mountain cave on Samhain, keeping her hidden away until Beltaine.**** She is the face of the Crone that calls to me more strongly than any other, and in my mind, she is the very heart of winter.

So how do I marry the vague, life giving Goddess who births the Sun and the Storm Hag who carries nature’s fury behind Her like a cloak? It took me a long time, but I eventually had to come back to the cycles of the Earth. Just as the time between Samhain and Yule is a time that the Goddess walks the world alone, so does the God hold solitary sway over the days between Yule and Imbolc. This balances the year nicely and allows for rebirth for both Deities.

The Goddess, the Mother, carries the burden of the earth’s fertility throughout the growing season and the harvest. Weary from Her long burden, She fades to the Crone, worn, as all mothers are, by the task of parenting. Her weary steps over the world bring an end to the harvest time and beginning of the long dark time. Behind her come the cold winds of winter. At Solstice, She births the infant Sun, and as He rises in the sky, She retreats underground, to rest from Her tasks and to grow young again. When Spring comes again, She will come back to us, a Maiden, to join the youthful Sun in bringing new life back to the world.

So as I honor the newborn Sun on Solstice morning, I will also remember to thank the Goddess, for carrying Her burden for so long. I will wish Her a peaceful, healing sleep, just as I ask Her for the same each night. And I will wait with great anticipation for Her return in the Spring.



*I have changed the more traditional Fair Maid to Old Maid, since it fits my view of the Goddess at the time of the Solstice.

**But not, interestingly enough, the Nordic/Germanic pantheon. While their light deity was male, Baldur, their physical sun was female, Sunna.

*** I am not and have never been a Dianic or Goddess-only Pagan. I left Christianity because it lacked a female divine aspect and I have a strong desire for gender balance in my religious tradition. I do know many Dianics who happily celebrate Yule without the God, but that’s not my bag.

**** I’ve chosen to change this myth somewhat in my own practice, saying instead the Brighid is locked away on Lughnassa, when the Harvest season begins, and returns to the world on Imbolc.