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Mom making Linzer cookies for Christmas.

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Fourth Sunday of Advent 2015

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Happy fourth Sunday of Advent!

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Day 22 of 25 days of Czech Christmas cards! Veselé Vánoce!!

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Lit the Yule log tonight in honor of the solstice. I left the Morana embroidery up for the darkest, shortest night, but tomorrow the sun goddess tapestry will be placed there until the 6th, when I’ll take down the Koleda/Yule altar and bring Morana back out.

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Sunset on the winter solstice in 2021

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A solstice trade. 2018

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And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome, Yule!

Illustration by Carson Ellis

Poem by Susan Cooper

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This is like the best St. Ambrose I’ve seen!

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““This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath…””

Margaret Atwood, Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-199

Art by Ralph Hulett

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My sister gave me this little silver-plated Italian choir boy for Christmas.

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The embroidery (adapted from a vintage Czechoslovakian pattern book) I gifted Mom last year with her beautiful matryoshka dolls she purchased years ago in Sitka, Alaska.

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Winter solstice spent baking with my mom and sister. 🌞

Vanilla crescents, chocolate peppermint cookies, golden thumbprints, potica, lemon bars, orange cranberry shortbread, Linzer cookies

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St. Thomas's Day

St. Thomas is the patron saint of wagon makers, masons and foresters. In the traditional culture of Slovakia, his day was celebrated as the feast of forests and it was forbidden to go to the mountain. People were afraid that if they violated this prohibition, they might get rolled up in the mountain, they might go astray, an accident or misfortune might happen to them.

On this day, most village households held pig-sticking. People believed that such meat would last longer. Butter churned on this day was thought to have increased healing power. Butter on Thomas was said to bring health and so they laid it aside. Likewise from the lard prepared on that day. In any case, this was how they secured fresh food for the festive table in advance.

Christmas wafers have always been part of the Christmas dinner. These used to be baked in the villages by the local teacher, the psalmist. He was helped by his pupils, who would go to the houses at the beginning of Advent to ask for the raw materials to make them. The housekeepers prepared grain or flour, eggs, milk and butter for them. They baked for several evenings and late into the night. And when the delicate pastries were ready, again the psalmist instructed the boys to distribute the wafers to the individual households together with the vine. Usually this was done on St. Thomas' Day.

And as on other "strigas days" in the run-up to Christmas, the shortest day of the year was associated with various ideas about the harmfulness of hags. People were trying to protect their homes and their economy and therefore did not let strange women into the house. On the contrary, the arrival of a man was welcomed from early in the morning.

It was with the expectation of a male visit that the custom of boys' house calls developed. From the beginning of Advent, shepherds, small boys and grown men went to sing carols. In most villages, this was also the way to go to Thomas's Day. Christmas carolers came early in the morning. They would bring a basket of grain and hand it to the householders with the words, "We bring you tinsel, the joy of Christ the Lord!". The green twigs of pine needles became a decoration of the dwelling during Christmas and smelled beautiful in the room.

On St. Thomas's Day, the householders and the young men would go into the woods to cut down Christmas trees. On this day, the first carol singers came to the cottages with a nativity scene, but especially the Christmas carolers, who kept up one of the oldest, now almost forgotten, Christmas customs - the walking with steel. Families were wished to have "health as strong as that piece of steel" in the coming year.

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