BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
Two years ago at this time, we regaled you with a flood of traditions from around the world and their interrelationships. Some were from only vaguely known almost prehistoric relatives, and some were from Americans and invented in the 1960s. You know what? We barely scraped the surface. Here, in utterly random order, are some more interesting traditions around Christmas and other holidays associated with the Winter Solstice.
In the English city of Brighton, there is an organization called Same Sky that is and does something very similar to Minneapolis’ In the Heart of the Beast. Same Sky is an arts nonprofit that “offer[s] … event management services, … with costumes and drama, puppets and light, arts innovation and events expertise … Every step of [their] creative process is about bringing people together, encouraging equality and belonging through a shared experience of art, and creating moments of magic that will feed the imagination for a long time after.” Just as In the Heart of the Beast is known for MayDay, a once-a-year spectacular unique to Minneapolis, but not funded or produced by the city, so Same Sky is known for the annual Dec. 21st festival called “Burning the Clocks.” Burning the Clocks “is a unique community event … that brings the whole city together to mark the shortest day of the year. Local people make their own paper and willow lanterns … and after parading through the city, they pass them into a blazing bonfire on Brighton beach, as a token of the year’s end. … Burning the Clocks is a lively celebration of the turning of the year but also a time for reflection and thought.” Also like MayDay, the event includes prior crowdfunding, and then a month or more of community-based planning and building, which then culminates in the rather final event of burning all the lanterns, which have a clock-related theme to them.
Across England in the extreme southwest, and poking out into the stormy Atlantic, is the county of Cornwall, a place of wild natural beauty which you may be familiar with from the PBS drama “Poldark” or the old British comedy “Doc Martin.” In the extreme southwest of Cornwall, two villages west of Penzance (famous for pirates) is the quaint and ancient village of Mousehole (pronounced mouzel), which has a unique midwinter festival celebrated on Dec. 23. For most of the month of December, Mousehole’s harbor is lit up with “Illuminations,” except for (since 1981) the night of Dec. 19 when they are off in memory of the victims of a terrible lifeboat disaster. The festival, Tom Bawcock’s Eve, is celebrated in a couple of tiny pubs (nowadays it spills out into the streets, the village’s one inn, and the nearby village of Newlyn). There is a legend, probably apocryphal, to account for the feast. It is said that Tom Bawcock was a real person, a 16th century fisherman. When all the fishing fleet was stuck in the harbor due to ferocious storms, and the entire village was on the verge of starvation, Tom Bawcock went out to sea alone and caught enough fish, of seven varieties, to feed the whole populace and keep them alive through the storm. There is a uniquely Cornish dish called Stargazy Pie which is made for all the revellers, containing seven types of fish, along with a cream sauce, boiled eggs, and nowadays, potatoes (which if this dish really does date back to the 1500s it would not have had then). The peculiar feature of the dish, which gives it its name, is that the heads and tails of the small herrings and pilchards are baked poking up through the top crust, as if they were looking at the stars. An interesting but only barely related tidbit is that Mark Hix, a famous Cornish chef, won a cooking competition in 2007 with a weird take on this dish, containing wild rabbit and crayfish, with the crayfish heads poking out.
In equatorial regions, the rhythms of the seasons are quite different from what we are used to here in the temperate or colder zones. Thus the meaning of the December solstice, or midwinter, or of the part the sun plays in our lives might be quite different from their experience. In India, for instance, there are sometimes said to be three seasons, or under other systems or in other parts of the subcontinent, six. And the difference in the lengths of night and day, although they do change somewhat through the course of the year, are not so pronounced as they are in the latitudes farther away. And yet there are still distinct harvest occurrences, and the sun and the attendant weather are still ritually important, especially to the majority who are growing food.
So there is a festival of light, but it occurs almost a month earlier than the December solstice, in the dark of the moon in the month of Kartik, usually mid to late November. This is the well-known Diwali festival, celebrated by Hindus worldwide, and also by Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists in the Indian subcontinent.
The festival commemorates the destruction of the evil king Ravana by the good king Rama. Celebrations of Diwali, besides the usual traditional foods and dressing up and being with family, include all things light-related, especially candlelight filling the home, but also strings of lights, sparklers and fireworks.
Then a very different festival occurs nearer the time of midwinter. This festival, called Pongal in the state of Tamil Nadu, is more of a harvest festival equivalent to Thanksgiving although it occurs in late December to mid-January. These “midwinter” festivals also have a quality of New Year’s Day about them, as they often involve cleaning and decorating the home, getting rid of old things and releasing old grudges, or eating a lot of a specific food to bring prosperity in the coming year. The traditional foods are usually either creamy and sweet, or green, mild dishes such as spinach and paneer. For instance, Pongal is also the name of a traditional Pongal dish—it’s essentially rice pudding made with a raw sugar product called jaggery, which is harvested just before the festival. The further north in India you move, the more the festival resembles the Western notion of a winter solstice. The Bihu in Assam, for example, involves worshipping Agni, the god of fire, and staying awake all night, similar to ancient festivals from both Scandinavia and Persia. Elaborate thatch houses are built for spending the night before Bihu, and then as early as 5 a.m., the celebrants emerge and burn the house down. The day is then spent in feasting and ritual dancing.
In Guatemala, an ancient holiday of the Mayans was converted into the Christian holiday celebrating St. Thomas the Apostle, Santo Tomas, observed on Dec. 21. In Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands, extremely tall pine poles are consecrated and erected in the plaza for the ceremony of the palo volador, the flying pole. Pole dancers climb in pairs to the top via platforms and ropes, and then they spin at the end of the ropes, swooping down in huge circles to the ground. It’s considered very good luck if they land on their feet. The ceremony’s origins probably lie in the Mayan tradition of the yaxche, the tree of life. The rest of the day is marked by colorful processions, which include the baile de la conquista, the dance of the conquest, in which masked dancers portray the Spanish conquistadores.
