The elder brother goes out just before midnight on Christmas Eve to offer his last mug of cider to the trees. He’s already given a few extra tidbits to the ox and the donkey and decorated their stalls with holly, so we know he’s a decent fellow. As he pours the cider over the roots, the Apple-Tree Man appears to him, his face as wrinkled as that last frostbitten apple that was always left on the bough for the fairies. He urges the elder brother to poke a spade under one of his twisted roots. Sure enough, the elder brother unearths a chest full of gold coins, which he quickly hides inside the house before the younger brother arrives. As the younger brother turns in at the gate, he hears the donkey and the ox conversing about the rude and greedy fool who has come too late for the treasure he seeks. The younger brother returns home, outwitted by the Apple-Tree Man.
In “Tibb’s Cat and the Apple-Tree Man,” Ruth L. Tongue offers us another strange but charming tale about a curious little cat who resided at Tibb’s Farm. This “dairymaid,” as white tortoiseshell cats used to be called, wanted to know where the black cats went on all the “wisht nights witches do meet” and was always trying to follow them. Having failed to keep up on Candlemas and Halloween, on New Year’s Eve she finally manages to reach the edge of the dark orchard into which the other cats have disappeared. But before she can put so much as a paw among the trees, the Apple-Tree Man calls out to her in his creaking voice, urging her to turn around and go back home, for soon the men will be coming to anoint his roots with cider and fire their guns to frighten the witches away. No, the orchard is no place for a little cat on New Year’s Eve, he tells her. Best to wait and come back on St. Tibb’s Eve. So the little cat went home to wait for St. Tibb’s Eve, but it never came, and she soon forgot all about following the witches’ cats.
Here’s a final tip from the Apple-Tree Man: a December blossom, though pretty, means that someone in the household is going to die in January. And if there are blossoms while there are still ripe apples on the tree, pinch the blossoms off or, again, someone is sure to expire.
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43. December 31 is St. Sylvester’s feast day, but in German-speaking countries it is known as Silvesterabend, “Sylvester’s Eve,” while New Year’s Day is simply Silvester. It seems that the identity of this fourth-century Roman pope was quickly subsumed by the festivities of the outgoing year when another pope, Innocent XII, fixed New Year’s Day as January 1.
44. See page 327 of John Seymour’s The Forgotten Arts and Crafts for an enjoyable account of how Mr. Seymour and a neighbor attempted to unblock a Welsh farmhouse chimney on Old New Year’s Day while still reeling from the excesses of Old New Year’s Eve.
45. Many assume that a wassail bowl must contain either hard or soft cider, but while hard cider was poured over the roots of the trees, the medieval wassail bowl, which was meant for human consumption, had no cider in it. Baked apples were floated in an ale-based concoction flavored with wine, sugar, and a host of spices. At the last minute, the hot brew was thickened with beaten eggs, thus making the traditional wassail bowl a cross between bishop’s wine and eggnog.
46. All wassail-carol quotes in this paragraph were gleaned from pages 46–47 of Ronald Hutton’s The Stations of the Sun. If you find yourself fascinated by wassailing customs, I recommend the chapter “Rituals of Purification and Blessing,” in which those pages are contained, as well as Ella Mary Leather’s classic tome, The Folklore of Herefordshire.
CONCLUSION
Eternity
There they sat, those two happy ones, grown up,
and yet children—children in heart, while all around
them glowed bright summer—warm, glorious summer.
~hans christian andersen, “the snow queen”
By Candlemas, a full forty days will have passed since Christmas. Mary will have been churched,47 so to speak; the days will have grown longer; and there will be little need for candles except from a spiritual point of view. On Candlemas Day, you can sit in a clean-swept parlor and watch the snowdrops opening outside the window, but tonight there is work to be done. “Down with the rosemary, and so/Down with the bays and mistletoe”48 and all the other Christmas greens: down they must come if you have not already stripped your mantels and banisters.
Nowadays, most of us are sparing with the greens, contenting ourselves with a wreath on the door and one waifish sprig of mistletoe hanging from the lintel. Swags and roping cost money, but back in the good old days when England was a maze of hedgerows, they were mostly free. At Christmastime, English churchwardens went a little wild, not so much with the rosemary and the bay—Mediterranean natives that must be cultivated—but with mistletoe, holly, ivy, broom, and box. It was largely English monks who ventured to the continent in the eighth and ninth centuries to stop the Germanic tribesmen worshipping among the trees or, worse yet, worshipping the trees themselves, so it’s a little ironic that at Christmas the primeval forest should have reappeared inside the English church.
Most churches and homes had their decorations down by January 7, but it was permissible to leave them up until Candlemas. If you kept them up longer than that, you risked an infestation of undesirable spirits. For each leaf—some said needle or twig—of Christmas greenery lingering in the house after that date, there would be one goblin cavorting with the dust bunnies under the sofa or elsewhere in the house. But what to do with all those prickly things once they had been torn from their hooks and piled outside the door? The sheer volume of “brownery” was the perfect excuse for a bonfire. This “Burning of the Greens” survives as a pyre built of Christmas trees in many American towns, especially in New England. In nineteenth-century Scotland, where there was little to be had in the way of Christmas greens, people observed Candlemas with bonfires of the yellow-flowered gorse and broom they gathered on the moor.
Judging by the number of crunchy brown wreaths still drooping on doors on Valentine’s Day, it seems that people just don’t worry about goblins anymore. I’d like to believe that this is because, on Candlemas, we’re too busy enjoying one last hurrah to think about undecorating, but for most of us, this is not the case. In Mexico, El Día de la Candelaria is a day of fireworks and children’s parties, and a few European countries hold candlelit processions, but these are the exceptions. Here in the twenty-first century, our lack of imagination has succeeded in banishing the ghosts, goblins, witches, and elves better than any bonfire could. By February 2, we have long since forgotten about Christmas and returned to the workaday world. With a full six weeks of winter still to get through, it’s no wonder we get so excited about the prognostications of a certain groundhog.
Outside, beyond the snowdrops, the road salt dissolves the skin of ice only to be washed to the shoulder by the sweep of the spring rains. In July, the blacktop sends up shivers of heat so that, just for an instant, it looks as if there are tinsel streamers blowing on the horizon. And there we are, driving over the hot, treacly asphalt, petroleum fumes thick in the nose, entertaining memories of Christmas. Were we really visited by all those spirits, or was it just a dream? Ask the spirits themselves and they might tell us, “Yes, it was all a dream,” for, really, the spirits don’t want to intrude: that is why they limit their visits to just a handful of days a year.
What would the children say if they could speak of such things? Most children rush headlong into Christmas without a care or backward glance. It’s the others you want to watch: the boy who goes stiff and unsmiling as he’s hoisted onto Santa’s lap, the girl who approaches her stuffed stocking on Christmas morning with a sense of trepidation even though she can plainly see the doleful-eyed beanie baby staring out over the cuff. Those children know. That stocking, which appears unremarkable to adult eyes, has obviously been stuffed through supernatural agency and must therefore be handled with care. Once the toys have been unloaded and unwrapped, they will belong to the child, but until then, they belong to the Otherworld. Can’t you see
how the patterned Christmas paper, last handled by elves, still pulsates with magic? And what about the old man himself? How can he still be so spry, so alive, after two thousand years?
He can’t be, not properly.
It’s all right to accept presents from Santa Claus, these children would tell you, just as it was and is all right to accept gifts from the Christmas Child, Barborka, and Epiphany Witch, for these are our rewards, our incentives, for staying on our own side of the veil. It is patently not all right to wait up for the gift-giver, to sneak a peak under that screen of hair or bushel of tulle, or to follow the visitors out the door when they go. It is forbidden to dance with them, to eat at their table, and even, in some cases, to address them directly. The problem is not that the spirits cannot be engaged or looked upon in all their horror or glory, but that they ought not to be, not yet. If you have questions for them, if you would know more, you have only to wait a little—not an eternity, just the space of a lifetime.
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47. Mary’s postpartum purification at the Temple was the blueprint for the medieval Christian “churching” of women forty days after they had given birth.
48. These are the opening lines of Robert Herrick’s 1670 poem “Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve,” which is a short version of his “Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve.”
ADDENDUM
A Calendar of
Christmas Spirits and Spells
Mid-October to Mid-November: Álfablót
You don’t have to wait for those mall decorations to go up to start celebrating the elves. Now is the time to host an Elf Sacrifice, or feast for the Álfar, in the old Nordic tradition.
November 11: St. Martin’s Day
Don’t be surprised if St. Martin has come and turned your bedside glass of water to wine in the night.
If the geese are ice-skating this morning, you’ll have a mild winter. If they’re splashing, you’ll have a cold one. It’s all up to the Wild Rider, who will be swirling through the skies on his dappled horse from now through the Twelve Nights of Christmas.
Jack-o’-lanterns are now out of season, but you might consider carving an old-fashioned turnip lantern in token of the bonfires that once burned on this night.
November 24: St. Catherine’s Eve
If you’re not too busy baking cattern-cakes, you should try to get a jump on your spinning today. All wool and flax must be spun by Twelfth Night if you are to have a good visit from the Spinnstubenfrau.
November 29: St. Andrew’s Eve
All over northern Europe, this was the first of many nights on which Bleigiessen, the pouring of molten lead into cold water, might be practiced. Each hardened blob of lead was scrutinized for hints as to what gifts one might receive in the coming year. Does it resemble a coffin or a car? If you don’t like what you see, you can try again on St. Barbara’s, Christmas, New Year’s, or Epiphany Eves. If you can’t get your hands on a Bleigiessen kit—they’re hard to come by these days—you can simply throw your shoes over your shoulder and see how they land.
Romanian vampires are out in force tonight: rub all window and door frames with garlic so they can’t get in.
December 3: St. Barbara’s Eve
You must go out and cut your “Barbara branches” tonight if they are to bloom in time for Christmas Eve. After you’ve put them in water, you can start looking out for the long-haired Barborky with their brooms, carpet-beaters, and baskets of sweets.
December 5: St. Nicholas’ Eve
On this date in 1844, Hans Christian Andersen began writing “The Snow Queen” in his hotel room in Copenhagen.
Tomorrow, if St. Nicholas decides you have been good, you can start eating Spekulaas, “mirrors,” which are cookies of pressed dough bearing images of windmills, castles, and seventeenth-century Dutch ladies. If he decides you have been bad, he will allow his sidekick Black Peter to stuff you in his sack and carry you off to Spain.
If Svatý Mikulaš, the Czech St. Nicholas, decides you have been naughty, he will turn you over to the goat-hoofed demon Čert, who will drag you all the way down to Hell.
Advent Thursdays
Advent candles are lit on the four Sundays preceding Christmas. (If Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday, it doubles as Fourth Advent.) The last three Thursdays of Advent were dedicated to Yuletide goddess/witch Berchta and her retinue. This was the time to scare evil spirits out from under the eaves by banging on pots and pans, playing fiddles, and throwing dried legumes. Spinning is forbidden on these nights.
In the Middle Ages, Advent, like Lent, was a season of abstinence. Sex at any time during Advent might result in a child who would eventually become a werewolf.
December 9: St. Anne’s Day
In Sweden, the arrival of St. Anne’s Day meant it was time to start reconstituting the dried cod that would be served on Christmas Eve. St. Anne is also popular with the Finns, who have conflated Jesus’s maternal grandmother with their own female forest spirit, Anni. Today, Finnish women begin baking the Christmas loaves that will serve as centerpieces and, like the Swedish Yule Boar, ensure prosperity in the coming year.
December 12: St. Lucy’s Eve
As well as marking the Old Style winter solstice, St. Lucy’s Day was an Ember Day, or day of fasting, beginning the night before.
It’s not yet time to deck the halls but to dust, scrub, and polish them in preparation for a visit from one of the many cross-dressing Slavic and Germanic Lucys.
On St. Lucy’s Eve, young men might read their futures in the Luzieschein, balls of light dancing over the rooftops.
If you’ve started making Icelandic snowflake breads, better hide them from the ravenous Yule Lads, the first of whom arrives today.
December 13: St. Lucy’s Day
Having survived the erstwhile darkest night of the year, you can get up early and celebrate Swedish style with “Lucy cats,” coffee, and candlelight.
December 20: St. Thomas’ Eve
In that region of the Czech Republic formerly known as Bohemia, this was not a good night to venture into the churchyard. At the stroke of twelve, all those who were called Thomas in life rose from their graves to be blessed by the dead saint himself, whose approach was heralded by the rumbling of his chariot wheels. At home, salt and holy water were cast about to petition the Apostle—Thor or Wodan in disguise?—for his protection.
Poor English children who went “a-thomassing,” begging door to door on this night, were appeased with small change. In return, they handed out blessings in the form of holly and mistletoe sprigs.
Meanwhile, on the isle of Guernsey, will-o’-the-wisps, spectral dogs, and white rabbits (who were probably witches in disguise) were also about after dark. They haunted all the nights between St. Thomas’ and New Year’s Eve.
December 23
On this date in 1893, Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairy opera Hansel and Gretel was performed for the first time.
December 24: Christmas Eve
Many Europeans are only just putting up their Christmas trees today. In some places, the Christ Child himself will bring the tree; in others, he/she will only light the candles.
Forget cookies for Santa; in Greece, tonight was the night to stuff the chimney full of pork sausages and sweetmeats for the kallikantzaroi. Try not to give birth today; a child born on Christmas Eve stands a good chance of becoming a kallikantzaros himself.
You should also put out some grain for the Yule Buck, fish heads for the Yule Boar, and, most importantly, don’t forget the resident household sprite’s annual bowl of rice porridge.
If you are staying home alone tonight, try not to fall asleep, and do not speak, no matter who or what comes in the door.
On Christmas Eve in Lithuania, unmarried young men and women might turn to catoptromancy, or mirror magic, to identify their future spouses. Banding together, they took a mirror
to an abandoned (shall we read haunted?) house and lit two candles before it. The mirror would fog up, presumably from all that excited breathing going on in the unheated parlor, and as each participant wiped the mirror in turn, he or she would see the face of the person in question.
Christmas Eve was one of two nights of the year on which seals were most likely to shed their skins and appear in human form. The other was Midsummer’s Eve.
December 25: Christmas Day
Reckoned by some as the First Day of Christmas (for others it is December 26), this is a relatively quiet day, supernaturally speaking. Scandinavians leaving for church before sunrise fit plenty of torches onto the sleigh to scare off any homeward-bound trolls they met along the way.
Holly picked today will keep witches away all year.
December 25 (or 26) to January 5 (or 6):
The Twelve Days (and Nights) of Christmas
Do many of your neighbors go away over the Twelve Days of Christmas? If you notice a preponderance of wolves in the neighborhood at this time, then they probably haven’t gone away at all; they’ve simply assumed lupine form, as werewolves are famous for doing between Christmas and Epiphany. Children born during the Twelve Days of Christmas may become werewolves themselves.
The Old Magic of Christmas Page 18