Myth & Moor is returning soon after its long hiatus. Watch this space. We have news to catch up on, books and art to recommend, some wonderful Guest Posts to publish, and the story of the little fuzzy critter in the photo above to tell you. In the meantime, studio assistant Lunar Hine writes and curates a Myth & Moor newsletter here. And you'll find both Lunar and me over on my Patreon page.
I've been away from Myth & Moor for rather a long time now. There's just been so much going on around here: hard grief after the loss of our beloved dog Tilly (following the loss of two members of my family in the last two years, both deaths sudden and heart-breaking), a new medical issue to come to grips with (on top of the old ones), and deadlines to meet (because work goes on even when the body fails and the heart is heavy). I do plan to start Myth & Moor back up as soon as health and energy allow, but due to the unfolding medical issues, I really don't know when that will be. Thank you for bearing with me.
What I wish for you all at the turning of the calendar is the same thing I wish for me and my family: a calm, gentle, and healthy new year, with abundant creativity, many fine stories, and a dollop of magic.
For those who have requested a re-posting of my previous piece on New Year traditions in my family-of-origin, you'll find it here. Bless you for asking. The art above is my "Bird Mother and Lost Child." The photograph of me and and Tilly was taken by Jonathan Higgs in the woods behind my studio, 2021. She was the best of dogs and we miss her so much.
Each year as Christmas approaches I receive requests to re-post this piece on the tales and folk customs of winter holiday season, so here it is. Today I am making a new batch of kiffles, as Howard prepares the rest of the holiday food and tends the fire. Tonight we'll join our Chagford neighbours singing carols in the village square; tomorrow we'll eat, and drink, and count our blessings, while raising a glass for all of the loved ones we've lost in the last two years. (Far too many.) It's a bittersweet holiday this time, our first without Tilly...but joy can co-exist with sorrow, and there's much to be joyful for right now. Our family, our friends, our community, and all of you here at Myth & Moor.
A cold wind howls, stripping leaves off of the trees, and the pathways through the hills are laced with frost. It's time to admit that winter is truly here, and it's here to stay. But Howard keeps the old Rayburn stove in the kitchen well fed, so our wind-battered little house at the edge of the village is cozy and warm. Our Solstice decorations are up, and tonight I'll make a second batch of kiffles: the Christmas cookies passed on through generations of women in my mother's Pennsylvania Dutch family...carried now to England and passed on to our daughter, who may one day pass it to children of her own.
My personal tradition is to talk to those women of the past generations as I roll out the kiffle dough and cut, fill, roll, and shape each cookie: to my mother, grandmother, and old great-aunts (all of whom have passed on now)...and further back, to the women in the family line that I never knew.
Kiffles are a labor-intensive process (as so many of those fine old recipes were), so I have plenty of time to tell the Grandmothers news and stories of the year gone by. This annual ritual centers me in time, place, lineage, and history; it keeps my world turning through the seasons, as all storytelling is said to do. Indeed, in some traditions there are stories that can only be told in the wintertime.
Here in Devon, there are certain "piskie" tales told only in the winter months -- after the harvest is safely gathered in and the faery rites of Samhain have passed. In previous centuries, throughout the countryside families and neighbors gathered around the hearthfire during the long, dark hours of the winter season, gossiping and telling stories as they labored by candle, lamp, and firelight. The "women's work" of carding, spinning, and sewing was once so entwined with storytelling that Old Mother Goose was commonly pictured by the hearth, distaff in hand.
In the Celtic region of Brittany, the season for storytelling begins in November (the Black Month of Toussaint), goes on through December (the Very Black Month), and ends at Christmas. (A.S. Byatt, you may recall, drew on this tradition in her wonderful novel Possession.) In early America, some of the Puritan groups which forbade the "idle gossip" of storytelling relaxed these restraints at the dark of the year, from which comes a tradition of religious and miracle tales of a uniquely American stamp: Old World folktales transplanted to the New and given a thin Christian gloss. Among a number of the different Native American nations across the continent, winter is also considered the appropriate time for certain modes of storytelling: a time when long myth cycles are told and learned and passed through the generations. Trickster stories are among the tales believed to hasten the coming of spring. Among many tribes, Coyote stories must only be told in the dark winter months; at any other time, such tales risk offending this trickster, or drawing his capricious attention.
In myth cycles to be found around the globe, the death of the year in winter was echoed by the death and rebirth of the Winter King (also called the Sun King, or Year King), a consort of the Great Goddess (representing the earth's fertility) in her local guise. The rebirth or resurrection of her consort (representing the sun, sky, or quickening winds) not only brought light back to the world, turning the seasons from winter to spring, but also marked a time of new beginnings, cleansing the soul of sins and sicknesses accumulated in the twelve months passed. Solstice celebrations of the ancient world included the carnival revels of Roman Saturnalia (December 17-24), the Anglo-Saxon vigil of The Night of the Mother to renew the earth's fertility (December 24th), the Yule feasts of the Norse honoring the One-Eyed God and the spirits of the dead (December 25), the Persian Mithric festival called The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun (December 25th), and the more recent Christian holiday of Christmas, marking the birth of the Lord of Light (December 25th).
Many symbols we associate with Christmas today actually come from older ceremonies of the Solstice season. Mistletoe, holly, and ivy, for instance, were gathered in their magical potency by moonlight on Winter Solstice Eve, then used throughout the year in Celtic, Baltic and Germanic rites. The decoration of evergreen trees can be found in a number of older traditions: in rituals staged in decorated pine groves (the pinea silvea) of the Great Goddess; in the Roman custom of dedicating a pine tree to Attis on Winter Solstice Day; and in the candlelit trees of Norse Yule celebrations, honoring Frey and Freyja in their aspects of Hunter, Huntress, and Protectors of Forests. The Yule Log is a direct descendant from Norse and Anglo-Saxon rites; and caroling, pageantry, mummers plays, eating plum puddings, and exchanging gifts are all elements of Solstice celebrations handed down from the pre-Christian world.
Even the story of the virgin birth of a Divine, Heroic or Sacrificial Son is not a uniquely Christian legend, but one found in cultures all around the globe -- from the myths of Asia, Africa and old Europe to Native American tales. In ancient Syria, for example, a feast on the 25th of December celebrated the Nativity of the Sun; at midnight the sun was born in the form of a child to the Virgin Queen of Heaven, an aspect of the the goddess Astarte.
Likewise, it is interesting to note that the date chosen for New Year's Day in the Western world is a relatively modern invention. When Julius Caesar revised the Roman calendar in 46 BC, he chose January 1 -- following the riotous celebrations of Saturnalia -- as the official beginning of the year. Early Christians condemned the date as pagan, tied to licentious practices, and much of Europe resisted the Julian calendar until the Gregorian reforms in the 16th century; instead, they celebrated New Year's Day on the 25th of December, the 21st of March, or various other dates. (England first adopted January 1 as New Year's Day in 1752).
The Chinese, Jewish, Wiccan and other calendars use different dates as the start of the year, and do not, of course, count their years from the date of Christ's birth. Yet such is the power of ritual and myth that January 1st is now a potent date to us, a demarcation line drawn between the familiar past and the unknowable future. Whatever calendar you use, the transition from one year into the next is the traditional time to take stock of one's life -- to say goodbye to all that has passed and prepare for a new life ahead. The Year King is symbolically slain, the sun departs, and the natural world goes dark. Rituals, dances, pageants, and spiritual vigils are enacted in lands around the world to propitiate the sun's return and keep the great wheel of the seasons rolling.
Special foods are eaten on New Year's Day to ensure fertility, luck, wealth, and joy in the year to come: pancakes in France, rice cakes in Ceylon, new grains in India, and cake shaped as boar in Estonia and Sweden, among many others. In my family, we ate the last of those scrumptious kiffles...if they'd managed to last that long. They could not, by tradition, be made again before December of the following year, and so the last bite was always a little sad (and especially delicious). The Christmas tree and decorations were taken down on New Year's Day, and the house was thoroughly cleaned and swept: this was another Pennsylvania Dutch custom, brushing out any bad luck lingering from the year behind, making way for good luck to come.
May you have a lovely winter holiday, in whatever tradition you celebrate, full of all the magic of home and hearth, of oven and table, and of the wild wood beyond.
The paintings above are by three great artists of the Golden Age of Book illustration: Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Edmund Dulac (1882-1953), and Charles Robinson (1870-1937). You'll find titles in the picture captions. (Run your cursor over the images to see them.) The bunny girl sketch, of course, is one of mine.
Typepad, the platform that hosts Myth & Moor, has had massive problems over the last few weeks as they've moved from one data centre to another. While many issues have been resolved, other problems remain and this blog isn't functioning 100% normally yet. You may find pages hard to load, art still missing on a number of pages, and I'm still having difficulties in publishing new posts like this one. The engineers at Typepad say they are working on it, and I hope it will all settle down soon. In the meantime, I'm sorry that so many posts in the archives are not loading all of their imagery. Please bear with us.
Thank you also for your patience with Myth & Moor has been on hiatus. As many of you know, it's been a very rough summer and autumn for us. I'll be back just as soon as I can be.
Pictures above: Celebrating May Day here in Chagford last spring, with storyteller & folklorist Lisa Schneidau (whose books I hope you all know), our village Jack-in-Green (Lisa's husband, naturalist Tony Whitehead), our 'Obby 'Oss (Howard) and the Oss Minder (me). Now we are heading into the dark of the year, also rich with folklore and magic.