[This is an ‘updated and extended version’ of a ‘pamphlet’ by one of my characters; Geoffrey C Whittier—that was (in world) written to be handed out at Mill House (one of the Whittier houses around Deer Hill) during the December Holidays for almost the same reason as I present it here; to introduce the “Thirteen Nights and Dayes of Yule.” The spelling of 'Dayes" stems from the book written by Egbert Whittier in 1835; the originator of the calendar. This version of the 'pamphlet,' in world, is posted at the Deer Hill website. – Montague Whitsel]
“YULE: An Introduction to the Whittier Calendar of Thirteen Nights and Dayes [3rd Edition]” - by Geoffrey C Whittier
“The light in the window was from the candles set on the boughs of a large fir tree, she now realized! Sybil stopped in the snow to look; to bring it into better focus. From this more intimate distance, she could make out the individual sources of light in the beacon that had drawn her down off the ridge to safety. The Yule Tree that she could see in the window of the large old house was comforting and inviting. It opened her heart toward the hearth that must surely be burning within the olden graying walls of the rustic farmhouse. She wanted to go down to the front door of this old and still familiar house and ring the doorbell. It was time to find solace; and accept it. She had been away so long, lost in the byways of life. This was her old uncle’s house, and she had found it, at long last, without intending to.” (12)
-
Susan
Jean Thymes Whittier
The House
Upon the Hill
(1973)
We have always loved this passage –
and many more like it – by one of the writers in our extended family. Susan
Jean’s description of the discovery of a house that becomes a sanctuary for a
battered and beleaguered character named Sybil is iconic of what the Yule means
to us. Yule, simply put, is a time for homecoming, not just in a literal sense
– though some of us do sometimes ‘come
home for Christmas’ – but more importantly: figuratively, spiritually,
poetically. “Home” and “Yule” are
deeply linked in our experience, our storytelling and our family’s ‘deep psyche.’ Our idea of Home is not a mere sentimental ‘escape’ from the ‘real world,’ but a
grounded and grounding ‘place’ – symbolic and imaginative, if not actual – of deep restoration and
re-connection with family and friends as well as with Nature and – by extension
– all of humanity. We enact this
‘homecoming’ through gathering and feasting, meditation and dancing, music and
hiking—all of our activities orchestrated by the calendar we know as “The
Thirteen Nights and Dayes[i]
of Yule.”
Connected to the ideas of Home and
Homecoming is the idea of the Hearth,
a symbol of human community with a deep history; a metaphor for the place of
gathering and all the activities in which we can be engaged when togethered in
genuine friendship and love! To be so
gathered together – to be ‘at home’ with one another – requires compassion, which arises out of mutual
understanding, forbearance, and the recognition of our common humanity as well
as our inevitable – and often awe-inspiring – differences. Yule is a time for refreshing our humanity by
reawakening our innate compassion for those with whom we are actually gathered
– even if we are keeping the Yule in solitude; for there is still fellowship and the awareness of significant others when we are alone – and, by extension, for
every human being on the planet; our ‘neighbors’ in our own locality and all
around the world.
“On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside,
Nothing.”
-
Charles Dickens What
Christmas is as We Grow Older (1851)
Home—Homecoming—Hearth; these are the touchstones of the Yuletide Season as our
family has celebrated it over the last two centuries. They are encoded in a calendar called The Thirteen Nights and Dayes which was created by our ancestor Egbert Whittier (1743-1832) in the
first decade after his arrival in
western Pennsylvania in 1790.[ii] The
Thirteen “Nights and Dayes” – which begin on the 13th of December
and extend to and include the 25th – are an intentional, symbolic patterning
of the Winter Solstice Season; they describe a personal and communal
journey. They make possible a journey of
poetic, aesthetic and often mystical import through the darkening days of
December, ending in the first days of the New Solar Year, at Christmas.
We have come to believe that they tap into
deep naturalistic and poetic truths underlying our common existence as human
beings-in-becoming. They offer a journey
of self-discovery wherein spiritual and psychological renewal and rebirth – poetic
self-transformations and transfigurations – are possible. The Thirteen Nights & Dayes orient the
devout Yuletide pilgrim to both the external reality of Winter’s Solstice and
its internal realization. As related in
Egbert’s book,[iii]
the calendar is as follows:
The Thirteen Nights and Dayes of Yule (13 –
25 December)
Rowan
Day (Gathering Night, 13 December)
Cedar
Day (Lighting Night, 14 December)
Balsam
Fir Day (Initiation Night, 15 December)
Hemlock
Day (Storytelling Night, 16 December)
White
Pine Day (Fire in the Hearth Night, 17 December)
Blue
Spruce Day (Visions & Quests Night, 18 December)
Jack
Pine Day (Solitude & Silence Night, 19 December)
Pine
Tree Moss Day (The Faery Wood, 20 December)
Winterwoodmas
(Winter Solstice Night, 21 December)
Yew
Day (Visitation Night, 22 December)
Black
Spruce Day (Nemeton and Heath Night, 23 December)
Bayberry
Day (Birth of the God Night, 24 December)
Scotch
Pine Day (Night of Self-Realization, 25 December)
Each ‘Day’ is named after an evergreen
that has long been associated with the Winter Solstice Season. To each ‘Night’ is assigned an ‘activity’
that carries poetic, aesthetic and spiritual import. The daytime activities are often preparatory
for what will go on at night. Some
activities are best done during the day, which can only really be observed when
we are not working or at school (e.g., if they fall on a weekend or vacation
day). Usually, however, the daytime
activity is something we can do in the morning before work or school or at least
meditate on before breakfast.
The schedule is not random, as we
have often found, but implies a seasonal logic, mapping – through stories and
symbols drawn from myths and folklore about the various evergreens after which
they are named – a kind of intuitive and poetic pilgrimage through the
season. We begin by Gathering (13
December), either literally or imaginatively, with others with whom we may want
to keep the season.[iv] The next night (14 December) we ceremonially light
all our decorative lights,[v]
even if we have had decorations up and lit since Nicholas Eve or even earlier! At 11 PM we turn off all our decorations and even electric lights, dwelling in candlelit darkness for a hour. Then, at Midnight, we turn all the Yule lights on, after which we meditate on their beauty and symbolism until we go off to bed.
The
night of the 15th is for ‘initiating’ ourselves more fully into the
season, deciding or discussing ‘where’ we want to ‘go,’ figuratively and
spiritually speaking over the next 10 nights, and if there are any themes or
ideas we want to integrate into our journey in any particular year. The next night – 16 December – is for
storytelling; for telling seasonal tales, watching favorite films with a
seasonal theme, and even engaging in a little ‘Christmas theatre’ – something
that the children and teenagers in our houses often get into doing with
enthusiasm. The night of 17 December is for
meditating quietly on the meaning of the Hearth. While we sometimes light an actual fire in an
actual hearth, more often these days we put a program on a television or
computer screen that shows a Fire in a Hearth.
Otherwise we meditate on pictures of hearths.
The next night (18 December) is an
active one in which we go on imaginative ‘quests’ seeking various destinations
connected with the Yule; e.g., the Dolmen of Yuletide Spirit, the Homely Home
of Nicholas and the Elves (called “Tara Lough” in our family’s traditional tales’),
and whatever other make-believe seasonal locales may be inspiring us at the
moment. The night of the 19th
is once again a quiet night for Silence & Solitude. We typically spend the evening alone, or
perhaps ‘alone together,’ reading, meditating or otherwise being inwardly
directed. This is followed by another
night of imaginative adventuring and storytelling, during which we ‘visit’ the
Faery Wood; on -- i.e., the place from which the Elves of Nicholas originally came—a
ráth called Tara Lough in Old
Ireland. This leads us on into the Day
and Night of Winter Solstice, which we call, following Egbert’s book—Winterwoodmas.
After Winter Solstice Night, the
days slowly begin to get longer, and we begin our journey out of the aura of the
‘Fires of Yule.’ Yew Night (22 December)
is devoted to remembering ancestors, family and friends who have passed on. We tell stories that remind us of them and commune with them in
memory and imagination. On this day we
will set a place at our dinner tables for any loved one who has died in the previous
twelve months, perhaps putting some item of theirs on ‘their’ plate. After dusk, it is time for remembering those
who are more long gone and for telling seasonal ghost stories (the list still
includes Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,
which is sometimes read aloud, either by one person or in parts over the course
of the evening). The next night is another journey and quest night, focused on the
symbolic locations called 'nemetons' & 'heaths;' these being places of spiritual and poetic
self-realization and potential transformation. At these locations -- visited actually or in our imaginations -- we hope to begin
to experience any benefits that may come to us as a result of pathing through
the season. On Christmas Eve we honor
the gods who have been born at Winter Solstice, including Jesus of Nazareth,
and meditate on the ‘birth’ symbolized by the crib in the Nativity scene. We often spend the evening singing carols and
telling stories related to rebirth and the hope of a better future.
Finally, on Christmas Day, we celebrate the
“return of the light” and the hope and joy that have been engendered by our
journey to, through and beyond Winterwoodmas. The Christmas Day dinner is
called the “Feast of Commonweal,” and is usually followed by an evening of
singing and dancing. This formally
concludes the Thirteen Nights & Dayes.
We prepare ourselves to enter into
the Yule by meditating – on the night of the 11th or 12th
of December – on the ‘tree’ associated with each of the Thirteen Nights;
reflecting on what we know of them. Many
of us have collected pictures of each of the evergreens for private use, and
strive to learn something of each species’ character; biological and
mythological—its physical aspects and the environment to which it is best
suited as well as stories in which it is featured that are connected with the
Yule. Some of us even go out to the
woods, each year at the end of November, seeking out the evergreens connected
to the Thirteen Nights, taking pictures of them, smelling their fragrance, and
perhaps even collecting a cone or small sprig from each fir or pine. Others have created a “Specimen Book” for the
trees of Yule in which are mounted drawings, descriptions and pictures they
have taken of whole trees, their branches, needles and cones. At each of the properties on Deer Hill you
will find one or more of the thirteen evergreens of Yule growing. These have been planted over the years as an
additional aid to the keeping of the Yule.
While the Thirteen Nights &
Dayes constitute a complete ‘spiritual’ pilgrimage, to, through and beyond the
Winter Solstice, cast in both poetic and naturalistic terms, in the last decade
of the 19th century, Julia
Rebecca Whittier (1853-1948), the Marian mystic, introduced two days – one
at the beginning and one at the end of the Season. As our ancestor Egbert had told a very unique
story about Nicholas and his Elves, she added the Feast of Nicholas and the Elves (6 December) as a kind of 'Prelude' to the Season, setting the date used in the Catholic Church for the
saint’s feast as an appropriate entry-point into Yule. Then, as the Yuletide mood often persists for
a week or more after 25 December, she also added Epiphany (6 January) as a 'Postlude' to the Season. This after-Yule period corresponds to the
traditional, medieval “Twelve Days of Christmas,” which began on Christmas and
ended on the eve of 6 January, which was called “Twelfth Night.”
By dusk on 6 January, we have put
all our decorations away and taken our trees out of our houses, apartments or
rooms, as the journey through the Winter Solstice Season is now complete. We have hopefully been renewed and refreshed,
our journey having readied us to travel once more through the Wheel of the
Year. Each person charts their own
journey, both together with others and/or alone, and every year our journey –
individually and as a family and community – ends differently; sometimes we are
deeply refreshed and seem to have more insight into life as lived, while in
other years we seem to gain little beyond having a restful, joyous, aesthetic
time. The Thirteen Nights & Dayes
require an intentional engagement, and no matter how well we fare during any
particular Yuletide, they intrigue and comfort us, providing us with a foil
that keeps us from being subsumed in the ‘holiday’ rat-race, giving us
something to commit to at the darkest time of the year. And this is why we keep the Thirteen Nights
& Dayes.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey
C. Whittier
[i]
“Dayes” is a spelling derived and descending from Egbert’s book; it is
idiosyncratic to our family, and we all use it when referring to the Nights and
‘Dayes’ of Yule.
[ii]
We are unsure whether Egbert created the “Thirteen Nights and Dayes” entirely
by himself or whether there was an earlier template for it; or even customs and
traditions back in England that he drew upon.
In any case, no earlier ‘version’ or probable ‘source’ for the schedule
has ever turned up.
[iii]
Egbert Whittier's The Thirteen Dayes of Yule (1800): A Modern Translation (2001,
Geoffrey C Whittier and Robert Werner)
[The product of almost a
decade of work, this text is as faithful a rendering of Egbert's original text
as was possible based on the one surviving copy that was returned to the family
in the 1980's.]
For further description of the Thirteen Nights and
dayes and a variety of stories about the Whittiers’ and their keeping of the
Yule, see Montague Whitsel’s book, Heart
& Hearth: Poetic Explorations of Authentic Human Dwelling in Earth &
Spirit (2008)
[iv]
In recent years, this gathering has been facilitated and augmented by the
Internet. We find ourselves using
websites that allow us to cam with others who could not possibly be with us. Long conversations ensue, and we sometimes
find ourselves gathered about someone’s laptop or pc screen, enjoying the sense
of having ‘gathered’ with those who are living father away.
[v]
We still do this today, even though most of us decorate our places of dwelling
– rooms, apartments, houses – at or soon after Thanksgiving.
No comments:
Post a Comment