Winter Festivals Worldwide

WINTER FESTIVALS WORLDWIDE By Mike McPhee [Service delivered at SUC on 17 July 2016.] Two years ago to the month, I gave a presentation on summer festivals around the world. This will be the third in the series, as I dealt with autumn celebrations at the beginning of this year. As so often happens, my research revealed all manner of things I had never heard of before. As we all know, the Winter Solstice in any hemisphere occurs when the corresponding pole points directly away from the Sun. It results in the shortest day of the year and the entire area within the polar circle (66.50 N/S Latitude) experiences 24 hours of darkness. Due to the small eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, the date of the northern Winter Solstice varies between 21 and 22 December (though leap years have the greatest short- term effect). However, the precession of the Earth causes the tilted axis to turn in a circle over 26,000 years. This results in what is called the Precession of the Equinoxes, whereunder all the seasonal points move backward by a month every 2000 years. Thus, the northern Winter Solstice was in the area of 21 January when the Roman calendar was established. 1 Winter feasts must have originated in the caves, if only to boost morale as our ancestors huddled around their fires, awaiting the return of longer days and warmer weather. It is impressive to note that Neolithic people could locate the position (if not the date) of the mid-winter sunrise, as seen by the alignments of passage tombs and stone circles. By that time, agrarian societies would slaughter animals to save feeding them and the ales and/or wines made from the previous harvest would be fully fermented, so the feasting should have been merry, indeed. The Ancient Greeks and Romans had a month-long festival called Brumalia, dedicated to Dionysus/Bacchus (the god of wine), ending with the Winter Solstice (25 December, by their reckoning), which in Rome was called Saturnalia. People decorated their homes with greenery and exchanged gifts, and the social norms were relaxed to permit gambling, general tomfoolery and even measured impertinence on the part of slaves. (In some cases, masters and slaves would reverse their roles, though the latter still prepared the feast that the former served them.) Togas were discarded in favour of informal dinner clothes and everyone wore the pileus (freedman’s hat). Attempts by Augustus Caesar and, later, Caligula, to shorten the festivities were met with massive revolts. 2 More ancient, though is Shab-e Yaldā, which was celebrated in Persia since at least Zoroastrian times. Commemorating the longest and darkest night of the year, it is a time for family and friends to eat, drink and read poetry until well past midnight. Traditional foods are nuts, sweetmeats and fruits, particularly pome- granates and watermelons, as their reddish hues represent the light of dawn and the glow of life. The Zoroastrians saw that night as a time when the power of the evil god, Amrihan, was at its peak, so people were advised to stay awake and in company to avoid misfortune. However, in modern Iran, the festival is largely secular and people of all religions celebrate it. Similarly ancient is the Dōngzhì Festival, celebrated at the Winter Solstice in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. While its vintage is unknown, its Taoist origins are evident in the principle that the flow of positive energy increases with the lengthening days. It is a time for family gatherings and honouring the ancestors, though the customs vary from place to place. In the south of China, the traditional food is tangyuan, balls of glutinous rice flour (sometimes with fillings and often coloured), cooked and served in a sweet soup or savoury broth. The standard drink is a mildly alcoholic rice wine, unfiltered to leave some rice grains in it. In northern China, the specialty is dumplings in the shape of ears. According to legend, Zhang Zhongjing, a physician during the Han Dynasty, saw that the poor had chilblains on their ears in winter and ordered his apprentices to make dumplings for them. In Taiwan, there is a similar emphasis on hot nourishing food – in addition to tangyuan, they use steamed rice flour to make nine-storey cakes in the shapes of various animals as an offering to the ancestors. 3 The Buddhists of Sri Lanka celebrate the festival of Uduvapa Poya (also known as Sanghamitta Day) at the Full Moon in December. According to tradition, Buddhism was introduced there in the 3rd Century BCE by Sanghamitta, the daughter of Emperor Ashoka of India, and her brother, Mahinda. Both had joined religious orders and their father sent them to Sri Lanka at the request of its king, Devanamplya Tissa. They brought with them a branch of the sacred Bodhi Tree, under which the Buddha had attained Enlightenment, which was planted at the royal capital and is still there today. The annual celebration, which was revived in 1903, is led by ten nuns and consists of prayers in the temple from sunrise till the dawn of the next day. Returning to Europe, we find a number of pagan societies that took winter in general, and the solstice in parti- cular, very seriously. Korochun was a Slavic festival celebrated from Russia to Serbia, though the name has cognates even in Hungarian and Romanian. Again, the solstice was seen as the day when Chernabog (the Black God) and other spirits of decay and darkness were most potent. They would defeat Hors, the god of the declining old Sun, but he would be resurrected as Koleda, the new Sun, on the next day. The Western Slavs lit bonfires in cemeteries on this night to keep their dead ancestors warm, held feasts in their honour and performed a chain-dance for Hors that is still called the horo in Bulgaria today. In a pattern that we will see across Europe, the festival was coopted by Christianity and the name is now coterminous with Christmas. 4 In Latvia and, presumably, the larger region where Baltic speakers once lived, Ziemassvētki was celebrated at the time of the solstice with a number of interesting traditions. First was towing an oak log through the village or town, whose rolling represented the solar cycle and the collection of all the failures, bad thoughts and deeds of the past year. It was then burned in a bonfire to destroy all misfortune and sorrow for a fresh start in the new year. Of course, there would then be a celebration with feasting, singing and dancing. Another practice was masked mummers in ghostly costumes, walking from one village to another to bring blessings and drive away evil spirits. They carried scalded tree branches, whose life force was transferred to every person and animal they touched. The Balts claim to have been the first Europeans to put evergreen trees in their homes and decorate them with straw, coloured yarn, bird feathers and dried flowers and fruits. Reputedly, the best drinkers at solstice celebrations were the Germanic peoples whose Jul festival gave us the alternate name, ‘Yule’, for Christmas. Viking practices are the best-known, though not all historians agree that the festivities ran from Mid-Winter to 12 January, with the feasting, drinking and sacrifices taking place over the last three days. In regions where there was still sufficient sunlight, there would also be games and contests. In Norse mythology, the Sun was a goddess called Sól, drove a chariot across the sky on an eternal flight from the devouring wolf of darkness. The wolf is a denizen of the Underworld (Hel), representing death, and its swallowing of the Sun would have been truly evident at latitudes near the Arctic Circle. 5 While the Yule log is arguably of Nordic origin, the connection between our Christmas hams and the Yule boar is less evident. While there are no records to this effect, it is thought that the date of Christmas was chosen because it was three days after the Winter Solstice; i.e., the ‘death’ of the year. However, we do know that Christ’s Mass was celebrated in Rome by or before 354 CE and in Constantinople from 379. Today, some denominations hold a special mass, known as ‘Blue Christmas’, on 22 December. The period from the fourth Sunday before Christmas is known as Advent, a reference to both the coming of the Nativity and the Second Coming of Christ. Traditions include keeping an Advent Calendar, one flap of which is opened each day. There is also an Advent Wreath, laid flat with four candles in the periphery and one in the middle. One of the former is lit on the first Sunday, two on the second, and so on; the last, usually white, is lit on Christmas Eve. 6 In the Early Middle Ages, the Feast of the Epiphany on 06 January was the dominant Christmastide celebration, commemorating the revelation of the Son of God to the world. In the Western tradition, that revelation was to the Magi who had come in search of him, whereas the Orthodox churches regard the Epiphany as Jesus’ baptism as an adult, after which he commenced his public mission. In any case, the period between Christ’s Mass and Epiphany became known as the Twelve Days of Christmas. Shortly after these festivities were put in place by the early Christian churches, Bishop Nikolaos of Myra (in what is now Turkey) died in 343 and many legends arose regarding his miracles and generosity to children.

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