Word Wenches

Turning the Page on the Calendar!

Andrea here, wishing everyone a Happy 2022 as we celebrate the first day of the new year. May it bring brighter times and less upheaval and uncertainty in all our lives.

As we mark this transition from old to new, it got me to thinking about how we record the passage of time . . . which of course made me think of calendars! In most of the world, the Gregorian calendar—a refinement of the Roman Julian calendar which was adopted in 1582—is used as the standard for secular use.

Unlike ancient times, where the passage of time was based on lunar cycles, the Gregorian calendar divides the year into 12 months , with a leap day added every four years to keep things in balance.

Some quick research into the history of calendars turned up some very fascinating facts!

Happy New Year!

Christina here. Today is New Year’s Eve and we should all be having a party – champagne, canapés, a huge gathering of friends and lots of fun, music, dancing and laughter. Obviously, that won’t be the case this time and I’m guessing low-key celebrations will be the order of the day instead. Personally, I don’t mind. I’ve never really liked all the hype around this one day – the older I get, the faster it seems to come around and I’d rather not think about how it signifies the rapid passing of time! I just want to spend the evening with my family, perhaps eating and drinking something special, and quietly welcoming the new year.

In Sweden, people say “Gott Slut” to each other until midnight, when this changes to “Gott Nytt År”. “Gott Slut” basically means “Happy Ending”, which has always sounded a bit morbid to me, but it is meant to be taken in a good way, wishing friends and family a happy evening and end of the old year before the new one arrives. I don’t know if any other countries have similar greetings? If you’ve heard of any, please let me know!

Reindogs!

by Mary Jo

Every year, the Mt. Adams neighborhood in Cincinnati hosts their annual Reindog parade, in which dogs are dressed in their holiday best. There's no fee for participating, but donations are gratefully accepted.

And every year, my animal loving and cat rescuing friend Laura Resnick attends with friends of hers, and sends me pictures because I love seeing them!

Some dogs clearly love the attention.  Others look pretty--hangdog, if you'll excuse the expression.  <G>  Prizes are given in different categories. on the left is the winner of the under 25 pound category.

Much as I love cats, I can't imagine them participating in Reincat parades!

Mary Jo, whose favorite is the Lion Dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Angels

Angels we have heard on high 
Sweetly singing o’er the plain. .  .

Susan here, wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy, great New Year, in hopes we are all headed into a much better year at last. Of all the Christmas ornaments we bring out in our house each year, I love the angels the most—from the angel that tops the tree each year to a growing assortment of angels, glittery, lovely, delicate and whimsical. For several years now, that’s all that goes on our tree—angels, along with stars, snowflakes, pearls, and white lights.

Angels at Christmastime are reminders of the angels who appeared to shepherds in the fields outside long-ago Bethlehem to point out the star overhead and a birth in a stable. Those angels, we are told, awed, startled, and probably terrified the shepherds with their magnificence. Today, the angels who gaze down at us from Christmas trees and displays are benign and lovely, but somehow magical nonetheless.  

Love came down at Christmas 
love all lovely, love divine 
love was born at Christmas
stars and angels gave the sign.

- Christina Rossetti

Angels were part of the original nativity event, bringing the news to Mary, informing Joseph in dreams, appearing to the shepherds, and singing the news in heavenly choruses, so we are told. They are mentioned earlier still, in the Old Testament and Talmud as guides and messengers, and before that in Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts and images. Timeless, beautiful, spiritual entities, sometimes cherubic and adorable, or magnificent and awe-inspiring, or whimsical, quirky, homespun, and on and on, angels are a special part of Yuletide.

Here are some Christmas angels to brighten up the Yuletide season!

Niccolo di Sozza Angel, Hyde Collection, Glens Falls NY

 

Christmas is truly the season of angels -- and for centuries, the presence of angels has helped keep the spirit, spark, and magic of the holiday alive in millions of homes worldwide. Wishing you all the magic of the season - and a happy new year! 

 

The Songbirds of Winter

Nicola here. It’s December 28^th and day four of the twelve days of Christmas. These days when I wake up in the mornings it’s usually still dark so I doze for a bit before getting up to make the morning tea and let the dogs out. One of the first sounds I often hear, as dawn is breaking, is birdsong.

In the well-known song, on the fourth day of Christmas, my true loves gives to me “four calling birds” as well as the three French hens, two turtle doves and the partridge in the pear tree. Originally, however the words were “four colly birds,” which in 1780 when the song was written meant four blackbirds. These were the European blackbirds that are the colour of coal dust. The words were changed to “calling birds” in some versions at the start of the 20^th century as so many people didn’t know that “colly bird” was a northern dialect word for a black bird.

In another old nursery rhyme four and twenty blackbirds are baked in a pie and “when the pie was opened the birds began to sing”. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds (although bad enough); in medieval cuisine, the live birds were only put under the pie crust at the last minute to give everyone a surprise when it was served. It certainly would have given you a surprise, I imagine, to find what the blackbirds might have deposited in your pie! (The picture of the blackbird is by Cornelius Nozeman from the collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, part of which is available on Wikimedia Commons.)

This brings me back to waking up in the early morning hearing birdsong. I had thought it was a blackbird in the garden but it turns out that they don’t start singing until the end of January when the male blackbirds start to claim their territories. No, it is the bright and beautiful little European Robin that is perched on our weeping pear tree, singing away as the dawn breaks. Happy Fourth Day of Christmas!

What do you wake up to in the mornings?  Music, a news programme, an alarm, birdsong or like me a nice up of tea? If you would like to listen to the dawn chorus there is a link here.

Merry Saturnalia!

Pat here, wishing all a wonderful holiday season!

While you’re wallowing in gifts and possibly debt from buying them, remember that the partying, gift-giving season most likely started with the Roman’s Saturnalia, a celebration of agricultural bounty in honor of the god Saturn, and quite possibly co-mingled with a celebration of the solstice from earlier times since the dates of the celebration fell between Dec 17-23^rd.

Several other religious celebrations also mark the end of the year with gift-giving, such as the Jewish festival of lights Hanukkah or the Hindu celebration of Pancha Ganapati in honor of Lord Ganesha. So the end of year tradition was well-established before Santa Claus took over.

But it was the Romans who really got into making sacrifices and wild partying, followed by private gift-giving. In their effusive generosity, the Romans treated even slaves as equals during these celebrations. Generally, the  gifts were of small value such as candles, figurines, and gag gifts. Apparently,  the lowlier the gift, the stronger the bond of friendship it represented. Some bosses often gave a gratuity to their clients or employees to help them purchase their gifts—the first version of the Christmas bonus.

As in everything, the Christian church usurped this holiday and made it about the Magi and the gifts to the Christ child. For good measure, they later threw in the tales of Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop and gift-giver, so the pagan holiday became about gifts and goodwill toward men.

And then along came the poem about “The Night Before Christmas” and Santa handing out goodies to good children, and the novella by Dickens of A Christmas Carol telling us all to be good to our neighbors, and the merchants jumped in with both feet and marketed the heck out of gift-giving.

Did you enjoy your Saturnalia?

Boxing Day

Anne here, and it's the 26th of December — St Stephen's Day, and traditionally the occasion in England where church alms boxes were opened and the contents distributed between the poor of the parish. It's the day when Good King Wenceslas gave the poor man meat, wine and wood — "on the feast of Stephen."

It's also called Boxing Day, and this term is still used today in the UK, Australia, Canada, NZ and other commonwealth countries. In Regency times, this was the day when the affluent folk presented servants and tenants and the local poor with "Christmas Boxes."

In practice this could range from money, leftover food from the Christmas feast, to discarded clothing, and all sorts. It's the origin of the Christmas bonus and the custom of leaving out out small gifts for those who deliver to our homes — the paperboy, the postman, the milkman etc. It was also a day when servants who'd been kept busy on Christmas Day could have a day off to celebrate Christmas with their own families. 

But for aristocrats, it was also a day for hunting, donning the "pink" coats and heading out in the crispy dawn to hunt down a hapless fox. (Yes, the coats are actually red, but those in the know refer to the colour as pink, I know not why.) These days fox hunting is banned in the UK, and "drag hunting" has replaced it, though illegal hunts still take place.

Merry Christmas!

Andrea here, wishing a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate the day—and happy holidays to those who welcome the changing season with other spiritual traditions. Today is the first day of Word Wenches’ annual tradition of short daily blogs over the Twelve Days of Christmas. Today, many of us are enjoying the ritual of exchanging presents today with family and friends. It’s a fun and festive occasion for all ages, but especially for children, for whom the sight of gaily wrapped presents under the tree is a magical.

So my my musings today are about childhood gifts, and how some of them resonate with you long after childhood is a mere memory.

Train Gardens

By Mary Jo

Moving to a new area means discovering new things.  When I moved to Maryland, among the new things I discovered were sauerkraut for Thanksgiving, and train gardens. 

Train gardens, you ask? These are elaborate miniature landscapes with electric trains created at Christmastime, most often in firehouses. They are charming and great fun, and apparently, like sauerkraut, they have German ancestry.

The custom has been traced to 18th century Moravian settlers in the Lehigh Valley of Eastern Pennsylvania.  Christmas trees came from Germany, and apparently in some German areas it was customary to build a little village around the base of the tree.

 

Dressing For Christmas!

Nicola here. Every year as Christmas approaches, I try to visit one of my favourite stately homes to see it “dressed” for Christmas. This is an official term, apparently, and involves a lot of decorating which puts my own Christmas tree and lights to shame! (For a start, I don't have four model trumpeters outside my house to welcome visitors!) It hasn’t been possible to keep this visiting tradition going during the pandemic, so this year it was a real treat to be able to go to Beaulieu in the New Forest and enjoy some spectacular decorations that totally put me in the Christmas mood.

Beaulieu is probably best known for its famous Motor Museum and whilst I did pop in to have a look at an Aston Martin or two (there was a James Bond exhibition on) my main interest was in the ruins of the abbey and Beaulieu Palace itself.

There isn’t much left of the abbey, once the largest Cistercian building in England. The ruins are rather atmospheric though. Like so many other monastic buildings, the abbey’s downfall came in 1538 with Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries when it was sold into private hands and much of the stone was taken away and used for other building projects. It’s still possible to see the scale of the whole estate and imagine it surrounded by a 12 foot high wall that stretched for a mile, with the great gatehouse (which still stands) and the river and quay where boats would unload their supplies.

Secret Scribbles

Christina here. I hope you’ll forgive me revisiting a topic Anne blogged about back in 2012 (here) because this is an exciting time of year for me – IT’S NEW DIARY TIME!!! That means I get to choose a brand new diary for next year and let me tell you, this is serious business.

I’ve kept a diary on and off since I was eight years old. When I was given my first one, the appeal lay in having somewhere secret to write down my thoughts because of course it had a lock and tiny key. (I didn’t know that anyone with a decent hairpin could probably have picked it). I relished the opportunity to keep my opinions away from prying eyes, especially those of my little brother once he learned to read. And anything secret seemed exciting then – my friends and I formed several secret clubs but that’s another story.

These days I don’t have many secrets to write about and there’s no lock on my diaries, but I still love to jot down what I’ve done each day and where I’ve been. Whenever possible I add things like ticket stubs and other tiny mementos, and there’s the occasional picture too. It’s not the end of the world if I miss a day occasionally, but on the whole, I’m pretty good about keeping up with it.

Christmas Quiz #3

Anne here, and for your entertainment here's another historical Christmas quiz, though this time the questions are not wholly restricted to the Regency era.

As usual, you will need a pen and paper to jot down your choices, then at the end, click on the link at the bottom of the page to check your answers. Then come back and tell us how you went and which snippet of historical knowledge you found most interesting. 

1)   Who could be called the original Christmas Grinch because of his hatred of Christmas? (Note: this was centuries before the word grinch was used.)    

    a) King George III.     
    b) Benjamin Disraeli.
    c) Oliver Cromwell.
    d) Charles Dickens

2) What was banned by the Puritans in the 1660s?

     a) The eating of pork during the 12 days of Christmas.     
     b)  Plum pudding.
     c)  Mistletoe.
     d)  Fox hunting

3) Why was the fourth Sunday before Christmas called Stir Up Sunday?

    a) It was the day when the first earth sod was broken and wine poured in.
    b)  It was the traditional day for the making of Christmas pudding.
    c) Ministers gave a diatribe against sin, a kind of spiritual purification before Christmas.
    d) The day when Christmas wassail was traditionally brewed.

4) Why was George I called 'the Pudding King'?

Ask-A-Wench: Our Thank You to Teachers

Susan here, with our Ask-A-Wench prompt for December: Wenches, was there a teacher who influenced you and helped you realize that you wanted to be a writer? Scroll down for our answers!

Our teachers may not have been Professor Snape or Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts, or Miss Shields in A Christmas Story, or even the economics teacher (“Anyone? Anyone?”) in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (some of my favorite movie teachers!). Even so, we were very fortunate in our teachers, encountering some who particularly encouraged, guided, and/or nudged us to discover our talents during our grade school and university years.

So in this holiday season of gratitude, we want to remember the special teachers in our lives. It seems especially important now when teachers truly need to be recognized for their dedication, resourcefulness, imagination, caring--and their resilience when it’s as challenging to be a teacher as it is rewarding. We want to say “thank you!” for what our teachers did for us then and thank teachers everywhere for all they do for their students now.  

Read on as we share some memories of the amazing teachers who helped us discover that, after all, we were writers. Please share in the comments some memories of your own favorite teachers!

How Stories Come to Life

Andrea here, musing about how my stories come to life. The Wenches were chatting the other day among ourselves about great teachers we had in school (look for that “Ask A Wench” blog on Wednesday!) and that’s what got me to thinking about it . . .

I have a very vivid memory of a school assignment that was my first “formal” introduction to the challenge of storytelling. It was sixth grade English class and our teacher gave each of us a random picture that he had cut out from old books and magazines—mine was a vintage engraving of a young Masai warrior facing down a ferocious lion—and told us to write a short story about

Granted, as a kid I had fooled around drawing crayon pictures and making up little vignettes about them. (And yes, I'm still a very bad speller!) But this demanded that I think of a real story—a beginning, a middle and an end. (I’m not sure my brain thought it through quite that clearly, but I do remember that the assignment really sparked my imagination.)

Favorite Christmas Stories

by Mary Jo

The original Christmas story is of the journey to Bethlehem and the newborn infant who was laid in a manger, and the holiday has been inspiring Christmas stories ever since. They are stories of warmth, family, and love, of kindness and reconciliation.  One of the most famous is the poem "'Twas The Night Before Christmas" written in 1823 by Clement Clark Moore.  The depictions of Santa Claus, the chimney, and the sleigh pulled by reindeer have helped shape the imagery of American Christmases ever after. 

Travels in Italy--Part Three

Pat here:

As many do, I fell in love with Umbria and Tuscany, the hill country of Italy. It’s hard to define why this area is so special. Perhaps because I’m not a fan of cities and the rural countryside with rolling hills and olive orchards appeal to my introvert self. But I think it’s also a matter of seeing the layers of Italy’s ancient history, largely untouched in some areas, that made it come alive for me.

Tempted by the Runes

Christina here. In just a few days, my new Viking time travel story TEMPTED BY THE RUNES will be published and it’s based on the first Viking settlement of Iceland in the 860s/870s AD.

The Viking era is usually said to be roughly from 793 AD to 1066 AD, ie from the first Viking raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne to the Battle of Stamford Bridge when the last Viking king, Harald Hardraada, lost his bid for the English throne. When I first started writing this series, I knew I couldn’t cover all that time and I had to decide which parts to base my stories on. So I made a chart of all the events that were known to have happened from 750 AD onwards, and discovered that the years between 850 and 900 AD were jam-packed with possibilities. At that time, the Swedes were heading east and south down the Russian rivers, the Danes (and others) were raiding and conquering in Britain and Europe, the Norwegians established a kingdom in Ireland and started settling on Iceland, and there were internal power struggles in Scandinavia too. This gave me a rich historical tapestry from which to choose events that my characters could be part of.

Home-made Cosmetics

Anne here. When I was a child, I was fascinated by the idea of making my own perfumes and cosmetics. I'm sure I got the idea from some book or other that it was pretty easy and straightforward. So I collected fragrant flowers and leaves planning to make perfume from them. I would stuff rose petals and other beautiful smelling flowers into a bottle, top them with cold boiled water . . . and wait.

The result was invariably a bottle of brown, slimy liquid containing clumped masses of glutinous matter that oozed ominously. Did it smell? Yes. Disgusting.

But did those many failed perfume experiments end my cosmetics-to-the-stars (well, to me) career? Not a bit of it. Next I tried for home-made lipstick. I pounded red geranium petals and rubbed the paste on my lips. They turned red all right, but the mix didn't go on evenly and even at seven or eight I knew I looked more like a clown than a glamorous lady.

Some years later my ambitions in that direction were fired again by some book, or possibly an article in a magazine, where you used everyday natural things to enhance my budding teenage beauty.