Boxing Day, and every branch and twig is outlined in white. 
The goathouse has goaty decorations processing along the top of its fence.
(You can see Vesla looking out of her window.)
(For some reason, this ghost in the snow on the driveway reminded me of Julia’s non-functioning stepladder.)
The living-room heating is switched off because of the Christmas tree. Until I light the stove in the morning, it’s chilly in there.
There are crystals on the dichroic glass samples:
But last night it was warm,
with candles all round the room.
I remember the name Candlemas from my childhood; it must have been in my school calendar, which was full of mysterious dates that were routinely ignored by everyone. I don’t know where the candles come in; it’s a celebration also known as The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. There are only two candles in this depiction, made by Hans Holbein’s father:
Hans Holbein’s father was also called Hans Holbein; they had very few names in those days.
Candlemas isn’t at Christmas, but in early spring. It’s somehow linked to Groundhog Day — though the shadow of the groundhog is projected by the Sun, not by candles, otherwise the result would be the same every year.
A Bad Guide 
In Spanish is also called “la fiesta de la Candelaria” in February the 2th
See here and
here. It was based on a Jewish tradition: the purification of the mother after the birth and the presentation of the child to the community. But the candles are in fact more related to pagan celebrations when the winter begins to fade, I think.
Speaking of births… now I have a Russian niece =)
I love your christmas decorations, specially at the goathouse.
But your living-room looks very cosy, too.
You can’t imagine how hot is here!
A Russian niece! Congratulations. A soprano.
I’ve added another goathouse picture & some crystals. Thank you for la Candelaria. i realise now that H. Holbein the elder, who was a contemporary of Dürer, was of course Roman Catholic, there being no other possibility.
Today is the warmest it’s going to be over Christmas, -9C.
Thank you! Her fingers indicates a pianist, like her mother (you can see her at my fcbook)
I love those new pictures, the crystal are fantastic and the goathouse decoration is adorable!
I just saw this picture in the newspaper and I’m sure you would like it. Isn’t it fantastic?
Oh, what happened? The link doesn’t work!
Let’s see now
Wow. I’ll have to show that to Alma later (she’s at the stable).
yes! it’s an article on jockey females
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1336115
Oh, fantastic. I told you, she’s studying Spanish.
A recent documentary on German development after the war showed how in the early ’60s horses were being taken out of service in agriculture, as pullers of beer-barrel delivery wagons in cities, and so on. The film showed people being very emotional about losing the horses as part of everyday life.
In Westphalia, though, horse farm owners had the idea of creating a market for private riding. They succeeded in switching from an expensive, aristocratic pastime to a popular one. In the process, a traditionally male-dominated business became one dominated by women. Now, in Westphalia, more women than men are proprietors of horseriding and breeding businesses, and more than half of all professional riders are women.
The Germans are all over all the horse magazines (we seem to get several). All the men are Germans.*
I love those huge cold-blooded horses, with nosebags and enormous fluffy hooves, that used to pull rag-and-bone carts in London when I was young. I guess they were Clydesdales or something similar.
*This is a subject I know nothing about.
I can remember when milk delivery was by horse-drawn cart, before the switch to electric milk floats. I remember coalmen too. But I never saw horses used in agriculture until my first visit to Germany – our farmers all used tractors. One of our local fishermen, however, used donkeys – but I’ve probably reminisced about that before.
Yes, there is an old barrio of Guatemala City called ‘La candelaria…’
And this website (not sure if it is the same barrio) offers some rather amazing ringtones…
http://www.candelaria.org.gt/descargas.php?sub_descargas=1
Those ringtones are pretty lugubrious – sort of South American Catholic equivalents of Melancholy Baby. I find it hard to imagine who would want them. A former thurifer, perhaps, demoted for peculation or diddling the choirboys.
Stu, I am going to have to look up peculation now. Wait…
It’s the pleasure of a product for which no market may exist that grips me…
Why do I like useless and/or misguided things quite so much?
I just finished Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser, that proved quite useless, too.
Yes, I like Robert Walser. In the late ’70s I binge-read about 15 green Suhrkamp paperback editions of his works, snatched from a second-hand book table.
The afterword states that there are no other literary works comparable to Walser, yet the single word, “Pessoa” was continually ringing through my mind while reading it. It was good, but it was as nothing compared to The Book of Disquiet.
A recent documentary on German development after the war showed how in the early ’60s horses were being taken out of service in agriculture
I have told you this before, haven’t I? In Norway the abolition of horses coincided with investment in fur farming, quite likely even with obsolete horses being ground into animal fodder, leading to a line my father used to quote:
Those are spectacularly beautiful hoarfrosted window shots, Artur.
Someone here envies the accommodations of your goats.
I know your snow probably becomes tiresome, but I much prefer the look of it to this rain. (And snow never caused me broken bones, so it definitely wins out there, also.)
Had Pessoa been Norwegian, I reckon he would have had nothing on Doctor Syntax.
(That package comes to you labeled “Artur,” in fine print at the bottom, by the way.)
I know, I was comparing Pessoa and Walser via English translations. A German friend has already upbraided me for that.
This Dr Syntax is completely in the zone with regards to my taste and the Google Image search for Rawlinson throws up a fantastically direct cartoon.
I don’t seem able to find the poem online.
Going back a little further in time, Tom, are you familiar with Nollekens and his Times by J T Smith? A most amusing hatchet job by a lifelong servant of the great sculptor.
I don’t seem able to find the poem online.
If you can’t get at the copies in Google Books, there’s the Internet Archive. Its scan is better anyway.
thank you for the hoar. I was in Veteran, Wyoming on Boxing Day. There the freezing fog had also laid down frost across the whole landscape, and me without my camera. A pheasant scurried across the road then flared up only to drop down again behind a white hedge and hide its bright colours.
The last time I saw such a frost was 1993 on a winter camping trip on Mount Rogers in Virginia, where
feral ponies shivered and stamped.
I thank you.
I found it here
http://books.google.com.ar/books?id=v48VAAAAYAAJ&dq=doctor%20syntax&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
Is this right?
Tom, MMcM, Julia thank you for finding those!
I too love the Rowlandson prints. I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding good-quality Dr Syntax pictures and especially figuring out how they are arranged on the page with the poem. I wasn’t as good at researching all this as you guys clearly are.
There’s a huge variation in brightness and saturation of the print colours too, as you can see by comparing Tom’s pictures with Julia’s. I’m not sure why.
Different digitization processes, people then optimizing further, etc.
Just reading through the opening. Most enjoyable.
Artur,
About the evident variations in the wonderful Rowlandson images for Doctor Syntax, that is in part explained by the fact that there were several different stages of illustrations done by TR: sketched line drawings;
outline drawings elaborated as watercolours; and then the aquatints, hand-coloured by TR in some cases, which were finally used in the several published editions of these extremely popular Tours.
My guess is that the amazingly energetic Rowlandson, who of course seized upon the assignment for the pay, also loved the subject matter, and sometimes worked it up beyond the simple call of bounty.
Examples would be found in the several lovely specimens which did not appear in any of the published editions.
In many of these, the pitfalls and pratfalls of the search for the picturesque remain, as it were, in the wings, or right around the corner, and are left for us to fill in with our imaginations (as perhaps Rowlandson did with his, though I fear his was quite a bit more active than ours… or for that matter almost anybody’s).
(In case you’ve missed it, I’ve talked about this a bit in replying to your
commenthere.)
I will perhaps soon post one of my favourites of these “out-takes” for you, mad dogs and sick cats and broken bones willing.
Pin,
The Smith account of the life and times of Nollekens has always struck me as a sort of biographer’s wet dream. Every manner of small and large transgression that any biographer, in the course of the tedium of attempting to compose a respectful (and respectable) account of the life of a person of significant worldly achievement, will inevitably have had to cover over — all those jarring little details which permit us to perceive the true nature and essence of the subject, revealing that as with every other human being, there are palpable flaws which attest not to greatness but to the opposite — is here laid bare. And all with a sufficient pretence of respect to effectively conceal the accumulated ill-will of months, years, decades…
By the by, in today’s post on Rowlandson and Ackermann’s Microcosm of London,
I quote Byron on his aversion to becoming the subject of
“a wretched picture, or worse bust”.
Surely he had in mind Nollekens (if not perhaps Chantrey, who was almost as bad).
I am certain you are a noble and generous soul, Pin, with none of Nollekens’ legendary defects of character.
However you may be reassured to hear you are not the first to avoid the performances of Shakespeare’s plays as though they were public assemblies of plague carriers:
“During my long intimacy with Mr. Nollekens, I
never once heard him mention the name of the
sweetest bard that ever sang, from whose luxuriant
garden most artists have gathered their choicest
flowers. To the beauties of the immortal Shakespeare
he was absolutely insensible, nor did he ever
visit the theatre when his plays were performed,
though he was actively alive to a pantomime, and
frequently spake of the capital and curious tricks
in Harlequin Sorcerer. He also recollected with
pleasure Mr. Kich’s wonderful and singular power
of scratching his ear with his foot like a dog; and
the street-exhibition of Punch and his wife delighted
him beyond expression.”
To each his own sort of theatre, then.
Anyhow, here ’tis, as promised:
Syntax Lost in the Forest (dedicated to all who have been badly guided)
Tom.
I have no aversion to Shakespeare, it’s just that I have yet to see a production. In fact, it’s on a very short list of things to do next time I am in London, with The Tempest as the play of choice (if I’m going to sit there, I may as well witness some technical wizardry).
It’s great to encounter someone else aware of the charms of J T Smith. I even like the fact that he has such an anonymous name, one that would surely be forgotten without his assault on his master.
Well, Tom, I’ve never had a procuress beating on my door to denounce the rough treatment I’ve handed out to a women of the pave.
Your time may yet come, Pin.
What has happened to Syntax may well be in store for the rest of us, at some point.
That pavé is hard, and always gaining on us, as I’ve lately learned all over again, to my distress, though in another context.
(About the Smith demolition of Nollekens, every nasty word feels richly deserved, the zest in the recounting of the cheapness and meanness and greed, and so on… yet one can’t completely fight off the suspicion there’s more than a pinch of spite in the thing, some old scores being settled; terrible evidence, perhaps, of the axiom that if you wish to get even with someone, the first step is to outlive them.)
Outlive is right. A case in point, The Guardian’s coverage of the murder of Joanna Yeates is far shabbier than anything JT Smith managed.
This really is low stuff.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2010/dec/29/joanna-yeates
Not really moved very far as a culture.
I agree about the Guardian, that’s very crude. Another thing that the Guardian did for days was to describe poor Joanna Yeates as an architect rather than as a landscape architect. It was a difference they must have thought was too trivial to bother correcting (the first day she was missing, they had correctly said she was a landscape architect), and yet if it had been my daughter I would have hated that.
Yes, I did automatically think of you, AJ, basically as you are the only architect I have ever encountered.
The broadsheets have taken the parents in hand, so that they now feel they can score a knockdown in any moral debate – “But the parents are behind us…” Yes, maybe they are. But maybe the moral compass of grieving parents is not what should be the guide here? The Guardian has been lurid, reporting on ‘private details’ etc. Ahem, they are not ‘private details’ when you splash them on page 1. It stinks.
I’m fairly typical, except most architects live in cities (out of choice).
Another thing I don’t like about the Guardian is that Alan Rusbridger makes some phenomenal amount, like £750 thousand a year, as editor.
It’s an ‘all-at-once’ effect that it produces. Post-modern.
There is the supposedly leftist part, the ecologically aware part (offset by its Travel section), the damning coverage of the coalition’s cuts (offset by its exclusive property section for people with a million lying around), etc.
You get every kind of posture, all laying alongside one another, contradicting one another, negating one another, and on and on we all go.
It’s a type of misery, but sometimes, it illuminates, remember this example?
http://www.bookarmor.com/?p=2492
I am sure Rusbridger thought the Guardian article on how to cope with redundancy was most amusing!
Anyway, Happy New Year! And love to the goats!
Thanks. Happy New Year to you too. I’ll give the goats your love. That was a funny piece.
(By the way, in case anyone imagines I’m having fun, I’m in bed with a cold).
With a cold what?
Tsh boom!
I thought the same thing, dearie. It just shows both our minds are in the gutter.
But looking at the stars, Arthur, looking at the stars.
(By the way, in case anyone imagines I’m having fun, I’m in bed with a cold).
Hmm, I thought the last word was going to be ‘goat’.
Are you really sick, AJP? I mean with a cold (I’m not judging by the hints of the previous jokes…)
In any case, I hope you’re better now.
What do you people will do for New Years Eve?
That’s magnificent Tom.
For all that: here’s to another year of the going on and the endless extenuations.
AJP, as they say in this country: hatcheui! If it’s any candelation (and how could it be?) Fino the scooter is out of action till Monday with a carburetor complaint. What even, like, is a carburetor?
Hear, hear. Thank you Tom. Who is worse, Nollekens or Smith? I’m sure Nollekens (isn’t that a cat’s name?). Smith’s father worked for him; there are decades of resentment built in to that payback.
Yes, Julia, I’m really sick, but getting better. Today I went out for an hour, and took pictures with my new macro lens. Alma has to take in all the horses at the stable because of New Year’s Eve (fireworks), that’s twenty horses. I’m planning to spend the evening in bed with the dogs and wife, watching videos and drinking port. Pretty exciting, huh? I suppose you lot will be tangoing until dawn.
But first I have to cook the turkey & sauces. Alma likes tradition to be maintained, regardless of illness.
The carburetor mixes petrol and air in a tiny chamber, and then spits it into the engine to explode (i.e. make the engine pistons move). I had a faulty carburetor nearly forty years ago. I used to suck petrol into the tiny chamber and then it would work. I don’t advise you to try this. Better to pay to have it fixed.
as they say in this country: hatcheui!
Isn’t it funny how sneezes are different in different languages? How do babies know what to say? The French say choo-ah, the British say ah-choo.
Yes, Julia, I’m really sick, but getting better.
There’s been an unusually aggressive bug going this winter. Or maybe two different bugs. I’ve been in bed with high fever for two days twice this December, and that hadn’t happened to me even once since I had pneumonia in ’83. After the first round I thought it was just me being unusually receptive, but my family got it just as hard, and now I hear it’s taking its toll everywhere. And I’m pretty sure it’s not the new incarnation of the swineflu — it feels like a cold, only more.
ah-chis in Spanish
¡20 horses!
No tangoing at all.
But “asado”* and swimingpool with some friends ( + lots of kids, wish us luck…)
*asado= something like US’s BBQ only better and tastier.
Trond, I hope you’re better now.
And AJP too (I forgot to say it before)
Send us some turkey, please…
I’ve been fine since the weekend before Christmas. I’m just stealing some of AJP’s well-earned pity.
:-)
Here you are all my pity, Trond (yours was well-earned too)
Good luck with the asado. The turkey is proceeding satisfactorily.
Many thanks, Principal. There are likely to be further extenuations where those came from, not to mention aggravations & c. Very sorry to hear of the rampant cold and flu bugs. ‘Tis the season (not). The large crooked protuberance where until two weeks ago I had a fibula, is wishing me a quiet new years. No tango, no tangere, noli me nollekens, this year. Staying in with the cats, and considering, with my old friend the fraudulent count, The Shape of Things To Come.
(By the by, the most extravagant display of new year’s pyrotechnics you are ever likely to see is today’s ten minute show from Hong Kong, to which I have linked in the comments here. Quite amazing if you enjoy fireworks, which I hadn’t done in … oh, four or five centuries.)
“The French say choo-ah, the British say ah-choo.”
Are you sure about the French? I thought it was atchoum. In German, you say hatschi.
So which videos are you watching? I watched The Ghost Writer today and was distinctly underwhelmed.
Happy New Year!
In German, you say hatschi.
With the stress on the second syllable: ha-TSCHI.
When I was in architecture school, there was a French woman who used to go “choo-ah”. Maybe it’s just French architects who do it.
I’m sorry, but we’re just watching HBO videos: The Sopranos, Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm. But I have two films to watch too: My Summer Of Love and Russian Ark.
Tom, thanks for the fireworks. I love a good display.
I’ve seen ah-choo explained as Á dieu! — i.e. a well-wish or an ironic affirmation similar to Prosit! or Á votre santé being reinterpreted as onomatopoetic.
However one “explains” it in terms of etymology, it does seem peculiar that people learn to make their sneeze reflex “fit in” without explicit guidance. This is in constrast to being toilet trained, say, And yet one does not learn to tune one’s farts in concert with the other sounds one makes. I am not aware of any such harmonic effort, at least. I suspect this matter has not been given the scholarly attention it deserves.
Perhaps sneezing is formed partly by imitation. That is, since the native language favors certain sound patterns over others, and sneezing involves expelling air through parts of the speech apparatus, perhaps certain sneezing patterns come to be favored over others. I would also expect correlations between “language proper” and other audible artefacts of communication, such as intonation, mild astonishment (French ouff !, German huch !, English huh !) and burping (post-prandial sign of appreciation in Japan, as one reads). Given how important these sounds are to effective communication, one wonders why they are eliminated from the study of “language proper”.
On further thought, it’s clear why there is no such thing as proto-Indoeuropean wind. It is because its expulsion does not involve the speech apparatus. Except when the speaker is an asshole, of course.
Oh dear, have I exceeded the bounds of decency (again) ? Or is it just that everyone is still abed with a hangover ?
Not my bounds, anyway.
There is such a thing as a Prutto-Indoeuropean wind. There are reconstructed words for both the silent (-> No. fis) and the noisy (-> No. fjert, Eng. fart) type. Both onomatopoeitc in origin, oddly enough.
I believe French philologists have identified prutt ! as a locution onomatopètique.
Salomo der Weise, Grumbly, spricht:
Laute Pupse stinken nicht.
Aber leise, die nur so zischen,
Aus dem Hintern schnell entwischen,
Die stinken fuerchterlich.
The silent and the noisy, huh. We’re back to the Eskimos, Norwegians have two different words for farts. I’ve always wondered why Norwegians say ouff and not something more German or British.
Grumbly, you cannot exceed the bounds of decency here, we’re pushing the envelope. I didn’t get up until one o’clock.
I’m so proud to have you as commenters.
Principal, there appears to be a certain uncertainty about the correlation between escape velocity and olfactory intensity (as measured in Dezipups). “Die schnell Entweichenden” [quick escape artists] are generally the audible ones, whereas die Kriecher [creepers] come on little cat’s feet and bite viciously:
I agree, v and i are inversely proportional. I think your last point was designed to stop anyone mentioning the deed.
There are more than two words for rear wind in Norwegian. Promp may be the most usual for the noisy sort. Fjert sounds prudish these days, probably because its correlated with Dano-Norwegian high sociolect. An other example of this sociolinguistic peculiarity is the word lort “excrement”. In Danish it’s a very dirty word, in Norwegian it could be something a middle-aged woman married into moderate wealth would tell her grandchildren to say.
I think your last point was designed to stop anyone mentioning the deed.
That’s right. The messenger is assumed to be the sender, since he received the message first. Or, as McLuhan’s motto might translate into German: Das Medium ist die Blamage.
The children around here used to say
He who smelt it dealt it.
Trond, Is lort different from basj, sociolinguistically or otherwise, in Norwegian?
Oe prime, why the sudden asymmetry? I suppose you were always asymmetrical, come to think of it.
That was my spelling of O’Umlaut, but it’s definitely time to revert* to the old Oslash.
* Is it true that the “verteth” in Sumer is Icumin In means “farts”?
Lort is partly technical, partly high sociolect. Bæsj is the usual word used with children by those not too prudish. Growing up I used to believe it was rude, but not as rude as dritt*. I’d been taught to say æsj, and that became very embarassing in school. I used to know a guy who taught his children to say nisse as a second order eufemism for tisse. I can imagine how that turned out.
*False friends in pairs: No. dritt carries the same load as Eng. shit, while skitt means dirt.
partly high sociolect.
Like excrement, so high that it’s no longer used? I learnt from my daughter that “droppings” is a convenient expression when in doubt socially about “shit”.
The wikipedia page says it’s currently thought to mean fart. Farts occur in Chaucer, of course.
Does your daughter use this word for human excrement?
No. There are often miscellaneous droppings around our house & garden from all the different animals, but rarely if ever from humans. I don’t know why in principle humans should defy gravity, though.
Aren’t they called “ploppings” in the case of humans ? If you don’t find them around your house and garden, that is not because gravity is being defied, but because otherwise propriety would be.
In the case of animals lort can be used much in the same wat as English droppings, I think. Lort is a countable masculine (en lort) that is rarely used in plural. Instead one would usually use the mass word møkk, uncountable feminine: (mye møkk, all møkka). Møkk is less prudish than lort<, though. I can’t even imagine it being said with a high sociolect masculine ending.
There may also be something dialectal here. I think a sheepfarmer in the western fjords might use lort without a prudish intention in his heart.
Of course if you know what animal is responsible then you have some marvelous specialized words available: fewmet, spraint, …
“Poop” is a pretty common all-purpose term in my world, suitable for talking frankly with children but with the downside that if you use it with adult company you may come across as talking like a child.
Wikipedia says scat is another word for spraint, or otter poop. Fewmet is a great term that means the bæsj of an unknown hunted creature, apparently. I’m glad to know these. Fewmet is a word I could actually use sometimes.
Lort sounds like a word I should stay away from; though it’s good to know what it means, of course.
I believe that “scat” is much more general — not just otters.
I learned “fewmet” from The Once and Future King.
Yes, I guessed you might have.
So not just otters, it’s broadly scatological. I don’t know if scat and scratty are related, the British (my mother’s) word for cat litter, though that might have been a trade name.
Ran around the corner for this.
Brutal 101 storey building exploding penis display.
After the artillery bombardment , a very exciting few minutes.
That’s spectacular. There was nothing like that near my house.
When I was young I guessed that the “spoor” of an animal must be its poo. Only later did I learn that it might be but it needn’t be.
A small contribution on the elegant subject initiated by Stu:
(aquí)
And the newest edition <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/images/2228901148/ref=dp_image_0/189-4129293-7174826?ie=UTF8&n=916520&s=books“> (aquí)
As far as I can find, the author also wrote some dictionaries, one of homonyms (aquí), and another on the history of the city of Paris (aquí)
What a marvellous find, Julia ! “The Art of Fart”, subtitled:
Isn’t it?
I found it via a fcebook contact (and we tend to believe that fcb is frivolous and useless…)
Well done, facebook!
Le Pétomane.
From the link:
Is there no scope for the family dog to make its famous contribution?
We have one dog who farts on the slightest pretext and one who never farts, or not in public. Birds don’t fart at all. Goats don’t make a big deal of farting, although I can’t say for certain they never do it.
His audience included
Though not, presumably, in one party. I’m surprised Freud didn’t have ten cents to stick in about M. Pétomane. He liked writing about that kind of thing.
But he could hardly admit to finding that kind of stuff funny. He was in the process of building a career on finding that it was significant.
Well, he didn’t have to find it funny. Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, for example, was written in 1910, and it says that Le Pétomane performed up to WW1. And as we all know, Freud wrote about the significance of humour.
My dog’s got no nose.
Another find.
empty: “Another find”:
The things some people will do to earn a buck ! But as long as the dollars roll in, who shall ‘scape whipping ?
How does he smell, Principal?
Enough of that, if nobody pardons my French, I’m soon to be hoist by my ownpétard.
Awful. Really though I’ve been lucky with these cats, they don’t seem to fart much at all.
My link was to a review dated April 1, 2007, I find.
When I was a kid, there was a little girl next door who called a fart a “sport”. I never knew whether this was a mishearing of the word or a family euphemism. But I think it’s pretty good onomatopoiea, at least for the brief loud kind.
January the 6th, do you celebrate the Epiphany (the day the Kings visited Jesus)? I only remember the reference of the Shakespeare play.
It would be nice to “make” camel footprints in the snow as we used to do here (well, not in the snow, of course)…
http://melioralatent.blogspot.com/2011/01/llegaron-ya.html
in Germany that is usually called Dreikönige [Three Kings], short for Dreikönigsfest [Feast of the Three Kings]. It’s a holiday in arch-Catholic federal states such as Bavaria, but unfortunately not nationally or in Hesse where I am currently working (Frankfurt).
Everyone should watch the video at Julia’s blog, it’s great.
Thank you, AJP. A long answer to your comment is there now (I hope you can understand my English!).
>Stu, it isn’t a holiday here (I mean is a working day), but is the day in which the kids receive presents. When my parents were children, they didn’t receive presents for Christmas but for the Three Wise Men’s (or Reyes Magos) day. In my childhood we already had both presents. And you can imagine how it is now, at our even more consumer society…
The nice thing of Día de Reyes is that the night before all, the children put their shoes in some special place, they also put some grass and water for the camels, sometime some food or drink in my case (when I was little the kings apparently liked red wine, says my mother… ;-)!) for the three kings; and they go to sleep. The next day they find their presents upon their shoes.
Well in fact is something similar to what in the North you do for Christmas and Santa Claus.
People do not pay a lot of attention to January 6 around here, but I am aware that it is variously known as (1) the “12th day of Christmas”* (2) Three Kings Day, (3) Epiphany. Our former neighbor held the rigid view that the Christmas tree come in on December 24 and goes out on January 6. We keep our tree around practically forever.
*It always seems a little funny for December 26 to be the first day of Christmas, when everybody knows that December 25 is the Day. But, as I never tire of saying, zero is my favorite number.
As I just commented on Julia’s blog, in England it’s traditional to toss the tree out on Twelfth Night, but my daughter makes us keep it for longer.
I’m doubtful about your counting the 26th as the first day of Christmas, Ø. In Norway (and I think elsewhere, except I’m not sure where), den 1. juledag is the twenty-fifth.
Here the Christmas tree comes in on December the 8th (Day of Virgin Mary). And it is gone after January the 6th.
We are never on time… In fact this year we don’t even have a tree… My youngest daughter, who watch too much TV, accuses me of not having “Christmas spirit” because of that. But she didn’t bother to arrange the tree, either. She prefer the accusations… And me, I prefer the crib instead of the tree. In fact is a more native tradition for us.
My daughter had to decorate the tree at 2 in the morning because we didn’t have enough Christmas spirit to do it by the deadline she’d imposed.
I count the 26th as the first day because somebody told me that the 6th is the twelfth day. I’d forgotten about 12th night. Is that the night before, or after, January 6?
Before — I think.
Around here there is now the practice (common among those who still do not use artificial re-usable Christmas trees) of buying a specially made huge plastic bag (non-re-usable) for the purpose of taking the tree out of the house to the curb to await the garbage truck. We don’t do that in our house. Maybe if we had the real Christmas spirit we would.
jajaja or hahaha!
You see, that’s the daughter’s spirit!
But at least she did something.
“I saw, I accused, I did nothing.” This would be a good motto for young girls :-)
Mine is too lazy (and younger, only 7, ok)
We cut it up and burn ours with the dropped needles in the stove in the living room. I love it, it burns so fast with a roar.
“I saw, I accused, I did nothing.” Hahaha.
Around here, only reusable artificial trees (pretty ugly in fact). One year my mother bought a real tree, but of course we didn’t throw it away. It was planted in our garden, until it fell down with a storm… It was a good thing, because the garden isn’t too big, and there were too many trees planted there.
“Your comment is awaiting moderation. ”
Apparently I’m censoring my own comments. I can’t be trusted.
Oh, you’ve reminded me of the corporate Christmas trees here, I’ll have to post them for your perusal. I also liked the “Make a Wish” exhibit, which beside it had a display of the latest cellphones as a prompt for those stuck for ideas (“Oh, yeah, an iPhone, not world peace…”)
Our house is surrounded by Christmas trees. One year I tried to find one to cut down, but the branches on all of the saplings were too sparsely spaced. We have to pay for our tree like everyone else.
an iPhone, not world peace…
World peace, that was John Lennon, the other Apple.
“Our house is surrounded by Christmas trees.”
A very pleasing sentence. I’d only previously imagined this being said by a paranoid schizophrenic.
Or Santa Claus.
Paranoid? They came and cut down all the Christmas trees right before Christmas last year.
One year I tried to find one to cut down, but …
So, does this tradition stem from a region in Germany where there were always many saplings that had the ideal spacing of branches? Or did Christmas tree users in the early days settle for what would now be regarded as less than optimal spacing? I’ll bet they did not try to cram as many ornaments onto one tree in those days as most of us do now. In our house have way too many tree ornaments, more than we can ever get on the tree. Every few years we do a purge. Certainly we have too many pickles.
Last year we had our best tree ever. It had personality. It had presence. It reminded us of our cat. We bought it fresh from a tree farm, where it had not been trimmed in a procrustean manner to look like a Christmas tree. This year we went back to the same farm, of course, but were sorely disappointed.
Okay, I’ll take a photograph of some of the spruce saplings around here. They’re an absolute joke, I defy you to say you’d allow them in your living room. They look like mistakes. The best-looking trees around here are the top six or eight feet of big old trees, but I don’t think I ought to cut one down just for that.
I like your glass pickles. I remember now you said you had a great tree last year. I think we were all disappointed by our tree this year, it’s too damn small and the decorations aren’t up to scratch, they look cheap. I like original-looking decorations. In the past, I’ve made some nice ones out of tinfoil. It’s a good material, because you can use it for hard-edge stuff like helicopter blades as well as for crumpled up things like grotesques with long noses, or for angels’ feathers that you curl with a scissor blade. And it twinkles a bit.
Reading between the lines: It sounds like you have mostly homemade decorations? That sounds wonderfully old-fashioned and truly in the spirit. But do you not keep the old ones?
We NEED to see AJP’s homemade decorations and Ø’s last year tree! It’s a claim, ok?
The truth is that I can’t feel ok with that custom you have of cutting down baby-trees for the Christmas decoration. It makes me sad… like Ideafix, Obelix’s dog, do you remember him?
The tinfoil ones only ever last for one extra year, and I haven’t made any for a while now. We have a few permanent ones that have been made by friends and my daughter when she was doing that kind of thing at school. My ones sound great though, don’t they? They are, in my memory.
I hadn’t come across Ideafix before, but it’s a god name for an Asterix character. Sorry about the trees. I don’t pull up many weeds, though.
You didn’t know Idéfix?? (I should have wrote his original French name, Idéfix not Ideafix, its Spanish translation, I found now that in English they call him Dogmatix)
But have you read any of these comics? ¡¡I love them!!
Here is the album title where is most shown Idéfix’s love for trees. It’s all about a big architecture project, I think you’ll like it.
http://www.asterix.com/books/albums/the-mansions-of-the-gods.html
Here is the French original
http://www.asterix.com/edition/albums/le-domaine-des-dieux.html
I can’t find now the editions online…
I figured it was “Idéfix”, we say idée fixe sometimes in English too, but Dogmatix is the most brilliant translation I’ve ever heard–better than the original, in fact. My French friend had the books when I was ten years old, but I haven’t read them since. I like this little dog, though.
You should try to read them again now. I’m sure you’ll find more funny things than when you were a kid.
I’ve been all my life reading and rereading them.
Though that’s not any quality proof, now that I think of it.
Sure it is.
Julia, I am now becoming refilled with the Christmas spirit, or should I say obsessed with Christmas trees and Christmas memories. Maybe this will lead me to start blogging again.
If I can find a picture of last year’s tree, I will post it. For many years now I have been out of the picture-taking habit. My wife has embraced digital photography, while I have never really gotten around to it. It is possible that in her laptop there is at least a glimpse of that tree to be had. I am sure that it wouldn’t look nearly as great in a photo as it does in memory.
By the way: I, too, am a little uneasy about the amount of waste and destruction involved in cutting down zillions of trees for the season, but do you have to call them “baby-trees”? You make it sound like they will miss their mamas.
Baby-trees, baby-trees, baby-trees…
(all your trees from past Christmas will come to haunt you while you sleep)
;-)
Let us know if you decide to blog again, please!
AJP, I have now in my hands Asterix and the Normans, to honour the the soil in which you reside
http://www.asterix.com/books/albums/asterix-and-the-normans.html
Idefix is perfect for him given how he becomes a member of the permanent cast of the comic. You might want to find him for yourselves in Tour de France.
Okay, I’ll buy a couple, Julia. The online version is too small for my eyesight.
YES! =)
I come in with a very small voice at the end, just to say I think there are three candles in Mr Holbein Sr’s picture. The chap at the left (is it Joseph?) has one he is holding down low-ish.
And you’re all wonderful and Best Wishes for 2011 as it continues.
So there is! Thanks for pointing it out. Happy New Year to you too!