Books We Love Insider Blog: historical novels

Showing posts with label historical novels. Show all posts

Monday, June 29, 2026

Two Hundred and Fifty Years

https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Hamilton-Elizabeth-Schuyler-Passion-book/dp/B014AY2YU0/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RNS092GK4E2N&keywords=Juliet+Waldron+%2B+Master+Passion&qid=1674856985&sprefix=juliet+waldron+%2B+master+passion%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/722879

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=Juliet+Waldron&ac=1&ac.morein=true&acsrc=gsp&ac.author=Juliet+Waldron&fcsearchfield=author&fclanguages=en&ssId=2LboBEueoN3xEOmskgn4t&sId=f585ccc3-6654-4c6b-a04b-7f2e8fe6b67d

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/search?q=Juliet%20Waldron

Please excuse these ancient links--having tech problems, as it changes faster than I can. These are old-timey control/click links, but will take you to the book through a blue redirect notice. The only links to all my books are now on B&N and Kobo, which actually show every one. Amazon is currently FUBAR.

Here is the opener of A Master Passion, the story of Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton. This is another 'wife of a famous man' story, related in a way to my Mozart's Wife, but certainly the personalities and the civil landscape in which these actors were enclosed is far different, a continent apart. Hamilton had a rough childhood and he had to fight for respect doggedly in order to overcome the stigma of a "bastard" birth.

Hamilton has been in my imaginary life since my eleventh year and so telling this story was important to me. Of course, no one back in the fifties was going to discuss any of this. The Founders were revered and white-washed in ways many contemporary historians and readers can acknowledge. Two hundred and fifty + years ago, status was fairly well locked in at birth. You were born a gentleman, with all the privileges and open doors that entailed--or, you were not. Hamilton had to fight for his place among the upper class men with whom he spent his life politicking and working. He was, in a way, the clerk to the revolutionary generation, a self-educated lawyer and businessman. Jefferson got the monument, but it was Hamilton who did the unglamorous work--laid the bedrock--for the trade and technology that made us a world power. 250 years of America, standing on shaky ground. I recently learned that the Athenian republic, to which our Constitution is so profoundly indebted, lasted only this long. I hope it's not an omen.

Sharing a sick feeling, Alex and Jamie Hamilton stood on barefoot tiptoe and peeked through flimsy wooden louvers, all that separated the rooms of their small West Indian house. Both boys were red-heads, but there the resemblance ended. Eleven year old James was well-grown and strong. Alexander, seven in January, was delicate, fast-moving and nervous, like a freckled bird.

“An idiot would have known not to trust him.” The beautiful dark eyes of their mother flashed. Rachel faced her husband, a slight man of aristocratic feature, who wore a white linen suit. Like him, it had seen better days. His wife’s tone was challenging, her arms akimbo. Her stays, containing a generous bosom, rose and fell.

“I—I—took him for a gentleman.” Father sputtered, attempting to fall back upon a long ago mislaid dignity. “He gave me his word.”

“His word!? Which means bloody nothing! How many times did I tell you what was going to happen? How many times?”

“Shut your mouth, woman!”

A sharp crack sounded. Rachel, hair spilling from beneath her cap, staggered backwards, cheek red. From the kitchen came the fearful keening of Esther, their mother’s oldest slave.

“There’s naught canna be dune noo!” James Hamilton, his long face flushed, roared the words. Scots surfaced whenever he was angry.

“Yes, nothing to be done. As usual.” A livid mark glowed upon Rachel’s face, but she, with absolute disregard for consequences, righted herself and finished what she had to say.

“This time Lytton’s going to let you go. And if you can’t even manage to hold a job with my kinfolk, where will you get another? What are we supposed to live on? Air?”

In spite of the fact that it was winter on the island, the best weather of the entire year, Alexander shuddered. Distilled fear slid along his spine.

How many times in his short life had he watched this scene replayed? Listened to Mama shout Papa’s failures, watched as his father, humiliated and enraged, used his fists to silence her? A business deal gone bad! More money lost…

Will we have to move again?

Every change of residence, from Alexander’s birthplace on cloudy Nevis, to St. Kitts, and from there to St. Croix, had carried them to smaller houses and meaner streets. The carriage, the two bay horses and the slaves who tended them, were only a memory.

Mama was shrieking now, about loans and due dates, things which she declared “any fool” could understand. Frozen, knowing what would surely come, Alexander watched as his father, crossing the room in two quick strides, caught his mother by the shoulders.

With the strength of rage, he threw her like a rag doll. She struck the wall so violently the flimsy house shook. The tiny emerald lizards stalking the mosquitoes drawn by candlelight vanished into shadow.

Silenced at last, Rachel crumpled against the floor, sobbing. Her once gay calico dress, muted by many, many launderings, lapped her. The under-shift, always scrubbed to a sea-foam white, drifted from beneath.

James Hamilton, breathing hard, blind with rage, tore open the door and strode past his cowering, terrified sons. For the last time, Alexander saw his father’s face, a sweating mask of fear.

**************************************************************************

Hamilton as a young man. This locket would have been painted sometime soon after his arrival in America, when he'd just begun to recreate himself as a gentleman, catching up on the Latin and Greek that his haphazard, mostly self-taught West Indian education had not sufficiently provided and which was necessary for him to be admitted to a King's College (now Columbia). Living in St. Croix, he'd been working for a living--since his eleventh year--in a merchant's office, which was the place from which the priceless knowledge came that made him the perfect first Secretary of the Treasury and treasured right hand man of George Washington.

A handsome reenactor at Saratoga battlefield, who obligingly stopped his equally handsome horse for a picture.

The Schuyler house in Albany, set up for whist and port. Here, in front of that same fireplace, as was Dutch custom, Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, were married during a winter lull in the Revolutionary War.

Juliet Waldron

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

Friday, August 29, 2025

Ixchel and The Water Pots of August by Juliet Waldron

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So many gods and goddesses lost throughout the long stretch of human history!

Many gods of our European past were lost during the violence of Roman colonization, or absorbed, their ancient lineage lost when these divinities were given Roman names. After the Romans, came the new religion, Christianity, and the old gods and goddesses were this time baptized as "saints," which either cloaked their origins in a doctrinally acceptable story, or simply twisted the story until it fit--often uneasily--with the new religion's teachings.

When European colonizers reached the Americas, the same thing happened to the divinities of these "newly discovered" lands. Some of those stories are lost forever, but a few kept their names. Among these surviving rarities is IxChel, a Meso-American goddess, who could be maiden/mother/crone depending on the season of the year, the age the devotee, or the phase of the moon.

IxChel was a goddess whose survival partially rests on the written record left by priests who observed what remained of her original religion after the Spanish conquest. From what we can glean, she was a lunar goddess, and, like so many others around the ancient world, the animals which are associated with her worship, are the rabbit (fertility) and the serpent (bringer of rain.) Below is a modern rendering of the goddess from Sacred Source's catalog. To synch with our modern preoccupation with youth, this IxChel appears as a young woman, although in the few remaining Mayan texts, her "rain" hieroglyph depicts her as Crone.

https://sacredsource.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoogCd36tvDfkvTP9t_CCNoPGWpntD6DE7UZFj9UNwT0lpuIFBYC

Like the Moon, however, Ixchel waxes and wanes; she changes. She, like so many European Great Goddesses, is a triple goddess. She was a special patroness of women, whose reproductive cycles are governed by the moon. Young women prayed to her maiden self for beauty, or for a husband. To the married women, she was Mother Ixchel, to whom you prayed for sons to please a warrior husband or for continued fertility and good health. Women of all ages prayed to Ixchel as Life Giver, asking this fruitful deity for the blessing of good harvests, as well as for good fortune and for safe delivery during the travail of childbirth. She knew the secrets of all herbs, and was known as a skillful healer.

In Meso-America, where droughts could (and historically did) bring famine and collapse to powerful city states, IxChel's sacred serpent governed the powerful hurricane rains, whose appearance was necessary to "fill the water pots" (the cenotes which dot the permeable limestone of the Yucatan) with the precious liquid which nourished the maize, beans and squash upon which the communities depended. "Water is Life" was as real then as it is now.

As the Moon, Ixchel governed the night. She opened the womb and then cared for the child growing inside. Her pale face radiated blessings upon her sister-children here on earth; the stars were her offspring. In some of the surviving stories, she dies and is reborn again, a miracle that, in so many religions, only male gods perform. As a goddess of vegetation, she is a kind of Persephone figure, entering the underworld and then being reborn again.

Ixchel is also said to be first weaver, the woman who taught her human children this civilizing skill. The spindle she holds and the thread she spins governs both life and death. Like the Fates of ancient Europe, she creates the fabric of our lives, and ends them when she wishes, breaking the threads. As a destroying goddess, she is called "Keeper of Bones" and crossed bones often appear in her iconography.

Cozumel, as it is known today, was once Isla Muheres, the Island of Women, sacred to Ixchel, the home of her temples. Mayan women were supposed to make pilgrimage there at least once in their lives. If you today are a fortunate traveler, you might still go and visit Ixchel there today. Offer her copal incense, cocoa beans, or small clay female statuettes, as her devotees once did on that lovely island so long ago.

Goddess Knowledge Cards,

Pomegranate

Art by Susan Eleanor Boulet

Here she is with an avatar--her powerful jaguar self, a creature who hunts on land and in the water--for she is a shape-shifter too. Though she was married to the Sun, she, like the cat, was a law unto herself, coming and going as she chose. Not even the Sun God could own her.

~~Juliet Waldron

Look up my books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and Kobo, ebooks,print, and audio

Juliet Waldron

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Character Birthdays & Akashic Records

My childhood hero, Alexander Hamilton, was born on January 11th on the little volcanic island of Nevis. Carrying the Edwardian novel I'd discovered in a used book store, I traveled with my mother to the place of his birth. Mother had her drawbacks, but she certainly took me to some interesting and (by Americans) rarely visited places back in the 1950's, for which I remain grateful. January cannot pass without a retelling.

I hope you will forgive me for this often told tale, but I am getting older and there is a certain compulsion to leave something behind which someone might remember. That Edwardian novel, short on facts though it proved to be, gained us entry to a little "hotel" on the island, because the owner regularly refused would-be guests if they had children. Being a quiet, polite child with a passion for this illustrious native son got us in the door, even though the lady of the house was quite ready, upon seeing me, to cast us out, literally, into the night.

January 27th is Mozart's birthday, so his natal day has just passed. Here's a character who took over my life for years--and years. Recently, I had an Akashic reading from a clairvoyant, who uncovered some material relating to this long obsession. I have never ventured into this territory before and had absolutely zero expectations.

First, however, I need to talk a little about what I understand concerning the Akashic records. I will quote Wikipedia: "In the religion of Theosophy and the spiritual movement called Anthroposophy, the Akashic Records are believed to be a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present or future..." This includes all sentient entities and life forms, not only "humans." Akasha is a Sanskrit term meaning "aether", sky or atmosphere and the foundational notion came West from Buddhist philosophy.

Akasha became Akashic via Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, who spoke of "indestructible tablets of astral light." Later esoteric philosophers, C.W. Leadbeater, Rudolf Steiner, Alice Bailey and Edgar Cayce, enlarged the concept. Akashic Records were likened to the entire experience, past, present, and future, of every life form in the universe--a kind of vibrational, spiritual "cloud" storage for infinity. These "files" could be retrieved by skilled practitioners and revealed to individuals.

You can go further down that particular rabbit hole and never escape. For instance, Ervin Laszlo's 2004 book "Science & the Akashic Field": An integral Theory of Everything, which attempts to explain mysteries of quantum physics via this philosophical structure. Therefore, I'll return to the original subject, my unexpected experience with an Akashic reading.

Many people seek Akashic readings hoping to find connections with famous historical heroes/heroines, but I wasn't one of them. The whole idea seemed absurd to me. If we are reborn, why shouldn't most of us have been some kind of working stiff, just one of the "cast of thousands" "another brick in the wall" character?

Here's what happened to me. I was told I had spent many years reliving and remembering a past life, evading the tasks of my present soul/life on this planet. Long story short, my informant said it would be best to stop. I could honestly reply I'd left that "addiction" behind, because I knew exactly what the clairvoyant was talking about, the decade spent exclusively on all those Mozart books/research/music. Apparently, according to the reading, I was, a few lifetimes ago, a part of his circle. The feeling was not "wow!" but more like the calm which descends when you find a puzzle piece for which you've been searching and snap it into place.

Don't misunderstand, those "Mozart" books are the first born of my novels, and I love them--and their characters--dearly. However, becoming a slave to a compulsion which drove me to total immersion did some real world, actual, harm. Jobs were lost; security endangered, important relationships neglected, while I spent all my time and energy "in" the 18th Century.

This, of course, sounds more than a little unhinged, but I intend to read more on the subject, especially the recent material linking systems theory to "reverence for natural systems."

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."

~Juliet Waldron

Sources: Wikipedia articles on Theosophy, Collective Unconscious, Anthony Peake, Ervin Laszlo, Rudolf Steiner, Madam Blavatsky, Edgar Cayce et al.

New Age, New Answers to Deep Questions by Ruta Sevo, PhD

momox.org/pythia Akashic Readings

Juliet Waldron

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Mysterious Mythical May

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Weather-wise, May can be a checkered month. I often saw snow in May in my upstate NY childhood during the early 50's. The last time I had such a surprise was while living near Hartford, CT, when I boarded a commuter bus, annoyed that I had snow all over my new high heels. The entire drive to bus, along slippery country roads, I'd seen the white stuff threatening to break the blossoming branches in orchards and front yards. I'm not likely to ever see that again!

May even feels a little a little unsteady, at least inside my seasonally-minded head. From the little we can know about early European religions, it appears many of our ancient relations felt that way too. May was a between month--between winter and summer--neither one thing nor the other. In many cultures, then as now, it was a time of clearing out of the grime left behind by winter cooking and heating, of freshening and storing away of the heaviest clothing. On the farms, young animals now frolicked in the fields; fresh milk was in. The spring cycle of plowing and planting was already underway, but, in the spiritual sense, this month was a pause.

Now, you may be thinking "Well, what about May Day and May Eve, two nights of dancing, feasting, and coupling, with or without, benefit of clergy?" All that is also true. May traditionally began with a party. We are familiar with the British tradition has the men riding out at dawn wearing sprigs of blooming Hawthorn followed by the Maypole dance. Perhaps the disconnect is a result of a lunar calendar and a year which accomodated thirteen months instead of our twelve. At any rate,

the "unlucky" time, the time of mourning and cleansing, the time of celibacy and onerous spring cleaning, began later in our May, perhaps beginning on the 13th and extending until the 9th of June.

"Ne'er cast a clout ere May be out." (Don't change your clothing) This saying was current in Britain and even into northern Spain, for the idea of an unlucky May was widespread. May was a time to abstain from sex across ancient Europe, from Greece to the west in Ireland, explaining why, traditionally, May is unlucky for marriage. In Britain, the month is associated with the Hawthorn or "Whitethorn," the tree of the Crone Goddess Cardea, who cast spells using hawthorn branches. The Greek's called her "Maia," a deity the romantic poets have led us to believe was young and fair, but Maia actually means "grandmother," a goddess whose son conducted the dead to the underworld. The Greeks propitiated the old Crone at marriages--"for the custom was hateful to the goddess," by carrying five torches of hawthorn-wood.*

In the temples, May was month of cleansing. Altars were purified, religious images were removed and washed, not only with water, but with rituals. Ovid, in his Fasti, says that the Priestess of Juppiter told him that his daughter should not enter into marriage until "the Ides of June, (mid-month) for until then there is no luck for brides and husbands. Until the sweepings of the temple of Vesta have been carried down to the sea by the yellow Tiber, I must myself not comb my locks which I have cut in sign of mourning, nor pare my nails, nor cohabit with my husband, though he is High Priest of Juppiter. Be not in haste. Your daughter will have better luck in marriage when Vesta's fire burns upon a cleansed hearth."

In Welsh mythology, Yspaddaden Penkawr, the Hawthorne giant, was father to the Fair Olwen (She of the White Track). No man could have her until her father received a dowry of thirteen treasures--all nearly impossible to obtain, of course. At last, a hero arrived. This man, fated to marry her, was named Kilhwych. Olwen was kept mewed up in a castle which was guarded by nine porters and nine watch dogs--note all those magical numbers! Until the unlucky power of May was broken, the Hawthorn's curse held sway.

In Ireland, we find many legends concerning magical wells and associated Hawthorn trees. According to E.M. Hull 's "Folklore of the British Isles," a man who destroys a hawthorn tree will suffer the loss of his children as well as the death of all his cattle. In "Historic Thorn Trees of the British Isles," It is noted that 'St. Patrick's Thorn' at Tin'ahely in County Wicklow was still celebrated into the 19th Century. Here, celebrants paraded to the church and circled the holy well. Here, they tore bits of cloth from their old garments and left them upon the thorns of the ancient Hawthorn that grew there. Long ago, all over Europe, this practice was a sign of mourning and propitiation that must take place before the time of weddings and bringing in the first fruits of summer, which would take place in June.

I realize that this has been a long wander into the tangles of ancient mythology. Much of this information comes to me from a controversial source: "The White Goddess" by Robert Graves, who was a poet, and, naturally, often occasionally afflicted by bee in his bonnet fits of hubris and madness. Nevertheless, he was also a man who understood many ancient languages well and who moved in scholarly academic circles. I find it interesting that many of his suppositions, arrived at through his knowledge of ancient languages, has actually anticipated many of the new DNA researches into the migrations of people into Europe, from the steppes and even from what is now Turkey and the Middle East. It amazed him, and it still amazes me, all the journeys that the ancestors made and the places in which they ended.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Juliet Waldron

Sunday, January 29, 2023

The Writer's Goals~~Then and Now

All My historicals @

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How did we ever get into this writing business/hobby/obsession?

Motive varies from writer to writer. Some of us wrote to escape, to create alternate worlds in which to live--worlds where we can control the outcomes. Some of us wrote to tell the stories that natter away in our heads incessantly, stories that entertain us so much, or engross us so deeply, we simply HAVE to share them. There are many so motives for writing a book.

When I began writing fiction seriously, by which I mean with an eye to publication, back in the late 1970's, there was a path in place to follow. We learned about the stamped, self-addressed envelope, the eye-catching cover letter, the one page synopsis, and the perfect, not-too-long first chapter, which we slaved and sweated over until finally, with great trepidation, we submitted to a carefully selected editor at a publishing house into which we thought our beloved "baby" would "fit." There were long waits for the mail and for some harried assistant editor's attention, followed by, over the years, perhaps a thousand rejections. Aiming at an ever-shrinking mid-list, acceptance into the "published writer" club became ever harder.

When we weren't working on our latest book or day jobs, we went to conferences and learned about genres and the rules which governed those genres, that is, writing to the expectations of your future readers. If your story was a love story, it had to have a happy-ever-after ending. If you wrote mysteries, you'd probably have read dozens of books by the all time greats, authors like Agatha Cristie, Earl Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr and Rex Stout. You planned your story and outlined a twisting plot, because "who dunnit" requires the reader to be engaged by the puzzle you've created, and, you, the author, has to remain always a step ahead.

Back then, you had to be a master of your craft in order to mix genres, and, as a new writer, you did so at your peril. Over time, much has changed. One example would be the old genre, "Romance," which is now split into many many, many categories. The hard-and-fast rules governing genre writing are out the window.

Moreover, what the ambitious writer of today dreams of is not only the traditionally coveted book deal, but also a movie deal, a TV show, or a series available on one of the many new hungry-for-content streaming platforms, such as Netflix, HBO or Showtime.

These days you can cross all the genres you can imagine in film. Look at the success of Lucifer, which started on HBO, and, then found a new home at Netflix. Into what genre would you put this show? Lucifer had a Comic book genesis (via Milton's poetic sermon, Paradise Lost, via Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Now the title character is a witty, urbane modern celestial escapee from Hell, but added to that, we've got a mash-up of romance, comedy, police procedural, adventure, soap opera and kung-fu fighting + gunfire, all crammed into a fantasy-fast-lane of sex, drugs and rock'in'roll inside the entertainment world of modern Los Angeles. (How's that for a run-on sentence!?)

666

One of my cross-genre books:

Black Magic

Vampires, Shapeshifters, Historical, Adventure, Family Saga, set on an 18th Century

Alpine estate that's nowhere near as placid as it appears.

Writing, now that we've crossed into another century, remains a labor of love/obsession that may or may not ever pay off. It's probably even harder than it once was to get published in the 21st Century, and ever so much harder to attract an audience with so much material clamoring for attention.

Still, if the madness is upon you...well, all I can advise is "Go for it."

~~Juliet Waldron

Juliet Waldron

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Joys in January

Cold, tired, eyes full of blue, black and glitter--that for me was January after our family moved to upstate New York in the early 1950's. I arose in the dark, ate oatmeal and the obligatory spoonful of cod liver oil chased with a shot glass of orange juice, and then got ready for the school bus--boots, leggings, coat, scarf and gloves plus whatever homework I had before trudging out into the sunrise over the snow banks. In those days, the snow had been piling up since October, and by now it was also well glazed with ice. I remember shivering, standing on our porch sheltering from the ever-present North wind and peering, eyes watering, into the gold and red of sun just cresting the stand of trees on the next ridge, anxious to see the bus in time to get down the long driveway in time to meet it. (Needless to say, there was BIG TROUBLE if I didn't.)

I remember playing outside in that cold with friends on most Saturdays. There were sliding hills, of course, but there were also enormous drifts in every yard to exploit. We'd tunnel into them and then sit inside, pretending we were in caves or that we were Indians or Inuit, sheltering during a winter hunting expedition. I remember me and my friends bringing candles, throw rugs, dolls and matches along to better enjoy our pretend.

After we'd furnished our "igloo," we'd light the candles and apply the flame to the wall and ceiling of until it dripped. The melt would speedily refreeze, but after a great deal of this careful work, we achieved a shiny frozen shell that might endure, during a truly bad winter, well into March. Mittens beaded with frozen pellets of snow, toes aching from the cold penetrating our boots, we'd enter child's fantasy land. I have no idea how we endured outside as long as we did, before the inevitable surrender and numb escape indoors for warmth and hot chocolate. Those physical experiences, even so long ago, helped me to imagine some pivotal scenes in "Fly Away Snow Goose."

There are many birthdays for me to celebrate in January--of the living and the dead. Two cousins were born in this month, but also two of grand-girls, the youngest of whom just turned twenty-one! They are all Capricorns, like my mother, whose birthday was also in this month. (How many families, I wonder, have this aggregation of birthdays in a single month?)

In the days when my Muse was visiting, I also celebrated the birthdays of two Dead White Men during the month. Alexander Hamilton's birthday is January 11, either in 1755 or 1757, as historians argue over the date. Paper records kept in tropical Nevis have not always survived.

Perhaps Hamilton himself muddied the waters on the date, wanting, rather like Mozart, to keep his hard-won status as a prodigy for as long as possible. Born in the West Indies into a family in constant financial distress, with the appellation "bastard" attached to his name, it was of monumental importance to Alexander that every possible strategy to assist his climb the social ladder be employed.

Young Hamilton as ADC to General Washington by Charles Wilson Peale

I never had birthday parties for Hammie, although I'd loved him the longest of all my dead white man crushes. Here I am in Nevis back when it barely had an airport, and the electricity only ran between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. My mother took us there--intrepid travelers that we were--back in the mid-1950's. Here's a happy January picture of me on the lava sand beach near where the Hamilton home was once supposed to have been.

And of course in the days of Mozart madness, I'd prepare for weeks before. I remember the first birthday party we had, it snowed heavily and I spent the morning digging parking places for my friends. Some cancelled, because the weather was truly nasty and the roads treacherous, but here are the intrepid few who came to that first party, all of them writers.

Mozart's birthday party was a thing for many years here. At one gathering, an entire poetry/writing group of perhaps twenty souls arrived, and our small house was warmed by all of those folks, by Mozart's music and much spirited conversation. I always made syllabub, which has to be started a few days before you intend to serve it. The centerpiece was always a glorious German bakery treat such as the one seen below, and we all laughed like children, riding on the sugar/wine high. Winter was outside the door and life was tough, but right now we could forget it all and just be happy.

The baker I talked to about the cake turned out to be not only a recent immigrant from Austria, but a huge Mozart fan as well! He beamed and told me how pleased he was to do this. You can see that he fulfilled my expectations and then some.

~~Juliet Waldron

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

12 Days of Medieval Christmas

In medieval times, Christmas was ardently Christian, but there were naturally Pagan traditions aplenty to be found hidden within the celebration. Some of these ancient traditions, like the German "Bad Santa" Krampus, still have plenty of fans.

The Twelve Days of Christmas themselves are both a memory of the Roman Saturnalia (Rome, which was The Empire of its time) as well as the even more ancient human observance of our planetary trip round the sun. The Sun's rebirth --that shortest day, when the sun is weakest, Winter Solstice--became, in Christian calendar, Jesus's natal day. We use the 25th now, but that had to do, I believe, with 18th Century adjustments to the western calendar.

Those twelve days are no longer observed with the same pomp as in medieval times. Some years, after a bad harvest, the poorest villagers might have been hard pressed to have enough to eat for the rest of the winter. During famine years, it must have been a feat to manage any kind of "feast," but the custom of pre-Christmas fasting always helped to shore up supplies.

Imagine twelve whole days of celebration! During that time, a peasant farmer or craftsman was not supposed to so much as lift a tool, although they were allowed to feed their livestock. This means that a great deal of planning necessarily went into preparation for this prolonged "vacation" at each year's end. Extra wood had to be cut and stacked close by houses. Stores of hay and grain laid into barns so that it would be a minimal task to feed the animals. Just like today, however, nothing changed for the "essential workers" of the time. Cooks, housewives and scullery boys, or the servants at the Castle. All these people remained on the job.

The 24 days preceding Christmas is called Advent and was the occasion of this fast. In the Late Middle Ages, this meant no meat, cheese, or eggs could be eaten--although this particular tradition is no longer part of our (consumption-driven) culture. In the past, there was a belief that a person must prepare themselves both physically and mentally for the upcoming ritual experience of the Divine Mystery that was to come.

If you were a peasant, however, there was a practical reason to consume less before Christmas--simply to conserve enough of what food stores you had in order to provide for those festive 12 days. The poorest villagers lived hand-to-mouth upon a diet of beans, barley or oat porridge, and near-beer, their menu filled out with whatever green stuff they could scrounge from the edges of their Lord's forest.

Besides food for man and beast, other supplies had to be stocked as well. Wood for fuel was a necessity, of course, but specific types of wood was split and stacked together--hazel, beech, oak and ash all being used at different times during the cooking process to adequately heat those earthen or brick ovens for the baking of meat, bread and pies. Hazel twigs burned hot and were fire-starters; beech and ash supplied a steady heat, while oak lasted longest of all and burned the slowest.

Rush lights were made by soaking rushes in left-over cooking fat and pan scrapings. These would burn for about an hour, hot, and bright, but smoking heavily and carrying the odor of whatever fat had been used, and this was the way a medieval peasant "kept the lights on" during the long, dark winter nights. This was making of rush lights would have been going on in late summer, July and August, while the reeds (species: Juncus Effusus) were still growing, and the pith which would absorb the fat, was well-developed.

he farming year of 4 Seasons

Pork was the traditional food of Christmas in the British Isles, a custom with pagan roots. The wild Boar was hunted to extinction in Britain by the 13th Century, so the Christmas pork then on would have to have been domestic. Those medieval pigs would have looked rough, though, feral and unfamiliar.

Pagan associations of the pig feast at midwinter are many. One of the most interesting discoveries at the famous Neolithic sites of Woodhenge and Stonehenge were mountainous heaps of pig bones. Such feasts are a well-attested-to-tradition in many Germanic, Slavic and Norse cultures.

Freya and her brother Freyr, Gods of the Vanir.*

Here, Frey is shape-shifted into a Boar.

Getting the boar's head -- the centerpiece of any prosperous farmer's feast -- ready for the table was laborious task which began with slaughtering, scraping, and butchering, followed by a bustle of preservation. Sausage was made from the blood and the hide readied to be tanned. Every bit of that pig would be consumed in one way or another.

Semi-feral hog

Pig's are "thrifty" animals, and in medieval times fed well in the woods upon acorns as well as the standard remains of human cooking. Then as now, the pig gave his all! Removing the skull from the meat and flesh was no easy feat. After this careful dressing out, the remaining flesh and ears had to be carefully preserved for eventual presentation at Christmas Eve Supper.

The housewife would store the fleshy remains in a simple pickling liquid (vinegar, mustard seeds) until it was time to prepare it for the feast. Then she would remove it from the pickle and stitch it back together--a sort of taxidermy job-- and fill the pouch with a stuffing mixture of raisin paste and nuts, after which it would be roasted. Serving the boar's head on a platter surrounded by greenery traditionally began that first festive meal of the Christmas holiday.

The medieval farmhouse had been decorated with Holly and Ivy. Sometimes, a Christmas Crown, an open wattle basket decorated with sprigs of Holly and Ivy was woven by the men and hoisted up high above the rising smoke of the central hearth where it would remain for the next twelve days. Holly and Ivy--representing of male and female--was a custom left over from more ancient religious observances. In medieval times, though, it was often said that if there was more ivy than holly among the decorations, the house would be ruled by the wife during the next year.

Pastry for pies, both sweet and savory, had to be sturdy enough to stand up by themselves, as this was before people had a great many kinds of differentiated cookware, such as today's pie pans. Frumenty was a sort of yogurty smoothy made of cracked wheat and milk and flavored with dried fruit, nutmeg and cloves. These exotic spices arrived in a medieval kitchen after a 7000+ mile trader-to-trader journey. Other dishes served might be a sweetened milk gelatin or a gelatin cone of meat scraps, called a "Shred Pie."

There would be church services every day. Masses were celebrated in honor of the birth of Jesus and in honor of the many saint's days which cluster throughout the twelve days. St. Stephen's Day is next (known in the UK and her still extant colonies) as "Boxing Day." December 27th celebrates the feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. On the 28th comes the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which commemorates the slaughter of new born boys ordered by King Herod. The memorial of St. Thomas Becket, Bishop and martyr, a "turbulent priest" murdered by order of King Henry II of England, comes on the 29th. Next comes the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, which often falls upon December 30th. The last day of the year is the feast of Saint Sylvester. The following day, January 1 of the new year, is celebrated as "the Solemnity of the Nativity of Mary, Mother of God" in Christ's mother Mary is honored. In some denominations, this last is said to be in honor of the Circumcision of Jesus, falling as it would, eight days following any proper Hebrew boy-child's birth.

Twelfth Night, the final celebration, had many traditions. One of them was Wassailing, which could be a parade around the village or just around the kitchen, accompanied by singing, piping, banter, and still more food and drink. Villagers would visit one another's homes and sing carols. Sometimes drink was offered by the homeowner as a thank-you. In some places, the tradition of Mummers, men and women in costume, was a time-honored part of the Twelfth Night celebration.

Mummers singing and dancing in costume

In apple orchards, offerings of toast soaked in punch might be placed in the branches of the trees, or glasses of cider were poured into the orchard earth, as a thank-you offering to the fruit trees for their cider. At the Twelfth Night feast, a Lord of Misrule was chosen by passing a large freshly baked loaf of bread around the table. As everyone tore off a piece and put it into their mouths, one of them would discover the single pea that had been baked inside. This person became Lord of Misrule, crowned with a garland. His office was to devise party games and tell jokes and tales. Often these feasts would dissolve into riot, with people pelting one another with bread and leftovers and rowdy, drunken dancing. This was the night when the Magi found Jesus and worshiped him as "King of Kings."

The Four Seasons

Then, like a bucket of cold water emptied upon everyone's head, came "Plough Monday," the day when farmers returned to their fields and women cleaned house and began to card wool, and spin and weave again. Another Christmas had gone and the toil of the year had once more begun.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Sources:

Life in a Medieval Village by Francis Gies and Joseph Gies http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

*Vanir-the original Norse gods, overshadowed in surviving stories by the later arrivals--the Aesir gods with whom people now are more familiar--Thor, Odin, Frigg, Balder etc.

How to Celebrate Christmas Medieval Style:

https://youtu.be/BY2TN8E5yAs