Herrick begged his Corinna to come maying with him, and remember Shakespeare’s songs?
In springtime, in spring time
The only pretty ring time . . .
Sweet lovers love the spring.
and
Between the rows . . . the lovers lie . . . in springtime.
In his day, by the way, the winter festival was given much greater weight than it is now. It lasted for a full twelve days; hence his jolly play Twelfth Night .
To the Romans, the spring festival was called Oestrus, hence Easter in English and Easter eggs, but they made no mention of bunnies. Maybe it is the fecundity of rabbits that makes them a good fertility symbol—and the Christians, cleverly picking up on a very ancient human view of the springtime reappearance (i.e., resurrection) of dead plants and winter-vanished greenery, added on their version of a resurrection myth, telling the story of the magical return of a dead messiah.
Did the lady at the school gates know anything of Norse mythology? Had she heard the glorious tales of a bunch of feisty gods and goddesses and their Valhalla, where dead warriors fought all day and then rose again for another day’s bout, and a really cracking festival designed to tempt the sun back when it was its lowest in the sky, because it disappears almost completely as you travel farther north?
Their festival had a logic to it—it was worthwhile for them to make the great effort to follow all the old rituals (it’s hard work dragging huge trees through the forest to get them to a bonfire) if as a result they could make the sun do what they wanted it to do. The accompanying tra-la-la, the feasting, the drinking, the swapping of gifts, and above all the sexy games were the reward for their efforts and also a way of showing the sun what great people they were and worth coming back to and how they would repeat the fun when he did come back. As he did, of course, every spring. As primitive forest dwellers, dependent on plants’ and animals’ fertility and growth for all their needs, their actions seem reasonable enough to me. To worship the sun as the giver of life isn’t at all off the map. That is precisely what it does.
It was why they set to work to build and light great bonfires sending hot bright flames leaping up into the dark sky to show the sun in its hiding place what was required of it. It was why they burned the biggest Yule logs they could find (phallic symbol, anyone?), consumed lashes of booze and preserved reindeer meat and salmon and so forth, and then cuddled up into the warm pelt of the man or woman they fancied. (Or, of course, the same-sex person they had fallen for.)
Would the woman at the school gates have been interested in the festival’s Oak King, who ran around the forest with great energy, and the Holly King, who liked nothing better than to dress up in red and put a sprig of holly in his tangled hair and then, on the shortest day of the year (December 21), drive eight reindeer and throw a few gifts of food around? A bit like Kris Kringle, who picked up the idea from the Scandinavians. And in America, of course, Coca-Cola invented for their advertisements a modern Santa Claus by putting a jolly bearded chap into a red outfit (originally green, by the way, just like the Holly King) and sending him skyward in a sleigh with—wait for it—eight reindeer.
And what about the symbolism of the Old Religion, as it was called? It is represented today, I understand, by Wicca—adherents of which are described by the uninformed as witches—and modern Druidism, which had (still has) a great admiration for great standing stones, midsummer morning, and mistletoe. The last is because mistletoe is a plant that doesn’t trouble to push itself into hard cold ground to thrive but simply perches on the forks and branches of other trees’ trunks to tuck into their sap and grow its greeny-gray leaves and those beautiful translucent white berries.
I have wondered whether the Old Religionists long ago decided that the
In springtime, in spring time
The only pretty ring time . . .
Sweet lovers love the spring.
and
Between the rows . . . the lovers lie . . . in springtime.
In his day, by the way, the winter festival was given much greater weight than it is now. It lasted for a full twelve days; hence his jolly play Twelfth Night .
To the Romans, the spring festival was called Oestrus, hence Easter in English and Easter eggs, but they made no mention of bunnies. Maybe it is the fecundity of rabbits that makes them a good fertility symbol—and the Christians, cleverly picking up on a very ancient human view of the springtime reappearance (i.e., resurrection) of dead plants and winter-vanished greenery, added on their version of a resurrection myth, telling the story of the magical return of a dead messiah.
Did the lady at the school gates know anything of Norse mythology? Had she heard the glorious tales of a bunch of feisty gods and goddesses and their Valhalla, where dead warriors fought all day and then rose again for another day’s bout, and a really cracking festival designed to tempt the sun back when it was its lowest in the sky, because it disappears almost completely as you travel farther north?
Their festival had a logic to it—it was worthwhile for them to make the great effort to follow all the old rituals (it’s hard work dragging huge trees through the forest to get them to a bonfire) if as a result they could make the sun do what they wanted it to do. The accompanying tra-la-la, the feasting, the drinking, the swapping of gifts, and above all the sexy games were the reward for their efforts and also a way of showing the sun what great people they were and worth coming back to and how they would repeat the fun when he did come back. As he did, of course, every spring. As primitive forest dwellers, dependent on plants’ and animals’ fertility and growth for all their needs, their actions seem reasonable enough to me. To worship the sun as the giver of life isn’t at all off the map. That is precisely what it does.
It was why they set to work to build and light great bonfires sending hot bright flames leaping up into the dark sky to show the sun in its hiding place what was required of it. It was why they burned the biggest Yule logs they could find (phallic symbol, anyone?), consumed lashes of booze and preserved reindeer meat and salmon and so forth, and then cuddled up into the warm pelt of the man or woman they fancied. (Or, of course, the same-sex person they had fallen for.)
Would the woman at the school gates have been interested in the festival’s Oak King, who ran around the forest with great energy, and the Holly King, who liked nothing better than to dress up in red and put a sprig of holly in his tangled hair and then, on the shortest day of the year (December 21), drive eight reindeer and throw a few gifts of food around? A bit like Kris Kringle, who picked up the idea from the Scandinavians. And in America, of course, Coca-Cola invented for their advertisements a modern Santa Claus by putting a jolly bearded chap into a red outfit (originally green, by the way, just like the Holly King) and sending him skyward in a sleigh with—wait for it—eight reindeer.
And what about the symbolism of the Old Religion, as it was called? It is represented today, I understand, by Wicca—adherents of which are described by the uninformed as witches—and modern Druidism, which had (still has) a great admiration for great standing stones, midsummer morning, and mistletoe. The last is because mistletoe is a plant that doesn’t trouble to push itself into hard cold ground to thrive but simply perches on the forks and branches of other trees’ trunks to tuck into their sap and grow its greeny-gray leaves and those beautiful translucent white berries.
I have wondered whether the Old Religionists long ago decided that the
Similar Books
