Wednesday 23 December 2015

yule log

Via the fabulously odd Everlasting Blort comes a cavalcade of holiday—both for Christmas and New Year’s—customs beautifully illustrated by a jewellery designer called Vashi and Marie Muravski. I was surprised to see how many of the traditions pivoted on the fortunes for all the single ladies in the upcoming year.
And while many rituals and trappings of the season seemed quite touching and original—except perhaps the endorsement that a certain favoured purveyor of chicken-product is accorded as a Japanese institution and the contentious hidden gurken in the tree ceremony. Though still culturally reinforced, and it’s nicer to believe that some Civil War soldier received life-saving sustenance from his captures in pickle form on Christmas Eve or it’s an enshrined Old World custom—and these versions don’t seem in any way commensurable—rather than be disabused by being told that the story was a marketing manoeuvre for a retail outlet overstocked with pickle ornaments. What sparked the decision to make so many of such decorations in the first place still strikes me as a bit mysterious and perhaps there is a deeper Christmas miracle behind it still.