Via the always intriguing Strange Company we are directed towards one explanation of the common apirition in the southern Welch Yuletide custom called Mari Lwyd (Y Fari Lwyd) of parading around a horse’s skull on a pole whilst draped with a cloak decorated with ribbons and sashes as an aspect of wassailing and ritual entreaties to one’s neighbours for food and drink—a sort of call-and-response called the pwngco. You’ve been pwn’d. Some conjure it represents a remnant of once widespread mystery plays that featured a popular subgenre regarding Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, with Mari Lwyd representing the donkey that bore Holy Mary—one proposed etymology, though this is disputed, with Grey Mare being more likely, especially given the preponderance of similar hooded animal parades spread across the British Isles that reflect a syncretion (see also) of ancient, pre-Christian rites. Much more detail about this custom at the link up top.
Saturday 5 December 2020
krampusnacht
Later on for this Saint Nicholas Eve, the hirsute, horned devil (see previously) visits the wicked and incorrigible with a thrashing and a lump of coal, assisted by Knecht Rupert. Less discretely and less charitably in some jurisdictions, Krampus is accompanied by Nicholas himself to distribute gifts for the naughty and nice respectively.
Thursday 26 November 2020
¡no lupita!
Released on this date in 1959 in Mexico (in October of the following year internationally, in America markets under the same title though sometimes distinguished as Santa Claus versus the Devil), this Renรฉ Cardona and Adolfo Torres Portillo collaboration premises that Santa has a workshop in outer space and defeats a demon called Pitch who was dispatched to Earth by Lucifer to spoil Christmas by killing its spirit and cause all of humanity to do Satan’s despondent and joyless, and by defacto evil, bidding. The movie received the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (see previously) on Christmas Eve 1993 and one can watch the lampoon in its entirety below.
Thursday 19 November 2020
o tannebaum
Much like that bellwether tree stood up in Rome four years ago, the poor sacrificial spruce (with stowaway, another climate refugee) left to slowly desiccate and die at Rockefeller Center, already bedraggled and reflective not only of this dreadful year but of our seemingly incipient and insurmountable toxic relationship with the environment, ought to be accorded the single dignity of being the last offering to this tradition born out of bleak austerity into this genuflexion before capitalism and conspicuous consumption. We could deck the place with a nice hologram instead.
Saturday 14 November 2020
all this trouble over a fat little man in a red suit
As our faithful chronicler informs, the sci-fi comedy (self-descriped as “yuletide science fiction fantasy” and hoped to find a niche for a perceived market gap) by Nicholas Webster and Paul L. Jacobson, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians—universally panned though significantly debuting the figure of Mrs Claus a full three weeks before appearing on the Rankin and Bass (previously) television special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, premiered in cinemas on this day in 1964. It was to receive the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment on 21 December 1991—shortly after MST3K was syndicated by the Comedy Central cable network and thus solidifying its enduring popularity aside from making the movie a cult classic. A young Pia Zadora has her film debut as Girmar—the Martian Girl.
Wednesday 28 October 2020
coal in your stocking
Monday 13 January 2020
dansa ut julen
Literally dancing out Christmas, some Swedish communities are celebrating Knut’s Day (previously) as the end of the holiday season by “plundering” the tree of its ornaments and ceremoniously tossing it out on this twentieth day (imagine that carol) of Yule—Tjugondag jul—set aside as Knut’s name day (see also).
Wednesday 25 December 2019
hark the herald ai’s carol
Reprising a 2017 experiment this time with more powerful machines, Janelle Shane (previously) had her neural network try its hand at composing Christmas songs, drawing from a dataset of two hundred and forty carols compiled by the Times of London, and the output really underscores how profoundly strange that the holiday with its strange fossilised language would be for outsiders.
With verses for Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer like “Its heart was full of sugar / And the most prized food item was its head” and “For sinful men such a deity doth appear / And wink and nod in reply.” If you subscribe to AI Weirdness at the link above, you can sign up to receive the full text of these and other experiments—which as an occupational hazard feature an inordinate amount of cusses and references to gun-violence. Grandma got run over by a reindeer.
The wretched world is run by ox and ass
The wretched world is run by ox and ass,
And in vain build I.
Monday 23 December 2019
o come, o come, emmanuel
With the evening prayer of the last week of Advent (previously) denoted as the hortatory Antiphons—a short chant with refrain textually based on the Book of Psalms and a call to meditate on one of the aspects of Jesus as Saviour, the last and final falling on the eve of Christmas Eve exhortation that O God is With Us, expanded into the carol.
Tuesday 17 December 2019
simpsons roasting on an open fire
On this day in 1989, the Fox network debuted The Simpsons, characters spun-off from a regular, animated interstitial from The Tracey Ullmann Show, with a Christmas special.
Intended as the eighth episode of the season, production delays had already pushed back release dates to the holidays and the producers decided to open with this show—which was a remarkably smart move in retrospect (The Waltons had a similar start with its pilot episode back in 1971) for the expository and establishing opportunities that come with such tropes.
catagories: ๐, ๐บ, 1971, 1989, The Simpsons
Monday 16 December 2019
✨
Via the always glamorous Everlasting Blรถrt, we are treated to the third collection of Dublin-based designer Jen Nollaig’s third seasonal showing (and here we thought we just had to make due with wearing the tree skirt like Bernice on the sitcom Designing Women) of eyewear, jewelry, headdresses and entire costumes created out of repurposed Christmas decorations, positing that we should be as willing, excited and committed to trim ourselves as much as the tree and decking the halls. Much more to explore at the links above.
Sunday 15 December 2019
8x8
it putteth away dumpishness & sadness, and bringeth mirth: a 1559 recipe for mulled wine
fox and liberty forever: the chaotic General Election of 1790, the polling and purdah lasting from 16 June to 28 July, via Strange Company
the power of youth: the photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva behind the iconic image of Greta Thunberg’s TIME cover—we personally found this honour to be pretty moving as well
link in bio: the insidious nature of Walled Gardens (see previously) and social media’s attempts to corral the free Internet
the land of the asuras: a Buddhist monk leads a solemn ceremony to eulogise untaken time off from work in Japan—hardly done despite legislation that all workers take a minimum of five paid vacation days per year
๐: this feline face filter underscores how poorly we understand our cats’ cognition
flight and blight: a survey of some of the historic character lost in New York City over the past decade
your branches green delight us: a tour of London’s Christmas trees
catagories: ๐ซ๐ฎ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐น, ๐, ๐ท, architecture, environment, labour, networking and blogging
Monday 9 December 2019
gumdrops and gatehouses
Carrying on a holiday tradition of crafting and featuring Modernist and Brutalist confectionary miniatures, Present /&/ Correct juries a new selection of gingerbread architectural models. It’s fun to try to identify the individual candy-types that make up the different architectural elements and appreciate the designers’ resourcefulness. According to lore, ginger was to be among the gifts of the magi but this particular wise man had to convalesce in Syria (see also) and did not make it to Bethlehem with the others but propelled his gesture onward with the baking custom.
catagories: ๐ฝ, ๐, architecture
Sunday 1 December 2019
herrnhuter stern
We’re getting ready to hang up our Moravian stars as the first festoonery of the season and the process of constructing the lantern and piecing together the paper cones is always an engaging ritual.
The decoration and design originated in the 1830s in a Moravian church (see also) boarding school for boys near the town of Gรถrlitz to impart students with a lesson in geometry—the twenty-six-sided star being called a rhombicuboctahedron. Around 1880, an alumnus of the Pรฆdagogium made the stars and their instruction manuals for sale in his bookstore and his son went on to open a factory in 1897 in the village of Herrnhut under the auspices of the church that makes and distributes the stars to this day.
thumpety, thump, thump
Saturday 29 December 2018
winterval or five gold rings
Probably the most famous example of a cumulative song—The Barley Mow (Oh the company, the brewer, the drayer, the slavey, the daughter, the landlady, the landlord, the barrel, the half-barrel, the gallon, the half-gallon, the quart pot, pint pot, half a pint, gill pot, half a gill, quarter gill, nipperkin, and a round bowl
—Here's good luck, good luck, good luck to the barley mow) and Green Grow the Rushes O being other examples—the Twelve Days of Christmas enumerates a progression of increasingly grander, more ostentatious (generally of the avian variety) gifts exchanged during the interval between Christmas Day and the Feast of Magi.
The standard tune is sourced to a 1909 arrangement by baritone and composer Frederic Austin, prolonging the verse of the fifth iteration that is often rendered golden nowadays. While there has been much speculation without a definitive answer as to the symbolic meaning of the gifts, it is worth noting that there are a round three hundred and sixty-four gifts given all told—one for every day of the year minus Christmas—and the presents may represent a device for memorising the important things that go on in each month over the course of a year (the original French verse was something about ‘‘five rabbits a-running” and probably not a coded mnemonic for a Christian catechism—in which case the rings would represent the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, the expository ones.
Tuesday 25 December 2018
merry christmas!
catagories: ๐, networking and blogging
Monday 24 December 2018
stille nacht
Composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber and set to lyrics by Father Joseph Mohr in Oberndorf bei Salzburg and first performed in the parish church of Saint Nikola on Christmas Eve two centuries ago, residents are expecting twice the number of holiday tourists to descend on their town for this anniversary spectacle of Silent Night.
Declared an intangible work of cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011, schoolmaster and amateur organist Gruber was only rehabilitated and acknowledged for creating the melody of the carol in 1995 when the lost, original manuscript was recovered, credit having been traditionally attributed to more famous Austrian composers like Haydn or Beethoven. The venue this year’s concert is not exactly made clear as the original choir was demolished around 1890 after a devastating flood sweep through the area, but the chapel curiously (or predictably) was rebuilt as a full-sized replica in the city of Frankenmuth, Michigan, a place settled by a group of disaffected Lutherans from Fürth, near Nürnberg—which bills itself as the Christmas capital of the world. Most of the over three hundred different languages versions of the song are more or less true to the German original though “Round you Virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild” is better translated “Round yon godly tender Pair, Holy Infant with curly hair”—Nur das traute hoch heilge Paar, Holder Knab’ im lockigen Haar
Saturday 22 December 2018
5x5
their santatanic majesties request: the Rolling Stone album had the working title of Cosmic Christmas
tinsel: a gallery of Mid-Century Modern aluminum Christmas trees
tinsel town: 1930s Hollywood in its heydays recreated as a diorama
brick & mortar: a bookshop in Tokyo now has a cover-charge
aรฐventuljรณs: a handy guide to the holidays in Iceland
Friday 21 December 2018
twelfth night
Driving home for the holidays, we really enjoyed listening to this Royal Christmas Special from Rex Factor (previously) that examines the celebration, traditions and historical happenstance—births, coronations, etc.—from a courtly point of view. We think you’ll like this entertaining and informative episode as well, travelling or otherwise.
catagories: ๐, ๐, ๐️, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ