Hogmanay is the Scottish New Year’s Eve celebration, although by all accounts, much wilder than how your average American rings in the New Year. Its roots go back so far that the origin of the word itself is no longer known, but it originated in deep winter celebrations of sun and fire, and moved from there into […]
December 28 was Childermass Day in the medieval calendar, known today as the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It is the day Herod slaughtered all the baby boys two and under, in his hunt for the newborn king he believed to be a threat to himself. One source reports that children were beaten on this day in memory […]
We celebrate Christmas: a rush of gift buying, cooking, baking, and decorating, culminating in one big day. The medieval Christmas was more of a full season of special days, from Advent to at least January 6, the Epiphany. Christmas Eve was known as Adam and Eve day. From the early 14th century, “miracle plays”– performances that […]
Today, many people are taking down the Christmas tree and cleaning out the vestiges of Christmas. In medieval times, the twelve days of Christmas– from the feast of the birth of Christ until the Epiphany, when the wise men arrived with gifts– is barely beginning on December 26. How might the halls of the great […]
Christmas, not surprisingly, has gone through many incarnations in two thousand years, its customs, traditions, and the emphasis put on it changing not only with time, but with place. For the first thousand and some years, there is no record of the word Christmas at all. Our first record of the term is from 1038 […]