Today, January 6th, is Twelfth Night, the feast to commemorate the arrival of the Magi to the birthplace of Jesus. Naturally, it has pagan overtones as well. A King and Queen of Revels is chosen, based on finding a bean or a pea, respectively, in the Christmas Cake. Later coins were substituted. There was a ritual in which , in one variant or another, a wassail bowl or cider was taken out and pour on , or drunk around, the apple trees to make them fertile.
Here's one of my favorite descriptions from OBSERVATIONS ON POPULAR ANTIQUITIES chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies and superstitions BY JOHN BRAND with the additions of Sir Henry Ellis", London, Chatto & Windus, 1913
The Gentleman's Magazine of 1791 records that "In the Southhams of Devonshire, on the Eve of the Epiphany, the farmer attended by his workmen goes to the orchard with a large pitcher of cyder, and there, encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three several times -A great site for further information and images of the Feast of the Epiphany is http://www.fisheaters.com/epiphanyeve.html .
'Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou may'st bud, and
whence thou may'st blow!
And whence thou may'st bear apples anow!
Hats full ! caps full!
Bushel-bushel-sacks full,
And my pockets full too!
Huzza!'
This done, they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are inexorable to all entreaties to open them til some one has guessed at what is on the spit, which is generally some nice little thing, difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it. The doors are then thrown open, and the lucky clodpole receives the titbit as his recompense. some are so superstitious as to believe that if they neglect this custom the trees will bear no apples that year."
Apples . . locked doors . . . 'titbits' on a spit? I think we have a pretty good idea what the subtext is here. I can just imagine the men - roaring drunk passing around the (hard) cyder. . . . so drunk they can't remember what was cooking on the fire when they went outside? Well, that's my image anyway.
Now we settle in for the stretch through January and February, but even now the days are a bit longer and the Sun is a bit higher and the memory of Spring is already upon us again.
Things That Piss Me Off This Week
Ron Paul supporters. One of my podcasts, Adam Curry at the Daily Source Code (http://www.curry.com/) is big now on Ron Paul now and he is a media darling in some circles. OK, look, I can understand the appeal of Libertarianism. God knows, I certainly curse the authorities whenever I can, as anyone who has ever driven with me knows. I think any intrusion into our personal lives by the government is unwarranted and unnecessary. I resent surrendering my identity to the State so that I can drive on the highways only until some uninsured motorist slams into my family and leaves my children scarred - which of course they did. THEN, by God, the sooner the police get there, the better. Sure I resent paying taxes, but only because there are hungry children that come to school in our town who are not being helped through government programs I pay for, instead of subsidizing tobacco farmers. And the list of necessary trade-offs in a modern society goes on and on.
I get the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but what Paul and other Libertarians miss, I think, is the incredibly powerful and insidious powers that operate in our land completely outside of the Government - Multi-national corporations; private armies; hidden and open organizations that control our political and economic lives. None of this is addressed by our Founding documents and certainly cannot be addressed by individual States. We are no longer the agrarian / mercantile society of the 18th century. I think Paul and his supporters are-at best, naive with regard to and - at worst, collaborators with - those self-same powers. Who will stand up to those powerful interests for us? Paul and his supporters ignore our political history since the adoption of the Constitution and harken back to an in illud temporis that does not (and perhaps did not ever, as these things go) exist.
But should the State's rights be supreme? I was listening to Tom Wheeler on CSPAN (oops, one of those intrusive government programs) yesterday and he was talking about his book, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails about the use of coded telegram technology during the Civil War. http://www.mrlincolnstmails.com/ He was asked about Confederate use of telegrams.
You see, we have a modern model for Ron Paul's ideals - the Confederate States of America - and Wheeler said in the CSA there were essentially only two main telegraph lines running North/South and East West. The North and West were crisscrossed with a spiderweb of telegraph lines. During the course of the War, the North added 15,000 additional miles of NEW telegraph lines, while the South added 500 miles. Part of that was available resources and technology, no doubt. But it was also an unwillingness of the States to allow a federal government to build an infrastructure across State lines.
That's the problem . . . can you imagine if each State governed Internet use, Aircraft overflight, Food and Drug safety on a state by state basis? That's Paul's world view. None of those items are mentioned in the Constitution, so are they the within the proper purview of the government? Some would argue no. Here endith the raving.
Next time, I want to talk about some movies I have seen recently, especially Pan's Labyrinth, so this will constitute a 'spoiler alert', dear reader, if you haven't seen the movie.
I am off to steam my Christmas pudding and have it with some Brandy Butter and have a final bit of Wassail. Til next time. Oh . . and a belated Happy Birthday, Scribbler!
