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A Toast for Thirteenth Night
In the life of each of us,
three great ales, three feastings,
and these are they:
the Birthal, the Bridal, and the Arval.
When we are born, the Birth-Ale,
when we wed, the Bride-Ale,
and when we die, the Grave-Ale:
whence Arval, meaning funeral.
And for that his is the life of us all,
the Birth-Ale of the Sun
lasts thirteen days, one for each Moon.
So on this Thirteenth Night of Yule:
January is a series of farewells.
Yule: the year's greatest feasting. Through the dark nights of December, we progressively prepare for and welcome its coming. Throughout the Thirteen Nights, we feast our beloved guest. Through the dark days of January, we bid our repeated farewells.
(In this we are like the Old Pagans, the Kalasha of Pakistan, who alone of all the peoples of the Indo-Euorpean diaspora have held to their traditional religion continuously since antiquity.)
We bid a first farewell at Thirteenth Night, thirteen days after the Solstice, as the Merry Monarch of Misrule presides over the feast's last feast.
We bid another farewell on King Day, when the Yule greens come down.
(This is a local household tradition that started years ago because my then-housemate had the day off work and I myself off school. Taking Yule down is just as much work as putting it up. Interestingly, though, it's not a mere marriage of convenience: the realia of MLK's life, death, and legacy interlaces surprisingly well with end-of-Yule lore as well.)
We bid yet another farewell on Twenty-Sixth Night, 2 x 13.
We bid a final farewell to Yule on Thirty-Ninth Night, 3 x 13. Technically, this year that would be Thursday, January 29, but in practice (in this house at least), we observe it on the last Tuesday in January, in sororal solidarity with Europe's greatest fire festival, Shetland's Up Helly Aa (lit. “Up Holiday All”: i.e. “the holiday's completely over”).
So begins the last verse of the most famous of the many carols for Yulesend. Why “Old Yule,” you ask?
Not hard: Yule, the solar New Year, is the microcosm of the solar year. Its Thirteen Days constitute a Year-in-Little, one day for each moon. Like the Sun, like the Year, Yule comes in as a Babe and goes out an Old Man.
Some years back, though, I overheard a friend singing a variant:
Bold Yuletide is past:
Thirteenth Night is the last.
“Bold Yuletide.” I like that. It echoes, of course, the name of Bold Slasher, one of the characters of the traditional death-and-rebirth Yuletide Mummer's Play.
It's more than that, though. There's something audacious, something in-your-face about Yule: its affirmation of light in a time of dark, its affirmation of plenty in a time of dearth.
Here's the odd thing this Yule: I've been experiencing a plague of flies.
What's odd is not the flies themselves, but the timing. Usually about a fortnight or so after I move the outdoor plants inside before Samhain, there's a hatching of flies. I presume that the eggs come in with the plants, and the warmth of the house hatches them out. Hence, flies. It always takes me a few days to hunt them all down. With flies, I've learned, you have to be pretty ruthless. If you don't get them before they breed, you'll be sorry.
This autumn there was no hatching of flies. At the time, I remarked the fact, but can't say that I missed them.
On the first day of Yule, though, I saw the first fly. The next day, there were a couple more. The next, a few more.
You know how it is with the Yuledays: things that happen then somehow take on added significance.
Well, the mistletoe is still hanging, and has been since Midwinter's Eve. Technically, this means that the house is under the bough, i.e. in a state of Yulefrith—the peace of Yule—and that nothing should be killed here for the duration.
I'll admit that this gave me pause, but only briefly. Call me impious, but in my house the Yulefrith extends to fellow humans and—if we're pushing it—to fellow mammals. Yes, flies are kin, too—We be of one blood, you and I—but when it comes to frith, I'm sorry: bugs don't count. As I've said before, sometimes you have to be ruthless.
So, I killed them as I saw them. Every day, through all the first Twelve Days of Yule, there were more flies for me to kill, like some sort of weird sacrificial holiday ritual.
Was this a seasonal anomaly, I wonder: the usual autumn hatching, come late? Did I maybe bring them in with the Yule tree, or with the holly from the yard that I cut and brought in a couple of days before Midwinter's Eve?
A buddy of mine once made the observation that omens imply the out-of-place. To know what's unusual, you first have to know what's usual. (He was dating a Druid at the time who, out walking one day, picked up an oak leaf from the ground and said: Oh, it's an omen of great good luck to find an oak leaf! as if this were some nugget of ancient Druidic wisdom. My friend thought: Um, it's November, and we're in a stand of oak trees. Needless to say, that relationship didn't last long.) In Minnesota, flies in late December are out of place. So what does it mean that I've had an infestation of flies through all the days of Yule?
The Old Norse idiom for “celebrate Yule” means literally “to drink Yule.”
Where did you drink Yule this year?
To the ancestors, Yule was synonymous with, and unthinkable without, the special Yule ale that was brewed in quantity for the great Midwinter feasting each year. Most people drank beer throughout the year, but the Yule ale was always distinctive from the day-to-day brew, specially rich, dark, and high in alcohol. Medieval landowners were required by law to brew enough Yule ale to keep their families and retainers well-drunk for the entire Thirteen Days, and woe to the stingy farmer who tried to short his people of their Yuletide due.
On first Mother Night, we tapped the box of red.
It was a nice wine for winter: chewy, hearty, a little leathery.
Next day, there was still wine left.
On second Mother Night, we drank more from the box of red.
Next day, there was still wine left.
Tonight, Thirteenth Night, we'll keep on drinking.
As for tomorrow, we'll see.
I'm beginning to wonder if what we've got on our hands here may not be that legendary box of wine that, no matter how many rituals you take it to, never runs dry.
Thirteenth Night,
when time runs backwards,
and the world whirls giddily widdershins.
Happy Feast of Fools!
Htrae eht nopu tuo deruop si evol ym dna,
Gnivil lla fo Rehtom eht ma I, dloheb rof,
ecifircas ni thgua dnamed I od ron.
Erofeb enog evah ohw esoht htiw noinuer dna,
modeerf, ecaep, htaed dnoyeb dna;
lanrete tirips eht fo egdelwonk evig I, htrae nopu....
'Tis a fine, foolish thing to wear a crown.
(Proverb of New Crete)
Sometimes Old Hornie wears an ass's ears.
Tomorrow is Thirteenth Night, the last of Yule, when the Merry Monarch of Misrule holds sway.
It's a short reign, but a merry one.
