A Latin Mass for Christmastide

Christus Natus Est Hodie

Christmas Eve in Ireland

Frontispiece to The Irish Christmas (Dublin, 1917).

Today is Christmas Eve and as a child I remember hearing that on this night we should leave a light shining in the front window of the house. This was to act as a signal that even if there was 'no room at the inn' elsewhere, Saint Joseph and Our Blessed Lady would find shelter with us. Katharine Tynan in her poem 'Christmas Eve in Ireland' alludes to this tradition and also to the fact that people not only displayed lights but kept their doors unlocked. Obviously it was an earlier and more innocent age!

CHRISTMAS EVE IN IRELAND

NOT a cabin in the Glen shuts its door to-night,

Lest the travellers abroad knock in vain and pass,

Just a humble gentleman and a lady bright

And she to be riding on an ass.

Grief is on her goodman, that the inns deny

Shelter to his dearest Dear in her hour of need;

That her Babe of royal birth, starriest, most high,

Has not where to lay His head.

Must they turn in sadness to the cattle byre

And the kind beasts once again shake the bed for

Him?

Not a cabin in the Glen but heaps wood on the fire

And keeps its lamps a-trim.

Now the woman makes the bed, smooths the linen

sheet,

Spreads the blanket, soft and white, that her

own hands spun.

Whisht! is that the ass that comes, on his four

little feet,

Carrying the Holy One ?

Nay, 'twas but the wind and rain, the sand on the

floor.

A bitter night, yea, cruel, for folk to be abroad.

And she, not fit for hardship, outside a fast-closed

door,

And her Son the Son of God!

Is it the moon that's turning the dark world to

bright ?

Is it some wonderful dawning in the night and

cold ?

Whisht! did you see a shining One and Him to

be clad in light

And the wings and head of Him gold ?

Who are then those people, hurrying, hasting,

those,

And they all looking up in the sky this night of

wondrous things ?

Oh, those I think be shepherdmen, and they that

follow close

I think by their look be kings.

Not a cabin in the Glen shuts the door till day,

Lest the heavenly travellers come, knock again

in vain.

All the night the dulcimers, flutes, and hautboys

play,

And the angels walk with men.

The Flower of Peace - A Collection of the Devotional Poetry of Katharine Tynan, 11-12.

Saint Nicholas: the Irish Connection

Below is a post which first appeared on my former blog Under the Oak in 2009. I have now closed this site but continue to blog about the Irish saints at my new blog Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae. 

December 6 is the commemoration of an eastern saint who is truly loved the world over - Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra. A Russian lady once told me that her people love Saint Nicholas so much that they are apt to forget he isn't actually Russian himself. This set me wondering if there might be an Irish dimension to the veneration of the great bishop of Myra. I found that there is, but that it owes more to the Normans and the Crusades than to the earlier native church. In his 12th-century Martyrology, Marianus O'Gorman begins the list of saints commemorated today with 'Nicolaus a holy man'. The Cathedral of Galway, constructed in 1320, was dedicated to Saint Nicholas in his capacity as a protector of seafarers. He was seen as an appropriate patron for a rising commercial city and indeed, the great bishop of Myra is the diocesan patron of Galway and is honoured as such in the Litany of Irish Saints. But Ireland makes an even more extraordinary claim in relation to Saint Nicholas - it claims to be the place where he is buried! Below is an article from an Irish newspaper which summarizes the story:

Santa's Irish resting place

CURIOSITIES: SANTA CLAUS may well be buried in a little country graveyard in south Kilkenny. Incredible as this might seem there is evidence to substantiate the possibility that Saint Nicholas of Myra, the original Santa Claus, is buried just west of Jerpoint Abbey, one of the finest Cistercian ruins in Ireland, in Co Kilkenny. The unmarked grave is in the ruined church at Newtown-Jerpoint (two kilometres outside Thomastown) once the site of a thriving Norman town that was abandoned in the 17th century probably due to plague, writes Gerry Moran.

St Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Turkey, died in AD 342 and was buried there. How his remains, or a portion of them, arrived in south Kilkenny has much to do with the Norman crusaders.

Jerpoint Abbey was founded around 1158 by Donnchadh Mac Giolla Phádraig, King of Ossory. In 1180, it was taken over by the Cistercian order. In 1200, William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, of Kilkenny Castle, decided to build a new town just across the river from Jerpoint Abbey. He called the town Nova Villa Juxta Geripons meaning "The New Town Across from Jerpoint". That same year the Church of St Nicholas of Myra was built in the town and, according to the historian Canon Carrigan, the tomb was laid that same year also.

When Strongbow invaded Ireland in 1169, his most trusted lieutenant was Sir Humphrey De Fraine. When the church of Newtown-Jerpoint was built and dedicated to St Nicholas of Myra in 1200, the most powerful Anglo-Norman baron in south Kilkenny was Nicholas De Fraine, son of Sir Humphrey.

The story goes that the Norman Knights of Jerpoint, the crusading De Fraines (or De Freynes) when forced to evacuate the Holy Land exhumed the remains of St Nicholas of Myra and brought them to Normandy from where they eventually found their way to Jerpoint. The remains were laid to rest beneath a slab, now broken across the centre, depicting a monk in habit and cowl. The grave, whether it be that of the real Santa Claus or not, can still be seen to this day. [see photograph above]

I am cynical about these old stories that supposedly go back into the mists of time, often the truth is that they cannot be traced back beyond the beginnings of the Victorian tourist era. I would be interested to know how far back this one about Saint Nicholas can really be charted in the historical record, if this is a genuine medieval tradition, one would expect to find some mention of it somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it cannot be traced back any further than the 19th century. I wouldn't be surprised either if it receives a new lease of life in our own time when yarns about secret lore, knights, crusaders and relics have topped the bestseller lists.

Urbi et Orbi Christmas 2011

Christmas Holiday

Of the films of Deanna Durbin, this is not the most tasteful, even if you look hard for the moral thread. However, the scenes from Midnight Mass for Christmas at the very beginning of this clip are worth showing.

Happy Christmas!

Christmas in Medieval Wales

The article below was published last year in a Welsh newspaper and highlights the very different perspective people in the Middle Ages had on the celebration of Christmas. Perhaps there is a challenge here to all of us to recover the true spirit of Advent and to regain that more theologically subtle understanding of the feast held by our forefathers?

More religion and less sentiment at Christmas in medieval Wales

Dec 24 2010 by Steffan Rhys, Western Mail

Our assumptions about the celebration of Christmas are shattered when we turn back the clock to medieval Wales, argues Dr Madeleine Gray , reader in history at the University of Wales, Newport

YOU would expect a traditional medieval Welsh Christmas to be all about Jesus’ birth.

Whatever our feelings about religion, we do think we have a picture of the first Christmas – the stable, the baby in the manger, the shepherds coming down from the cold hills. But strangely enough, there were very few pictures of this scene in medieval Wales.

There is one lovely little painting in a manuscript in the National Library in Aberystwyth. Mary is lying under a good Welsh tapestry blanket, with the baby on her lap. She has clearly just finished feeding him. At the foot of the bed, Joseph is having the traditional post-birth nap!

There is also a very battered stone carving in St David’s Cathedral, some very faded painted wooden panels in Llanelian near Colwyn Bay and the remains of a stained glass window at Gresford – and that’s it.

Our “ignorant” peasant ancestors had a much more theologically subtle understanding of the whole story. For them, it began nine months earlier when the Angel Gabriel told Mary she was expecting God’s child. There were pictures of this event, called the Annunciation, in illuminated manuscripts and in churches all over Wales. It is carved in alabaster on a tomb at Abergavenny and there is even a little wooden carving under one of the choir stalls at Gresford. Sometimes a picture of the Annunciation survives in fragments of stained glass when everything else has been lost, suggesting that this picture was the one people wanted to save above all others.

There were also lots of pictures of the Virgin and Child, including the famous statues at Cardigan and Penrhys. There were even pictures and carvings of Jesus’s earthly family tree. This was shown literally as a tree growing out of the body of his ancestor Jesse. The kings of Israel stood in the branches and Mary and Jesus were at the top. There is a massive stained glass window of this Tree of Jesse at Llanrhaiadr in the Vale of Clwyd. In Abergavenny it was carved in wood, the size of a real tree. All that is left of that carving now is the figure of Jesse, at least twice life-size. Painted and gilded, the whole thing would have been awesome.

But in virtually all of these paintings and carvings, Jesus isn’t a baby. He is a well-grown toddler, reaching out to his mother or to the audience. Welsh people of the middle ages didn’t want to get sentimental over a little baby. They believed in a God who was human, one they could engage with and relate to.

Christmas nowadays seems to start before the leaves have fallen from the trees. Pubs and restaurants are advertising Christmas specials by the end of August – Cardiff’s lights are turned on at the beginning of November – by the time we get to the great day we’ve all eaten and drunk too much already and if we’re honest it can be a bit of an anticlimax. But it’s traditional, isn’t it?

Well, maybe. But if you went back far enough in time, you would find that the run-up to Christmas was very different. For our medieval ancestors, Advent (the month before Christmas) was a time of fasting and penitence. No chocolate-filled Advent calendars then! You prepared to celebrate Christ’s first coming to earth by thinking about his second coming as a judge. Every church had a terrifying painting of the Last Judgement with souls being pitchforked down into Hell. Jesus was shown not as a sweet little baby but as a judge, in red robes.

Celebration didn’t start until Christmas Day. Mind you, once they started, they did know how to party. Elizabeth de Burgh had a Christmas party in Usk Castle in 1326 that went on for the full 12 days. There were two boars’ heads, venison, beef and pork for all comers in her new Great Hall. The tradition was that if you turned up looking reasonably respectable, you could stay for three days before anyone even asked who you were. And for those who couldn’t scrub up, there would have been a generous distribution of leftovers outside the castle gates. There would have been music, dancing, poetry and entertainers. For the great and the good, three swans were cooked, two herons, two bitterns and a holocaust of smaller birds. The kitchen got through 800 eggs on Christmas Day alone.

This was not just conspicuous consumption. Elizabeth was a shrewd politician. What she was doing was what the American political theorist Joseph Nye called “soft power”. She had only just reclaimed her estates from Edward II’s favourite Hugh le Despencer. If local people wanted to be invited to her feasts and entertainment, they were more likely to be prepared to support her against the king.

Medieval Welsh landowners also entertained in style. Snowed up in Merionethshire, the old poet Llywelyn Goch spoke of:

Listening after Christmas
To the cooks slicing the meat;
Quick fiddle and bagpipe,
Blending of voices nightly,
Sanctus bells and laughter
And hailing men to have wine. (translated by Joseph Clancy)

But this was after Christmas – and all the more enjoyable because you had to wait for it.

Keep Christ in Christmas Campaign

Please spread the word and keep Christ at the heart of Christmas by asking for Christian cards, Christian stamps, and Christian gifts.

"When Jesus therefore was born in Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of king Herod, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to adore him." Matt. ii, 1-2

St. Knut's Day - The Last Day of Christmas in Sweden

Today is the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers but in Sweden it is celebrated as the Twentieth Day of Christmas and the feast day of St. Knut (Tjugondag Knut). Other countries may celebrate the twelve days of Christmas ending on the 6th of January but in Scandanavia we celebrate the twenty days of Christmas ending today. Today was obviously a special day in ancient times because the feast day of St. Hilary gives the name to the whole academic term in many Universities and even in some Legal Systems around the world. It is also interesting that the liturgical season of Christmas that once lasted a whole forty days until Candlemas on the 2nd of February was shortened to the twenty days and ended on 13th January in the new rubrics of Blessed Pope John XXIII (VIII De Anni Temporibus N. 72).

The St. Knut who is celebrated was King Knut or Canute IV of Denmark, which, in those days, included Sweden and Norway too. His uncle had been the King Canute who also ruled England so the era we are talking about is the end of the Viking era and the beginning of the modern (and Christian) era in Scandanavia. The feast isn't really celebrated in Denmark maybe because Canute was very ambitious and warlike and the nobles of Denmark, who elected his half-brother to be king before Canute, were tired of the war and war taxes that he introduced. He attempted to invade England to regain his uncle's crown and he assembled the last Viking army and fleet ever to be assembled but delay meant that the invasion wasn't a success.

However, the feast is an important day in the calendar of Norway and Sweden. King Canute was a devout Catholic who strongly supported the Church. He was martyred in the year 1086. There was some interesting research some years ago on his bones buried in the Cathedral of Odense on the Island of Funen, where he was martyred. It showed that he died of a single wound from the sacrum through the abdomen and with no signs of struggle, seeming to confirm the account of his death without a struggle from a lance wound. Soon after his death King Canute's reputation for holiness and the miracles reported to happen at his grave caused him to be regarded as a saint. His reputation became so great that in 1101 Pope Pascal II recognised public devotion to him.



However, this day isn't really his feast day, which is in July but it is the day that he is remembered because it is the last of the twenty days that he decreed should be celebrated as the Christmas season. It is another date in the Christian Calendar that we Swedes celebrate but in a different way and at a different time, like the feast of All Souls and how we celebrate the eve of Christmas and the eve of Easter and the eve of St. Walpurga's Day.

As usual with Swedish feasts, there are special songs. One tells us the meaning of the feast:

På Tjugondag Knut dansas julen ut och då plundras och kasseras granen.

This translates to "on St. Knut’s day, dance Christmas away and then plunder and scrap the spruce tree".

On this day we obey the law of St. Knut by plundering the Christmas tree of its decorations (especially the chocolate ones!) and drive out Christmas by throwing the Christmas tree out (usually through the window) and singing that rhyme. We also knock on the walls to scare out any Jultomten who are hiding in the house! Sometimes there is a man dressed as “Knut” in a kind of crazy ragged costume who helps to sweep out Christmas.

Another song of St. Knut's Day was written by Sigrid Sköldberg-Pettersson and reminds me of the frog song for St. John's Day: It's really a song that is sung during the whole Christmas season (starting from St. Lucy's Day) but the last verse is especially about today.

Raska fötter springa tripp, tripp, tripp!
Mamma har så bråttom klipp, klipp, klipp!
Juleklappar lackas in.
Dörren stängs för näsan din.
Det är bara roligt.

Pappa har gått ut i sta'n, sta'n, sta'n;
Köper där en präktig gran, gran, gran.
Den skall hängas riktigt full,
Först en stjärna utav gull,
Nötter sen och äpplen

Se nu är ju allting klart, klart, klart.
Barnen rusa in med fart, fart, fart.
Vem står där i pappas rock?
Jo, det är vår julebock.
Han har säkert klappar.

Alla barnen ropa: "Ack, ack, ack;
Snälla rara pappa, tack, tack, tack"!
Margit får en docka stor.
Gungehäst får lille bror.
Stina får en kälke.

Snart är glada julen slut, slut, slut.
Julegranen bäres ut, ut, ut.
Men till nästa år igen
Kommer han vår gamle vän,
Ty det har han lovat.

This translates to:

Rushing feet run tripp, tripp, tripp!
Mother is so busy cut, cut, cut.
Christmas gifts are wrapped.
The door is closed before your nose.
But it is all fun.

Daddy has gone to town, town, town;
To buy a grand Christmas tree, tree, tree.
It is going to be well-decorated,
first a star of gold,
followed by nuts, and apples.

Look, everything is done, done, done.
The children rush in with speed, speed, speed.
Who is standing there in father's coat?
Yes, it is our Christmas goat.
I'm sure he's got presents.

All the children shout Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Dear Daddy, thanks, thanks, thanks!
Margit has got a big doll.
Rocking horse for little brother.
Stina gets a toboggan.

Soon the lovely Christmas is at an end, end, end.
The Christmas tree is carried out, out, out.
But next Christmas once again
Our old friend will return.
Because he promised!



There really isn't a good choice on YouTube for this song but this is the best. The second song is about the arrival of the snow... so a real Autumn song in Sweden!

Trettondag Jul - Epiphany in Sweden

The Epiphany, the feast of the Three Holy Kings, known in Swedish as Trettondedag Jul (Thirteenth day of Christmas, just as the day after Christmas Day is Annandag Jul, Second day of Christmas) is the most controversial of our Christian Public holidays. The "Almega" employers union disapproves of the religious theme of the holiday - nothing to do with having to give employees a day off of course!

Public holidays in Sweden are called Röda Dagar (Red Days, just like "red letter days") because the important Church feasts were marked in red in Church calendars. There are 13 Red Days. They are Nyårsdagen (New Year's Day), Trettondedag Jul (Epiphany), Langfredagen (Good Friday), Påskdagen (Easter Monday) Forsta Maj (1st May), Kristi Himmelsfardsdag (Ascension Day), Pingst (Pentecost Sunday) - Annandag Pingst (Pentecost Monday) was a Red Day but was replaced by - Sveriges Nationaldag (Swedish National Day, 6th June), Midsommardagen (Midsummer Day on the Saturday between 20th and 26th June), Alla Helgons Dag (All Saints/Souls Day on the Saturday between 31st October and 6th November), Juldagen (Christmas Day) and Annandag Jul (26th December).

Everyone in Sweden also celebrates a few other days like Julafton (Christmas Eve), Midsommarafton (Midsummer Eve) and Nyårsafton (New Years Eve) as full holidays and Trettondagsafton (Epiphany Eve), Skärtorsdagen (Easter Thursday), Påskafton (Easter Saturday), Valborgsmässoafton (Walpurgis Eve), Kristi Himmelsfärdsdag (Ascension Eve), and Allhelgonaafton (All Saints/Souls Eve) as half holidays. Also, if the Red Day falls on a Tuesday or Thursday we take the Klämdag (squeeze day between the Red Day and the weekend) as a holiday too!

Only 1st May, the Swedish National Day and Midsummer are not Christian Days, unless you include the feast day of St. Joseph the Workman and the election of King Gustavs I Vasa, who founded the Reformation in Sweden, and the feast day of St. John the Baptist as Christian Days!

Back to the Epiphany or Thirteenth Day of Christmas. It was celebrated in Sweden during the Middle Ages with Mystery Plays. It used to be the day that stjärngossar (Star Boys) dressed in white with cone hats with stars on would put on pageants of the journey of the Three Kings to Bethlehem and they would make a procession from house to house. Balthazar carried a star lantern on a pole and Caspar and Melchior would carry swords. The other children dressed as biblical characters. All would go singing songs and hymns and collecting gifts. The most famous of these biblical characters was always Judas in a big beard. The one dressed as Judas would jingle a bag with the 30 pieces of silver he received for betraying Jesus.

In Sweden today children dress as stjärngossar on Luciadag (St. Lucy's Day) instead but in a few places in Norway they can still be seen on Epiphany.

Urbi et Orbi Christmas 2010

A Thought For The Day by Pope Benedict XVI

This morning Pope Benedict XVI broadcast 'Thought for the Day,' a regular two-minute-forty-second pious meditation during the morning news programme 'Today' on BBC Radio 4, which airs every weekday morning.

The BBC website gives the text of the broadcast:

"Recalling with great fondness my four-day visit to the United Kingdom last September, I am glad to have the opportunity to greet you once again, and indeed to greet listeners everywhere as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Our thoughts turn back to a moment in history when God's chosen people, the children of Israel, were living in intense expectation.

They were waiting for the Messiah that God had promised to send and they pictured him as a great leader who would rescue them from foreign domination and restore their freedom.

God is always faithful to his promises, but he often surprises us in the way he fulfils them.

The child that was born in Bethlehem did indeed bring liberation, but not only for the people of that time and place - he was to be the Saviour of all people throughout the world and throughout history.

And it was not a political liberation that he brought, achieved through military means; rather, Christ destroyed death forever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross.

And while he was born in poverty and obscurity, far from the centres of earthly power, he was none other than the Son of God.

Out of love for us, he took upon himself our human condition, our fragility, our vulnerability and he opened up for us the path that leads to the fullness of life to a share in the life of God himself.

As we ponder this great mystery in our hearts this Christmas, let us give thanks to God for his goodness to us and let us joyfully proclaim to those around us the good news that God offers us freedom from whatever weighs us down: he gives us hope, he brings us life.

Dear Friends from Scotland, England, Wales and indeed every part of the English-speaking world. I want you to know that I keep all of you very much in my prayers this Holy Season.

I pray for your families, for your children, for those who are sick and for those who are going through any form of hardship at this time.

I pray especially for the elderly and for those who are approaching the end of their days.

I ask Christ, the light of the nations, to dispel whatever darkness there may be in your lives and to grant to every one of you the grace of a peaceful and joyful Christmas.

May God bless all of you!"

CHRISTVS REGNAT - Short Story Special Issue

This special short story issue of the journal of St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association is now available here. Past issues are also available for download here.

Included in this issue are the following short stories:

Letter from the Pontiff A Short Story by Revd. Deacon Raymond Tucker Cordani

The Trail Before Cell Phones A Short Story by Kathleen Culligan Techler

The Liturgiologist and the Antiquary An ecclesiastical tale by Ritualist

The Guild A Tale of Old Dublin by Des Hannon

Revd. Mr. Cordani was born in Torrington, Connecticut and earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Literature with a minor in Creative Writing and Theater from the University of New Hampshire 1995. In 2002, he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He had been a working journalist since 1993, having written for the Associate Press, Catholic News Service, Columbia Magazine, Our Sunday Visitor, and the National Catholic Register. Between 2002 and 2007 he taught English at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

In 2007, he entered Blessed John National Seminary near Boston, the result of a long discernment to priesthood. He is sponsored by the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts, and, God willing, was ordained to the diaconate on Saturday, 27th November, 2010. Currently he ministers in a parish called Immaculate Conception, “a hardscrabble assignment in the Puerto Rican and Dominican barrios in Western Massachusetts.” His Sacerdotal Ordination is scheduled for Saturday, 4th June, 2011. He adds that writing while in the seminary has been difficult, more than a labor of love but a “dual vocation,” as Merton said of his own vocation to writing and service of God in the Church.

www.tucker-cordani.blogspot.com

Kathleen Culligan Techler decided decided in second grade to become a writer, although she was to became a physical therapist, wife, mother of five, and grandmother of nine, before actually writing her first book. For Shalom, Mary: Letters the Blessed Virgin Mary might have written, (2001) thoughts came to her in church during a Christmas sermon and wouldn't leave her alone until she wrote the book. The ideas for Barriers (2001) and The Secret of Pirate Key (2004) came from the barrier island off the coast of Florida where she and her husband have a vacation house. Her time as a "skating mother" sitting in a cavernous old auditorium gave her plenty of ideas for Summer Ice (2006). She has also written in Holiday Hearts a collection Christmas Short Stories for her regular publisher Diskus Publishing. When she is not writing or reading she delivers Meals on Wheels, knits hats for newborns, and tutors second graders in reading.

www.ktechler.tripod.com
www.diskuspublishing.com/kathleenculligantechler.html

Urbi et Orbi Christmas 2009

Christmas Eve in Sweden

In Sweden we really start celebrating Christmas a long time in advance with the beginning of Advent and St. Lucy's Day which is taken very seriously here in Sweden. Here in Gothenburg the whole city is covered in lights from Liseberg Park to the Harbour. This year the really cold weather has helped to create the perfect atmosphere (especially if you are warm and indoors looking out the window!).

The Swedes, being a particurly difficult people, prefer to celebrate the birth of Christ on December 24th. (Same thing with Easter - we really are a tricky bunch!) Traditions differ between families, but for most people Christmas is one of those seasons when you enjoy spending time with your family. We decorate the Christmas tree together, cook, drink glögg (mulled wine) or julmust (very sweet like beer but with no alcohol) and eat far to many oranges, knäck (fudge), lussekatter (St. Lucy buns eaten right through Advent) and pepparkakor (little ginger bread men). Then, at precisely three o'clock Christmas starts for real - with Donald Duck on TV.

After about an hour of pretending not to laugh at the same silly things as the year before it's finally time to start eating. A traditional Swedish Christmas dinner or julbord is a huge meal with many differnet kinds of inlagd sill (pickled herring) and ägg (eggs - sometimes mixed together as gubbröra), rödbetor (beetroot), salad, prinskorv, fläskkorv and isterband (types of sausages), köttbullar (meatballs), rödkål, grönkål and brunkål (different kinds of cabbage - pickled and cooked), sweet bread, julost, bondost, herrgårdsost, prästost and getost (types of cheese), salmon, omelette, rökt ål (smoked eel), lutfisk, a special fish dish, paté and all sorts of pickles and condiments.

Recipes for the most important dish julskinka, the Christmas ham, are handed down through generations - they still all manage to taste exactly the same. The ham is enjoyed with mustard or apple sauce and is often accompanied by dopp i grytan, which means 'dip in the cauldron,' a slice of vörtlimpa (sweet bread) that's been dipped in the water in which the ham's been boiled.

Another Swedish Christmas tradition is the julbocken or Christmas goat. In the same way that the julbord is a reminder of pagan feasts the julbocken is pagan tradition based on the legend of the god Thor who used to ride in a chariot drawn by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr but the tradition has been Christianised into the devil who would appear to menace St. Nicholas in the medieval mystery plays. In past centuries people used to play pranks disguised as the julbocken in the same way as on the Dymmelonsdag ('clapper Wednesday'). This is very like the Julebukking of Norway.

In some places, the julbocken brings the presents to children instead of jultomten, the Swedish Santa Claus. Unfortunately, not in my city. I would have loved a Christmas goat to bring me presents! Some towns such as Gävle build huge straw goats for the celebrations. Small straw goats wrapped in red ribbon can also be bought as a Christmas decoration.

There is also a tradition of carol singing associated with the julbocken that is very similar to the Wren Boys of Ireland.

Remember The Holy Innocents!

"Herod the King, in his raging, charged he hath this day,
His men of might, in his own sight, all young children to slay."

Let us pray to the Martyrs of Christmas for the Holy Innocents of our own day!