The Nameless Day

antlers & flickering beams

Happy December New Moon!

Today is 23 December, the Nameless Day. And tomorrow … tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Stop for a moment and sniff the air. Can you smell the enchantment of glimmering birch bark?

Birch trees in Crow Wood

O the rising of the sun

And the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ

Sweet singing in the choir.

The Holly and the Ivy (trad.)

Bracken & Wrack is named for the path I walk between the heath and the sea in my native Norfolk, land of the Eceni. It wends this way and that across fields, woods, gorse-bedecked heathland and the wide North Sea. At this time of year it becomes the Birch Track, inspiring the things I make and the words I write.

It is, of course, far more than a literal track. It’s a soft bed of golden birch leaves, icy northern magic, bright toadstools, lace-edged deer tracks and always the silvery glimmer of birch bark to lure us deeper between the trees.

Any research into the birch tree will quickly reveal it to be a tree of beginnings, having been first to lay root into land exposed by the receding ice. But its branches extend way beyond this. Traditionally used to make cradles, and with a place in funerary custom, it takes us full circle from birth to burial. The birch is a sacred tree in every land in which it grows. It’s also the tree for the first month in the Tree Calendar, of which more later. And that begins on 24 December!

The first forest was a birch wood and the tiniest sliver of birch bark is a key to open the gate. Turn the key in a deep fissure in the silvery bark and gain access to that ancient place, humming with healing, wisdom and magic. I feel it every time I step into the part of Crow Wood thickest with birch.

 So if you’d like to pull on your backpack, with its steaming flask of hot chocolate and a St Lucy cake for the journey, let’s get going. 

Midwinter Solstice

Winter Solstice sunrise from my bedroom window

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

 At this time to the Goat is run

 To fetch new lust, and give it you,

 Enjoy your summer all;

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

John Donne (1572 - 1631), from ‘A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day’

You may wonder why I talk about St Lucy here, when her feast day came and went on 13 December. But, centuries before 1752 and the attempt to align astronomical and calendrical time which led to the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, St Lucy’s Day actually coincided with the Winter Solstice. That is why the energies feel so mutable, I think. Santa Lucia is widely known and loved, and many people follow the customs attached to her feast day, feeling that it marks the true beginning of Christmas and the festive season. I do the same. This year, I managed for the first time to make and shape my Lussekatter on the evening of 12 December, ready to bake for an early, reflective breakfast in bed before sunrise, with a cup of strong coffee. The making was a ritual in itself, as was the tasting. I plan for it to be a yearly tradition at The Old Shop from now onwards. 

But with time still slipping year on year, Old St Lucy’s Day is no longer the Midwinter Solstice. It falls on the day that we now call Boxing Day, with Old St Lucy’s Eve on Christmas Day. By that time the weather conditions can, of course, be very different from those prevailing 13 days before. And rather than going into the dark we are coming out the other side, into the light. No wonder that if you pause for a while in the busy-ness of the festive season you can find yourself feeling unsettled, in need of a walk out into nature as a recalibration.  

Lussekatter in the kitchen, 13 December 2022

The Nameless Day

.. A day foretold by images

of glassy pond, peasant and snowy roof

over the holy child iconed in gold.

Or women shawled against the goosedown air

pleading with soldiers at a shifting frontier

in the snows of television,

while in the secret dark a fresh snow falls

filling our tracks with stars.

Gillian Clarke, from ‘Snow'

The Nameless Day. A day that slips between the worlds, is no-time. Some say that it’s the day after the Oak King defeats the Holly King when the old king is dead and the new one still unborn.

If you divide the year into 13 lunar months of 28 days each, you find you have a single day unaccounted for to make up the solar year of 365 days. This is The Nameless Day. I have read that this is the ‘Day’ of the ‘Year and a Day’ of myth and fairy tale.

This wispy day, so hard to feel the shape of, is probably best known through its inclusion in the Celtic Tree Calendar, based on the Ogham alphabet. In this, each of the 13 lunar months is allotted its own patron tree, with 23 December standing apart from the rest.The calendar itself is mostly an inspired invention of poet and scholar Robert Graves, who first published his idea in The White Goddess (1948). Although Graves took liberties in his interpretation, his theory has a basis in known practice. The Druids did, according to Roman accounts, follow a lunar calendar, and their Ogham writing system did equate each letter with a different tree. 

As accurate historical records of the Druids’ activities are scarce, many of Graves’ ideas were based on the work of Irish historian Roderick O’Flaherty, who, in 1685, had published a history of Ireland. This work went into great detail on the myths and legends of Ireland and contained a chapter on interpreting the ancient Ogham alphabet. Graves was probably inspired, too, by the fourteenth century Book of Ballymote, which also included information about the Ogham.

The Nameless Day has been referred to in Druid circles as the Day of Creation, the Feast of Potentials and The Secrets of the Unhewn Dolmen. The latter comes from a line in the Song of Amergin, reputed to be the oldest poem known from these lands:

Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen?

An unhewn stone is rough, unshaped, virgin with infinite potential. I love the thought that it could take any number of shapes or have any image or word carved into it. No wonder the Day itself is ‘wispy’ as I found myself reflecting earlier! There is also the mysterious notion that, just maybe, the fate that lies within it - perhaps even just below the surface - is already there waiting to be uncovered.

The last oak leaf - St Lucy’s Eve 2022

Mistletoe

Our Clerk, who was once a Gardener, has this Christmas so over-deckt the Church with Greens, that he has quite spoilt my Prospect, insomuch that I have scarce seen the young Baronet I dress at these three Weeks, though we have both been very constant at our Devotions, and don't sit above three Pews off. The Church, as it is now equipt, looks more like a Green-house than a Place of Worship: The middle Isle is a very pretty shady Walk, and the Pews look like so many Arbours of each Side of it. The Pulpit itself has such Clusters of Ivy, Holly, and Rosemary about it, that a light Fellow in our Pew took occasion to say, that the Congregation heard the Word out of a Bush, like Moses.

The Spectator, No. 282, 1711 

Druids hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it is growing.

Pliny, 1st century CE

If you search for The Nameless Day on the internet or look at contemporary books and oracle decks based on the Celtic Tree Calendar you will see that the day has mistletoe ascribed to it as its sacred tree. I have tried to uncover whether this is actually authentic to Robert Graves’ work but can find no direct evidence that it is. Some authors, for example Nigel Pennick in The New Celtic Tree Oracle, hedge their bets by describing the card for The Nameless Day as the mystical card without a corresponding Ogham tree-letter, but which is related to the mystic Mistletoe plant. 

Nigel Jackson and Nigel Pennick, who conceived this oracle deck, give the card for The Nameless Day to The White Roebuck. Pennick explains that the quality of The White Roebuck or Stag is imagined as existing ‘between’ and throughout all the other cards as an indefinable, elusive but transcendent spiritual essence. According to him, this mythical animal is the symbol of the highest spiritual reality, citing Celtic stories where The White Roebuck is pursued into the depths of magical forests. Often it lures the hunter deep into the Otherworld or reveals a hidden secret or sacred place. It is, he says, the emblem of concealed mystery, the soul or inner spiritual core that is lodged in the thicket of the body and of the world.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. 

This year, having seen friends’ beautiful free-standing 3D Advent calendars by Roger la Borde, I decided to purchase one for The Old Shop (they’re reusable year after year). There were several to choose from and I was attracted to one called Silver Stag, which duly arrived. Because I was late for the beginning of Advent there was the excitement of putting it together and adding several of the cut-outs to the tree structure all in one go. What I didn’t realise at the time, but have done as the Day creeps closer and the motifs left lying beside the tree grow fewer, is that the cut-out allocated to 23 December is … the eponymous Silver Stag. 

Coincidence?

‘Silver Stag’ Advent Calendar - 23 December

But let’s go back to the mistletoe. Of course, the internet being what it is, if one writer decides that the appropriate ‘tree’ for The Nameless Day should be mistletoe, others will follow suit without necessarily doing any primary research. But what led that writer to choose it in the first place?

Mistletoe certainly has good credentials for an Otherworldly plant. It is semi-parasitic, growing on trees without ever touching the ground or putting down roots. This gives it a mystique that has spawned a wealth of folklore and magical traditions. Indeed, in the Norse myths it was the one tricksy entity to slip through the net when Frigg decreed that her son, the god Baldur, could not be killed by any product of earth, air, fire or water. So, he was slain using a mistletoe spear by his enemy Hodr. It’s said that after Baldur’s death, Frigg banished mistletoe to the tops of trees but made it a symbol of love after he was brought back to life. 

Traditionally in Scandinavia, if enemies met under mistletoe they would lay down their weapons and not fight until the following day. 

In Brittany, mistletoe is known as Herbe de la Croix because of a legend that it was once a tree and that Christ's cross was made of its wood. After the crucifixion it shrivelled into a parasitic plant.

Mistletoe berries appear at the time of the Winter Solstice, the birth of the new year, and may have been used in the Druids’ solstitial rites. In Celtic mythology and in druid lore, it was considered a remedy for barrenness in animals and an antidote to poison. Interestingly it was also worn on their girdles by medieval women who wanted to increase their fertility.

In Tudor England we start to see the custom take the form we know today. The ‘kissing bough’ or ‘kissing bush’ was a wreath-like frame woven from mistletoe and decorated with an icon of the Virgin Mary. It must have made the perfect location for stealing an illicit kiss or two.

When hung up in houses for kissing under - and given all the foregoing it’s easy to see how this tradition evolved - it is sometimes left up for the whole year to preserve the house from lightning or fire until being replaced the next Christmas Eve. And, what could be more natural than to believe that love will always reside in a mistletoe-bedecked home? It was also hung in homes and stables to protect the household from the mischief of fairies and evil spirits.

Another custom says that each sprig only serves to sanction as many kisses as there are berries. One berry must be removed each time it is used as ‘currency’ until none are left. Although, in good mistletoe country at least, you can imagine each sprig being quickly replaced!

If you do a Google search on mistletoe you will read over and over again that it was banned from being taken into churches. Actually, that turns out to be a myth. Writings from the 18th and early 19th centuries reveal that it was routinely used to decorate churches as well as homes, along with holly, ivy and other evergreens.

In his poem The Approach of Christmas (1716) John Gay writes: 

Christmas, the joyous period of the year.
Now with bright holly all your temples strew,
With laurel green and sacred mistletoe.

By the turn of the 19th century, the use of mistletoe in the church was being described as ‘taboo’, ‘excommunicated’ and ‘banned’ as if it were established fact, but there’s no evidence of any such ecclesiastical decree. Instead, it seems that mistletoe’s uncomfortable pagan origins were a side issue compared with the licentious and lusty behaviour the presence of mistletoe was thought to encourage.

In 1892 Baptist minister James Smith expressed pious rage against various Christmas customs, but while railing against the supposed pagan origins of various evergreens, his most pressing objection concerned mistletoe. As the Henley Advertiser of 24 December explains, he ‘condemned the use of mistletoe for church decorations, owing to its popular use for the custom of kissing ladies under it that it invites’.

In the Cornish & Devon Post of 29 December 1900, a contributor repeats the myth of the medieval ban because of its association with a heathenish form of mythology. Then we come to his true concern: ‘And certainly if, in an age of levity, the same freedom which is permitted in the hall of kissing under the mistletoe were pleaded in the sanctuary, it might be well to keep the fateful parasite at a respectable distance’.

By contrast, on 8 January 1894, the Northern Echo decries the falling attendance of young people at church and suggests: ‘Perhaps a freer use of the mistletoe in those church decorations might provide more tempting bait for the absentee parishioners.’

Myself, I would love to be at York Minster on Christmas Eve when, each year, mistletoe is blessed and hung up on the high altar. In his fascinating essay on mistletoe, James Hoare suggests that given York’s role as capital of the 9th century Danelaw in which Christian Anglo-Saxons and pagan Norse settlers lived side by side, this could be an instance where the use of mistletoe might genuinely be a lingering pagan custom resulting from the city’s unique culture.

If you would like to see the mistletoe actually being hung up on York Minster’s high altar, there’s a lovely little video on youtube which I’ve linked below. In it, the Dean of York explains why he is so enthusiastic about keeping the tradition going, so I will leave the last words to him:

‘I think there was a time when in all sorts of places this custom used to exist, but here in York it hardly ever died out and in recent years I, especially, have wanted to cherish this old custom. So every Christmas Eve I hang a spray of mistletoe. For probably thousands of years, mistletoe has been a sign of good fellowship and love in a household or a place of meeting. In the days before Christianity came to these parts, they would probably have hung mistletoe over their celebrations in the middle of the winter. But the early Christian missionaries had a brilliant idea. They said, this expresses very well the kind of new life that God has brought to us in Jesus Christ. So let’s hang our mistletoe up in our churches as well!’

The Dean of York in ‘York Minster: Hanging the Mistletoe, Christmas Eve’

Birch Track (Winter Solstice 2021)

It’s pouring day and the kitchen is scented like the birch woods. 

Close your eyes while the wick crackles … can you feel the warmth of the fire in the clearing, set with stumps all around? Sit down, draw this rough wool blanket around your shoulders and let me pass you a deep wooden bowl of fragrant pine-needle tea.

Pouring Birch Track midwinter candles 2021

Nameless Day Pear, Ginger & Hazelnut Cake

Gingerbread has long been associated with Yuletide and was a popular gift or fairing in medieval times. This recipe is only tweaked a little from a Deliciously Ella one, but I felt it was perfect to warm this Day (here, a misty, grey and damp one) in a beautifully festive way. Ginger is not only traditional for Christmas but provides fire in the darkness, while the sweetness of pear and the nourishment of the hazelnut seem apt companions for this midwinter spell. I imagined the pears as the last of the harvest, carefully wrapped and put away ready for the feasting. The precious hazelnuts being brought from the storeroom, where they had been carefully placed after being gathered during the autumn from woodland and hedgerow. 

300ml oat milk

1 tbsp lemon juice

350g self-raising flour (or use gf flour)

200g coconut sugar

1 teasp baking powder

150g coconut oil

2 pears

3 balls stem ginger from jar

50g hazelnuts

Oven 180 degrees C

Stir lemon juice into oat milk and set aside for 10 minutes. 

Mix flour, sugar and baking powder together. 

Melt coconut oil.

Chop ginger, hazelnuts and one of the pears, peeled and cored. Peel and slice the other pear thinly.

Add the milk mixture and coconut oil to the flour and mix to a smooth batter.

Put in the chopped ginger and pear, and spoon into a cake tin lined with parchment.

Arrange the sliced pears in a wheel on top and scatter with hazelnuts.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a rack before removing from the tin.

I promise your kitchen will smell of midwinter magic! 

A few resources:

https://ireland-calling.com/celtic-tree-calendar/

https://medium.com/@jameshoare_6430/was-mistletoe-banned-by-the-medieval-church-for-being-pagan-c7cdf1ab08ec