[Cue the music of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"]...On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me--a Mother on a dogsled and some kids!...?
"A mother on a..."--?!
Well, the Second Day of Christmas (don't you dare toss that tree to the curb yet!) is called St. John's Day/Mother Night, and it has its own particular mythologies and observances. But on any of the Twelve Days, keep an eye out for the Wild Hunt, a bunch of fairies (nature spirits, that is) led by King Arthur, or the Norse father-god Odin, or Arawn (a Celtic god):
Well, the Second Day of Christmas (don't you dare toss that tree to the curb yet!) is called St. John's Day/Mother Night, and it has its own particular mythologies and observances. But on any of the Twelve Days, keep an eye out for the Wild Hunt, a bunch of fairies (nature spirits, that is) led by King Arthur, or the Norse father-god Odin, or Arawn (a Celtic god):
--OR a tall
woman dressed in white riding a sleigh pulled by dogs, with a train of children
running and laughing alongside (only image I could find lacks both sleigh and children):
...This last is Mother Christmas, and although she and
her hounds, and kids, might show up any of the Days, the Second day is her Day. If you leave
your door open, and she sends in one of her dogs, don't turn it away! Very bad luck
for you (Maybe it's a good day to visit the Humane Society, I don't know. Or to be "givin' a dog a bone".).
↑ "Rocky," ↑ current resident at the Champaign County Humane Society
Mother Christmas is simply a version of the Mother Goddess,
here representing fertility, abundance, and justice--and blasphemy, if your
religious views are rigidly penis-oriented. It might be a good day to truck out
a very voluptuous Great Mother statue from some bygone culture, or of your own
making. After all, Christmas is a celebration of the incarnation of
Spirit on and of Earth, and She IS Earth.
By the way, if you are going to entertain motherhood as a theme for the Second Day, then you have to consider why there is so little mention of Mary in Christmas carols. I'd never thought about it before myself, perhaps accepting that Christmas is about the baby Jesus more than anything, while the angels, shepherds, wise men--and his mother--are arranged around his shining self like furniture, and no big deal. But turns out that the relative exclusion of Mary from Christmas music is not by accident:
So why is Mary largely AWOL in our Christmas songs? My guess is that the answer is pretty simple. Our carols are primarily nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Protestant inventions (although the musical-tune part dates from all the way back in the Renaissance, the medieval-sounding text “What Child Is This” was written in 1865), not a time that’s known for its deep Roman Catholic/Protestant cooperation and mutual affection. Although Mother Mary can’t be excised from the Christmas story completely, in Protestant-penned Christmas carols she’s mentioned as little as possible, for fear of turning her into an object of cultic devotion--something most Protestants have accused Roman Catholics of doing for a fairly long time. So Mary merits only passing mention in a few carols or--even better--no mention at all in most.
By the way, if you are going to entertain motherhood as a theme for the Second Day, then you have to consider why there is so little mention of Mary in Christmas carols. I'd never thought about it before myself, perhaps accepting that Christmas is about the baby Jesus more than anything, while the angels, shepherds, wise men--and his mother--are arranged around his shining self like furniture, and no big deal. But turns out that the relative exclusion of Mary from Christmas music is not by accident:
So why is Mary largely AWOL in our Christmas songs? My guess is that the answer is pretty simple. Our carols are primarily nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Protestant inventions (although the musical-tune part dates from all the way back in the Renaissance, the medieval-sounding text “What Child Is This” was written in 1865), not a time that’s known for its deep Roman Catholic/Protestant cooperation and mutual affection. Although Mother Mary can’t be excised from the Christmas story completely, in Protestant-penned Christmas carols she’s mentioned as little as possible, for fear of turning her into an object of cultic devotion--something most Protestants have accused Roman Catholics of doing for a fairly long time. So Mary merits only passing mention in a few carols or--even better--no mention at all in most.
--“Looking
for Mary in Christmas Carols” by Michael Linton 6 . 18 . 08 https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/06/looking-for-mary-in-christmas
...In this day and age, a deliberate exclusion of Mary from any Christmas lore seems, well, just wrong. One can't help but wonder if it was a trend that began what continues today. The modern assault on motherhood includes forcing women to have babies they don't want and can't provide for, making contraception unavailable, excluding nursing mothers from doing so publicly, encouraging mothers not to nurse but feed their babies formula, allowing mothers (and fathers) little if any maternity leave, and leaving women in financial straits that force them to abandon their babies to daycare in order to keep a roof over everyone's heads. Can you imagine the Christ Child in daycare? YOU CAN BET YOUR BOOBIES THAT THE BABY JESUS WAS BREASTFED FOR A SOLID THREE YEARS, AT LEAST!
Since the whole point of the birth of the Savior is the incarnation, the Word or Spirit's becoming flesh, coming down to earth to spend time as "one of us," then a natural extension of that is attention paid to the earthly world of the Savior--including his mother. There is no more immediate intermediary to the earthy and the carnal than to the mother--the womb, the umbilical cord, the nourishing breasts, the skin-to-skin contact. By cutting out mention of such closeness, we cheapen the blessing that God was wishing to bestow on our humanity, on all of Creation. And I can't think of any reason to do so other than patriarchy, and a spirituality that sought to exclude or exploit the body and the Earth rather than bless and cooperate with them.
Chew on that while you throw away Christmas wrappings and boxes.
The Second Day is also known as "St. John's Day". I'm not sure what St. John has to do with the day, other than to try to hog attention from the distastefully feminist Mother Night--or, less cynically, to provide some masculine-feminine balance.
However, I do know that wine is another symbolic connection between Heaven and Earth, and the Second Day is a good day to have your clergy-person bless your wine, making it very lucky and healing, and giving it the name "St. John's wine".
Since the whole point of the birth of the Savior is the incarnation, the Word or Spirit's becoming flesh, coming down to earth to spend time as "one of us," then a natural extension of that is attention paid to the earthly world of the Savior--including his mother. There is no more immediate intermediary to the earthy and the carnal than to the mother--the womb, the umbilical cord, the nourishing breasts, the skin-to-skin contact. By cutting out mention of such closeness, we cheapen the blessing that God was wishing to bestow on our humanity, on all of Creation. And I can't think of any reason to do so other than patriarchy, and a spirituality that sought to exclude or exploit the body and the Earth rather than bless and cooperate with them.
Chew on that while you throw away Christmas wrappings and boxes.
The Second Day is also known as "St. John's Day". I'm not sure what St. John has to do with the day, other than to try to hog attention from the distastefully feminist Mother Night--or, less cynically, to provide some masculine-feminine balance.
However, I do know that wine is another symbolic connection between Heaven and Earth, and the Second Day is a good day to have your clergy-person bless your wine, making it very lucky and healing, and giving it the name "St. John's wine".
....I suppose, if you are alcoholic, you'd best not drink this blessed wine hoping it will cure your alcoholism, although I know some would surely try. If you're "sober," just enjoy the "wine" of whatever turns you on/gets you "high" on life--just don't always expect a priest to bless it.
Wine is a symbol, but spiritually minded teetotalers understand that you
don’t have to drink it to gain its symbolic benefits. Wine is a “spirit,”
and therefore represents the spiritual, however its strong association with
blood, and thus the flow of spiritual life through a person, bring it
down to earth in a very vivid (think blood-red) way. In fact, wine is a
perfect symbol for this melding of the spiritual and the earthly--spirit and blood--that I was discussing in the context of motherhood, above. Instead of drinking wine, and possibly getting drunk, it might be even more valuable to meditate on the Matter-Spirit connection symbolized by wine, and by the birth of a divine Wonder Child through the womb of an earthly mother (the word matter comes from the Latin word mater, meaning "mother").
This is the whole point of the Christian Incarnation, or for that matter any incarnation, any interaction between the gods and the people of Earth, in myth: spiritual and earthly reality become one. Spiritual ideals and energies become matter, flesh and bone here on Earth. And so Christians talk of Christmas, the holy birth in which the very Son of God appears in an "earthy" stable (i.e., one that smells like donkey crap). The Buddhists talk of the Buddha Nature’s inhabiting every being (and the Boddhisatvas’ rejecting pure nirvana to stay here on Earth and teach until every being is enlightened). All other religions have their own versions of this insight, and no one “owns” it.
This is the whole point of the Christian Incarnation, or for that matter any incarnation, any interaction between the gods and the people of Earth, in myth: spiritual and earthly reality become one. Spiritual ideals and energies become matter, flesh and bone here on Earth. And so Christians talk of Christmas, the holy birth in which the very Son of God appears in an "earthy" stable (i.e., one that smells like donkey crap). The Buddhists talk of the Buddha Nature’s inhabiting every being (and the Boddhisatvas’ rejecting pure nirvana to stay here on Earth and teach until every being is enlightened). All other religions have their own versions of this insight, and no one “owns” it.
Ritual, the studying of sacred texts, prayer and meditation, mindfulness, spontaneity, the arts, and the telling of poetry and myth are activities that make the “wine” of Spirit flow through our very veins and SEE the Divine mush everywhere at once like a supernatural dog team. My advice to you is to be eclectic and find the versions of these activities that make it flow best for you—but commit to the process, and savor the wine that only those who combine Earth and Spirit can drink.
A minor Christmas miracle involving wine actually happened to me one 2nd
Day of Christmas, although at the time I was 18 years sober. I wrote a true-story poem to capture it:
A MIRACLE ON THE
SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS, 2005
I laughed when Mary
hinted to Jesus,
"They're out of
wine."
He testily replies,
"What do I have
to do with you, woman?
My time is not yet
come!"
But she glibly
commands the servants:
"Do what he tells
you."
Did he throw His arms
up,
bursting through the
roof?
Or roll His eyes
across the Arc of the Firmament?
"Get me six stone
water jugs,"
He sighs.
This first miracle
He did for his mother!
Six jugs of wine,
Mother said so!
I turn to tell my
sweetheart
What I am laughing
about—
Instead, I catch the
smell of wine from nowhere.
My vines are shaken,
The grapes all drop to the
ground.
...By the way, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, authoress of Women Who Run With the Wolves, has an audiobook called Mother Night: Myths, Stories, And Teachings For Learning To See In The Dark. I thought I'd mention it, 'cause it seemed so perfect for the Second Day.
https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Night-audiobook/dp/B0037MA84G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TR8OYJRAAS5U&keywords=mother+night+clarissa+pinkola+estes+book&qid=1672158735&s=audible&sprefix=mother+night+cla%2Caudible%2C103&sr=1-1
Kurt Vonnegut has a novel called Mother Night,
a story about an American playwright turned Nazi propagandist. In 2022, this work is relevant to those who believe that the US war machine is as we speak whitewashing the nationalistic brutality of the Ukrainian Azov movement. It was made
into a mixed-reviews movie of the same name starring Nick Nolte.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/mother-night-by-kurt-vonnegut--/252693/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYo5y0vbRvc
MUSICAL CHOICES (available as a playlist on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8eINC7N_E&list=PLdartdqjh56DnX9KMsrVKretIQ9oOImg1 :
WINE: "Spill the Wine" by War, "Elderberry
Wine" by Elton John, "White Lightning and Wine" and "Just
the Wine" by Heart, "Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren)" by the
Rolling Stones, "Old Red Wine" by The Who, "Red, Red Wine" by UB40, "Bottle of Wine" by the Fireballs
MOTHERHOOD: "Mother Earth Blues" by Heart, "Mother Earth" by Eric Burdon and War/Memphis Slim, "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the Shadows) by the Stones, "Your Mother Should Know" and "Mother Nature's Son" by the Beatles, "Mother Freedom" by Bread, " Motherless Child" by Eric Clapton, "Mother Goose" by Jethro Tull, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" by Odetta, "Mother Says" by Joe Walsh, "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" by Neko Case, "Mother Rose" by Patti Smith, "Mother" by The Police, and another song of the same name by John Lennon (these two only if you like to be DARK on Christmas), "Every Mother's Son" by The Pretenders, or the different song by the same name by Traffic, or the different song by the same name by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Mother Beautiful" by Sly and the Family Stone and "Mother Earth" by Walela or the other song by the same name by Memphis Slim, "Old Mother Reagan" by The Violent Femmes, "There Come Our Mothers" by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, "Mother Earth" by Government Mule, "Mother of Earth" by The Gun Club, "Ruler of My Heart" by Mother Earth, "Earth Blues" by Jimi Hendryxx and the song of the same name by Three Hypnotics, Black Madonna by Cage the Elephant
CHRISTMAS CAROLS THAT FEATURE MARY: "Angel Gabriel" (an old Basque carol lauding Mary); "Mary, Did You Know?; "From Lands that See the Sun Arise"; "A Great and Mighty Wonder"; "Of the Father's Love Begotten"; "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming"
DOGS: "Dog"
and "Underdog" by Sly and the Family Stone, "Love Is a Doggone Good Thing" by Eddie Floyd, "Black Dog"
by Led Zeppelin, "Two Dogs and a Bone" by Los Lobos, "I'm
Walkin' the Dog" by Webb Pierce or "Walkin' the Dog" by Rufus
Turner, and the different song of the same name by Aerosmith, "The Dog
Song" by Nellie McKay, "By-tor and the Snow Dog" by Rush,
"Little Brown Dog" by Taj Mahal, and anything by Three Dog Night,
especially "Mama Told Me Not to Come" and "Joy to the
World" (just because); "Dogs" by Pink Floyd
...Don't pack it up! Enjoy your Second Day of Christmas!
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