Saturday, January 05, 2019
Music For the Twelfth Night Of Christmas
The Twelve Days Of Christmas
The Three Kings
The Three Kings
Twelfth Night
This is the last day of Christmas festivity. Tomorrow is Epiphany, which has a joy of its own. The wassail flows again tonight, and the enormous fruitcake, wrapped in layers of marzipan and iced in Royal Icing and often decorated, known as the Twelfth Cake is served.
The Twelfth Cake itself was the center of games related to the feast. Symbolic items were hidden in the cake, much as with an Irish barmbrack at Halloween. A king and queen of the feast were selected based on what items showed up in whose slices of cake. This is related to the Lord of Misrule custom.
Herrick had this to say about the Twelfth Cake:
Now, now the mirth comes
With the cake full of plums,
Where Beane's the King of the sport here;
Besides we must know,
The Pea also
Must revell, as Queene, in the Court here.
Begin then to chuse
This night as ye use
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a King by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfe-day Queene for the night here.
Which knowne, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake,
And let not a man be seen here,
Who unurg'd will not drinke
To the base from the brink
A health to the King and Queene here.
Next crowne the bowle full
With gentle lamb's woll;
Add sugar, nutmeg and ginger,
With store of ale too;
And this ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.
(Robert Herrick, "Hesperides, Twelfe Night, or King and Queene", 1648).
In my reading of the various charming books by the late Sir Alec Guiness (a Catholic convert, btw), he mentioned the custom of the Drury Lane Cake.
From CatholicCulture.org.
Here is a history of Twelfth Cakes.
And the excellent devotional site Fish Eaters has two superb articles on Twelfth Night and Epiphany, for all of your Catholic end-of-Christmas needs.
The Twelfth Cake itself was the center of games related to the feast. Symbolic items were hidden in the cake, much as with an Irish barmbrack at Halloween. A king and queen of the feast were selected based on what items showed up in whose slices of cake. This is related to the Lord of Misrule custom.
Herrick had this to say about the Twelfth Cake:
Now, now the mirth comes
With the cake full of plums,
Where Beane's the King of the sport here;
Besides we must know,
The Pea also
Must revell, as Queene, in the Court here.
Begin then to chuse
This night as ye use
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a King by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfe-day Queene for the night here.
Which knowne, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake,
And let not a man be seen here,
Who unurg'd will not drinke
To the base from the brink
A health to the King and Queene here.
Next crowne the bowle full
With gentle lamb's woll;
Add sugar, nutmeg and ginger,
With store of ale too;
And this ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.
(Robert Herrick, "Hesperides, Twelfe Night, or King and Queene", 1648).
In my reading of the various charming books by the late Sir Alec Guiness (a Catholic convert, btw), he mentioned the custom of the Drury Lane Cake.
In the Green Room of London's Drury Lane Theatre, however, Twelfth Cake still is eaten and a toast drunk in honor of Richard Baddeley the comedian, who died in 1794. The ancient ceremony, interrupted by war, was revived in 1947, and will continue — God willing — for centuries to come.
Richard Baddeley was a pastry cook who later became an actor. Upon his death he left the sum of one hundred pounds, invested at three per cent interest, to provide a cake, known as the "Baddeley Cake", which was to be eaten annually, in his memory, by "His Majesty's Company of Commedians".
From CatholicCulture.org.
Here is a history of Twelfth Cakes.
And the excellent devotional site Fish Eaters has two superb articles on Twelfth Night and Epiphany, for all of your Catholic end-of-Christmas needs.
Friday, January 04, 2019
Music For the Eleventh Day of Christmas
Maureen Hegarty, O Holy Night
Anne Murray, Joy to the World
Monteverdi Choir, Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming
Maureen Hegarty, Ave Maria (Shubert)
Anne Murray, Joy to the World
Monteverdi Choir, Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming
Maureen Hegarty, Ave Maria (Shubert)
Octave Of the Holy Innocents
The Eleventh Day of Christmas
Thursday, January 03, 2019
Octave Of Saint John the Evangelist
The Tenth Day of Christmas
Music For the Tenth Day Of Christmas
The Chieftains with Burgess Meredith, Don Oiche Ud I mBeithil
Choir Of Saint Paul's Cathedral, Once In Royal David's City
David Archuleta, Pat-A-Pan
Frederica von Stade & Kathleen Battle-I Wonder as I Wander, Mary Had a Baby
Still in full Christmas mode here. The calendar sorted itself out this year for an almost ideal and unnoticeable celebration of the whole 12 days of Christmas.
Choir Of Saint Paul's Cathedral, Once In Royal David's City
David Archuleta, Pat-A-Pan
Frederica von Stade & Kathleen Battle-I Wonder as I Wander, Mary Had a Baby
Still in full Christmas mode here. The calendar sorted itself out this year for an almost ideal and unnoticeable celebration of the whole 12 days of Christmas.
Wednesday, January 02, 2019
Octave Of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr
The Ninth Day of Christmas
Music For the Ninth Day Of Christmas
Celtic Woman, Away In A Manger
http://youtu.be/vftEpuxUo1E
http://youtu.be/DiXjbI3kRus
http://youtu.be/lkgY21KH-EM
The Gothard Sisters, Greensleeves/What Child Is This http://youtu.be/u0tn-VdgU_k
http://youtu.be/DiXjbI3kRus
http://youtu.be/lkgY21KH-EM
The Gothard Sisters, Greensleeves/What Child Is This http://youtu.be/u0tn-VdgU_k
Tuesday, January 01, 2019
Music For the Eighth Day Of Christmas
Celtic Woman, The Wexford Carol
Vienna Boys' Choir, Still, Still, Still
Mannheim Steamroller, Master's In This Hall
Nashville Early Music Ensemble, In Dulci Jubilo
Vienna Boys' Choir, Still, Still, Still
Mannheim Steamroller, Master's In This Hall
Nashville Early Music Ensemble, In Dulci Jubilo
Octave Of Christmas
January First has many titles in the Church, a proliferation coming after Vatican II, as the church seems unable to settle on lasting theme having diminished its previous traditional theme for the day. But traditionally it has been observed as the Feast of the Circumcision.
The Catholic Encyclopedia on this feast.
Monday, December 31, 2018
My Father's Twenty-Ninth Anniversary
My father, George Thomas, Senior, died twenty-nine years ago this morning.
He had just returned from 9:30 Mass with my mother, and went around the corner to chip ice away from the door of an elderly neighbor. Moments later, there was a frantic phone call that he had collapsed. I dressed and rushed to the scene and arrived just in time to see the ambulance crew carry him in. Efforts to revive him failed.
V. Requiem aeternam, dona ei Domine.
R. Et lux perpetua luceat in ei.
V. Requiescat in pace.
R. Amen.
Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti: miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae eorumque peccata dimitte: meque eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.
Amen.
In your charity, please pray for the repose of his soul.
He had just returned from 9:30 Mass with my mother, and went around the corner to chip ice away from the door of an elderly neighbor. Moments later, there was a frantic phone call that he had collapsed. I dressed and rushed to the scene and arrived just in time to see the ambulance crew carry him in. Efforts to revive him failed.
V. Requiem aeternam, dona ei Domine.
R. Et lux perpetua luceat in ei.
V. Requiescat in pace.
R. Amen.
Deus, qui nos patrem et matrem honorare praecepisti: miserere clementer animabus patris et matris meae eorumque peccata dimitte: meque eos in aeternae claritatis gaudio fac videre. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.
Amen.
In your charity, please pray for the repose of his soul.
Music For the Seventh Day of Christmas
The Clancy Brothers, The Lovely Far Off City
George Winston, The Holly and the Ivy
The Chieftains, The Holly She Bears A Berry
Jethro Tull, Bouree
George Winston, The Holly and the Ivy
The Chieftains, The Holly She Bears A Berry
Jethro Tull, Bouree
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Music For the Sixth Day Of Christmas
Loreena McKennit, The Holly And the Ivy
Celtic Woman, In the Bleak Mid-Winter/The First Noel
Loreena McKennit, The Gloucestershire Wassail
The Clancy Brothers, Angels We Have Heard On High
Celtic Woman, In the Bleak Mid-Winter/The First Noel
Loreena McKennit, The Gloucestershire Wassail
The Clancy Brothers, Angels We Have Heard On High
