December Update

Shoes in the hall, Lussekatter, and Winter's arrival

December Doldrums

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The garden in December is pretty dull. Gone are the bright blue skies and fiery foliage of October, the thrilling first snow of November. The end of the year brings chill winds, ground blanketed with brittle brown leaves over frozen mud, and seemingly no life inside the garden fence. Though I’m sure there are critters living there, as our dog rushes through the garden gate on high alert when he’s let out into the darkness.

Grapevines on the garden fence

Well-deserved rest for all the growing things, and a necessary part of the life cycle, but it feels like stagnation. And a bit depressing to look out on. So I made a point this weekend of trying to find some beauty in the yard. Here’s what I came up with:

Backyard dormant plants, a study in shades of brown.

St. Nicholas Day

Thankfully, there are a few festive liturgical feasts in early to mid-December to break up the stretch of gray days and long nights, and light the way to the bigger holidays that end the month.

Note to St. Nick: Aldi stocks some great sweets.

The night of December 5th, we each place a shoe (or 2 slippers, if you’re an especially hopeful child) out in the bedroom hall. St. Nicholas pays a stealthy visit, and we wake to treats on the morning of the 6th. The trick is to gather up the goodies before the dog finds them and tries to play keep-away. Which trick we shall try to improve on next year… the dog is fine, though.

St. Nicholas’ Day is celebrated in multiple countries, with all their lovely cultural variations, and our family’s tradition lacks all frills (and donkeys in the house). But it’s nice to wake on a dark December morning and have chocolate for breakfast.

St. Lucy’s Day

Speaking of sweets for breakfast, one of my favorite feast days is this coming week, on December 13th. The traditional morning treat for this day is Lussekatter, or Lucy cats— saffron buns with raisins that resemble curled-up cats, or more gruesome— the eyes which were gouged out as part of the saint’s martyrdom.

Learning to fold the dough for Lussekatter.

This year, St. Lucy’s day falls on a busy work & school morning, following an equally busy eve of the feast, so we’ll be opting for premade refrigerated cinnamon rolls popped in the oven, rather than the more labor-intensive Lussekatter. The joy is in waking the family with warm baked goods and song on a cold morning.

I’ve so far balked at the traditional lit candles on the head for my own daughters (youngest pictured here), but my mom was legit and my sisters and I sure did wake the family with flames balanced on head wreaths when we were kids.

Santa Lucia was one of the first martyrs of the early Christian church. Though she lived in Syracuse (the one in Sicily, not New York), her feast day is honored throughout Europe and particularly so in the Nordic countries. Our family’s traditions hail from Switzerland, via immigrants to Michigan, but seem to match the Swedish and Norwegian celebrations pretty closely. The reason Lucia is so venerated in these countries has its origin centuries ago in Sweden, when the saint appeared with food for the starving people there, in answer to their prayers. There are some seriously gorgeous Santa Lucia celebrations for the watching on YouTube, and you won’t be sorry if you start with this Swedish one:

Why December 13 for this feast day? Regular readers of The Suburb Farm will not be surprised to learn that it has to do with one of my favorite subjects, the old Julian calendar. Sweden did not switch to the Gregorian calendar until 1753, so prior to that both the Winter Solstice and Christmas fell on this date, rather than their later dates that we recognize now. This year the Solstice falls on December 21, next year December 22nd, and Christmas is static at December 25th. The ancient feast of Yule, or Yuletide, is linked to the Solstice but the length of the celebration has varied with time and place. Our Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25-January 6) mirror Yule in that way. And yes, the Twelve days of Christmas start with Christmas, not with December 13 as retailers would have us believe. (Unless you’ve decided to live by the Julian calendar, in which case more power to you.)

Lucy means “light” and her day is a reminder that though we’re in the darkest time of the year, the balance will soon shift. Following the coming solstice, the light will gradually return to triumph over the night. Such was the comfort of this season to our agrarian ancestors, and such it can be for us.

Elderberry flowers holding out until a couple weeks ago.

Happy December, friends! May your holiday preparations go smoothly, your budget miraculously stretch, and the return of the light break through any dreariness that December has brought.

—Erin, in Michigan