A Midsommer Night’s in Denmark

June 23

The Scandinavians never pass up a chance for a good bonfire. Midsummer Night, or St. John’s Eve as it’s sometimes called in Denmark and Norway, is the perfect occasion. The holiday has little to do with St. John the Baptist, other than falling just before his saint day. In the 10th century Baltic and Scandinavian countries replaced the traditional names of Midsummer with allusions to the feast of St. John the Baptist, which fell on June 24.

In fact the tradition long pre-dates Christianity’s entry into Scandinavia. Midsummer was originally a tribute to the pagan sun god, and the bonfire represented defeat over darkness.

In Scandinavia, darkness hovers over the landscape for much of the year. On Midsummer Night however, it can stay light until midnight; in parts of Norway it can stay light for weeks at a time in late June, hence the name Land of the Midnight Sun.

For hundreds of years Midsummer Eve torch processions were common. Other rites centered around nature. Midsummer was viewed as an auspicious date for fertility. Farmers prayed for a bountiful harvest while maidens collected special herbs and plants, including St. John’s wort.

I must gather the mystic St. John’s wort tonight-
The wonderful herb, whose leaf will decide
If the coming year shall make me a bride…

— “The St John’s Wort”, old German poem

In some towns, villagers would light a straw-covered wheel afire and roll it down a hill to be extinguished in the river. Across Poland and the Baltic, maidens would toss herbs into the fire to protect them from evil spirits in the year to come while young men would jump over fires to display their bravado.

Today the holiday is a time for community to come together around the bonfire and sing patriotic songs such as “Vi elsker vort land”, also known as Midsommervisen.

We love our land
Our midsummer most
When each cloud over the field sends a blessing
When the flowers are in bloom
And the cattle drags the plough
Giving gifts to laborious hands…

…Every woman, every man can
Find an example of love for life!
Let the times grow old, let the colors fade
We will however draw a memory in our hearts
From the North so rich in legends
A glory shines across the world…

To this day Danes continue to burn a straw witch effigy atop a bonfire on Midsummer Eve, a tradition borrowed from their German neighbors in the late 19th century. The witch effigy represents evil spirits, but to some the throwback eerily recalls the Danish witch burnings of the 1600s.

Other names for Midsummer Day and Eve:

Denmark: Sankt Hans aften (Hans is the diminutive of Johannes or John.)
Norway: Jonsok
Poland: Sobotka, Swietojanska, Wianki
Eastern Poland/ Ukraine: Kupalnocka, Kupala
Russia: Ivan Kupala

http://www.epinions.com/content_1470341252

Saint Anthony’s Day

June 13

Saint Anthony of Padua

Cities and countries around the world celebrate St. Anthony’s Day, from Lisbon, Portugal to Wilmington, Delaware, not to mention cities in Brazil, Mexico, Italy, and even India!

The Brazilians get the jump on the celebrations by commemorating June 12, the day before his feast, as Día dos Namorados, or Day of the Lovers, a Brazilian Valentine’s Day, in honor of the matchmaker saint.

St. Anthony was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1195, so understandably the Lisboans claim him as their own. Like the Brazilians, the celebration begins the night before…

“When the sun sets, the whole town goes out to honor the saint with alfresco dining, grilled sardines with salad of peppers, irrigated course, with much red wine, and dancing to the beat of popular music…” (Lisbon at its Best)

In the morning, special services are held in the church built over the spot where he was born, and vintage convertible cars carry throngs of “St. Anthony’s brides” down the Avenue Liberdade.

Women write prayers and wishes on paper and tuck them into specially baked “St. Anthony’s bread”, a tradition that dates back to 1263 when…

…a child drowned in the Brenta River near the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua. The mother went to St. Anthony and promised that if her child were restored to life, she would give to the poor an amount of wheat equal to the weight of her child.  Of course her son was saved, and her promise was kept.” (Sardine Heaven: Lisbon’s Feast of St. Anthony)

The award for the most unusual St. Anthony’s Festival goes to San Miguel de Allenda, Mexico. There laborers originally celebrated May 17 as San Pascual Bailon (St. Pascal Baylon) Day, in honor of the patron saint of field and kitchen workers.

“To keep the paraders and observers separated, some paraders were dressed as scarecrows and their characteristic movements were described as “loco,” i.e., crazy. Somewhere along the way, paraders dressed as clowns replaced the field and kitchen workers, though the music and the dances stayed the same.” (El Dia de los Locos)

The popularity of the San Pascual Bailon parade overshadowed that of the more established San Antonio (St. Anthony), and the two festivities merged. Now the festival is held the Sunday after June 13 and is known as El Día de los Locos, or Day of the Crazies.

photo by Ronald Felton, licensed under Creative Commons

Fisheaters: Feast of St. Anthony of Padua

Lisbon’s Craziest Night

Italian Festivals in the U.S.

Book a hotel for St. Anthony’s Festival

Saint Joseph’s Day – New Orleans

March 19

St. Joseph
St. Joseph

In New Orleans, Carnival season doesn’t end with Mardi Gras, it just gets going. On the heels of the Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day comes St. Joseph’s Day, one of the biggest celebrations of the year.

Saint Joseph is the Patron Saint of Italy; he’s particularly revered in Sicily, where prayers to the saint are believed to have ended a deadly drought in the Middle Ages. His Feast Day is celebrated by Italian communities throughout Europe and the Americas. And March 19 is celebrated as Father’s Day in countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Bolivia and Honduras.

+ + +

In New Orleans, Saint Joseph’s Day has long been celebrated by Italian-American communities. Just as the Irish throw cabbage, carrots, and potatoes in the New Orleans St. Patrick’s Day parades, the Italians have recently begun throwing spaghetti (thankfully uncooked and in boxes). Just don’t throw meatballs, as St. Joseph’s Day falls in the middle of Lent.

But the stars of Saint Joseph’s Day aren’t Italian at all. They’re the Mardi Gras Indians. The Mardi Gras Indians consist of dozens of “tribes”, centered around African-American communities. The tribes have names such as the Golden Eagles, Wild Tchoupitoulas, Fi Ya Ya, Creole Wild West, Cheyenne Hunters, Yellow Pocahontas, and Guardians of the Flame. They meet throughout the year, but come Carnival season the tribes really strut their stuff. Literally. The tribes blend West Indian and African roots with Native American traditions to create some of the most incredible outfits, or “suits”, you’ll ever see.

The suits involve hundreds of feathers, beads, and other ornamentations. Tribe members—the Chiefs especially—can spend all year, and thousands of dollars, on a single outfit, and do so year after year.

The traditions and rivalries go back to at least WWI, though in not as formalized a way. Tradition holds that the Chiefs of each tribe confront each other and present their suits on Mardi Gras and Super Sundays (the Sundays closest to St. Joseph’s Day), surrounded by their designated Flag Boys, who carry banners and  totems. Each Chief spreads his wings to emphasize the beaded panels hanging from his arms and chest.

super_sunday

Around 1970 the ceremonies were moved from the evening of St. Joseph’s Day to the nearest Sunday afternoon, making it a more family-friendly event, but the Mardi Gras Indians still meet and celebrate on March 19th as well.

Most years, there are actually two Super Sundays, usually one on either side of March 19. One is led by the Uptown Indians, called “New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council’s Super Sunday,” and the other by the Downtown Indians, called “Tambourine and Fan.”

The costumes are the most visual, but by no means the only tradition of Super Sundays. The celebrations include singing, dancing, music, and performance.

No one’s sure why the tribes celebrate on St. Joseph’s Day.

According to the late Chief “Tootie” Montana, interviewed by the NY Times in 2004, it’s because “the Italians and us were like this,” he said holding two fingers together.

Montana, the “Godfather of the Chiefs” had been a involved with the Indians for over a half-century when he died of a heart attack at a New Orleans City Council meeting on June 27, 2005. His last act was to testify against police violence towards the Indians during the celebrations.

“With 83 years under his belt, this man came to the podium and reviewed interactions with the police over the past 52 years he’s been involved. Tootie astutely blew holes in all of Mayor Nagin’s exhortations by describing the police violence he has seen and experienced over his many years as Chief…His last words were ‘This has got to stop,’ and he turned from the podium, slumping towards the floor.”

— http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/3515.php

Allison "Tootie" Montana
Allison "Tootie" Montana

Montana died just two months before Hurricane Katrina. Over the past several years, the Mardi Gras Indians have worked to overcome the double tragedy of the loss of the Chief of Chiefs and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Describing one recent St. Joseph’s Day confrontation between tribal chiefs, the New Yorker writes,

“This was the moment, in the old days, when a knife would flash, a shot would pop, a broken bottle would fly. But the legacy of Tootie Montana and countless other chiefs who have striven to transform Indian culture from gang warfare to street art held firm. The drumming and chanting reached a crescendo, then burst and faded. The two chiefs laughed and embraced; the sweaty crowd applauded, took swigs from bottles of water and beer, and moved on down the avenue to find another battle.”

http://www.bigeasy.com/new-orleans-events/mardi-gras/indians.html

St. Patrick’s Day around the world

March 17

shamrock

I’m tired of these @#$%! snakes
on these #$%@$! Irish plains!
— St. Patrick, 433 AD

When the going gets tough, the tough go green. And the hard times haven’t dimmed the green glow (or watered down the green beer) of St. Patrick’s Day from the Emerald Isle to North America.

For a run-down of the slave-turned-priest who we celebrate today, check out last year’s St. Patrick’s Day post: Green is Good.

This year we travel around the world to see how St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in different cities.

American Servicemen and women in Baghdad held their first (and possibly last) St. Patrick’s Day Parades. It was considerably smaller than, say, New York’s festivities, but the tiny procession drew a respectable amount of confused looks from curious Iraqis. AFP

In New Orleans, the St. Patrick’s parades are second only to Carnival/Mardi Gras. Instead of throwing beads, float-riders threw food: full heads of cabbage, carrots, and potatoes. “Everything you need to make an Irish stew, minus the meat,” says New Orleans native Odin (yes, that’s his real name). And that’s exactly what participants do with it. “And if you’re a mother with kids, forget it.You’ll go home with more food than you could eat in a month.”

But watch out for large flying edible projectiles!

The St. Patrick’s Day parade in Toronto is relatively young, but gaining in popularity. The Irish have a long tradition in Canada’s largest city. According to toronto.ctv.ca:

In 1847, when the city of Toronto was only 13 years old and had only 20,000 residents, more than 38,000 Irish refugees of the Great Famine — which lasted from 1845 to 1851 — arrived in the city.

In the U.S. the two most famous celebrations are the parades in Boston and New York.

John “Wacko” Hurley has helped organize the Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade for a half-century and has been its lead organizer for the past two decades.

The New York parade dates back to 1766 and is one of the city’s oldest annual traditions. It was originally organized by military units before falling upon the shoulders of Irish fraternal clubs in 1811.

A few years back the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade counted 150,000 participants. That’s marchers alone, not spectators. The people lining the parade route and watching on TV numbered in the millions.

And of course there’s Ireland. Surprisingly Ireland held a disappointing, lackluster St. Patrick’s Day celebration until recently. It wasn’t until 1996 that Dublin, inspired by the success of fanfare overseas, held it’s first major St. Patrick’s Day festival. Amazingly, that first crowd numbered over 400,000. Today the festival has grown to six full days of activities, and visitors to the festival number over a million.

Wherever you celebrate today, there’s a good chance you’re a stone’s throw away from an Irish pub.

And if not, you can always go throw cabbage at someone.

Let us know how that goes!

St. Patrick’s Day – “Green Is Good”

March 17
Everyone knows where the world-famous Saint Patrick is from. Scotland.

That’s right. Patrick was a wee lad by the name of Succat living in Scotland when he was kidnapped by Irish pirates at the age of 16 [“Kidnapped by pirates is good!” – Fred Savage, The Princess Bride] and sold as a slave.
In Ireland he herded a Celtic chieftain’s sheep for six years, until one day he ran away and traveled 200 miles across Ireland to escaped to France on a ship.

In France, he studied under the Bishop Germanus at the Auxerre monastery in Gaul. Patrick returned to Britain a priest, but heard the land of his captivity calling, and returned to Ireland in 430 A.D.

St Patrick
St. Patrick and snakes

Patrick’s experience living in Eire gave him an advantage over previous missionaries.

During the Druidic festival of Beltraine, which celebrated the coming of spring, the King Laoghaire lit the annual bonfires. The law of the land said no other fires could be lit that night under penalty of death. Patrick defied the law by lighting a flame in clear view of the capital, to remember the resurrection we know as Easter.

Patrick was ordered before the King to explain himself. Legend says this was the first of many times Patrick picked up three-leaf clover and used it to illustrate the Holy Trinity. The number 3 was particularly revered by the Gaelic people, so Patrick often emphasized the Trinity in his teachings. King Laoghaire was surprisingly receptive to Patrick, the former slave, and later asked him to codify Irish law.

St Patrick and King Laoghaire
King Laoghaire (left) and Saint Patrick (dramatization)

Saint Patrick feat is remarkable in that he converted an entire people to Christianity without bloodshed. He didn’t have to die a martyr’s death for his beliefs, nor did he execute or threaten to execute anyone who did not share them.

But his most famous conquest was as the “Samuel L. Jackson” of the Emerald Isle. According to legend, Saint Patrick cured the Irish plains of their snake infestation. And to this day there are no snakes in Ireland, iron-clad proof of the great Saint’s miracle!

I have had it with these @#$%&! snakes on these @#$%&! Irish plains!

Saint Patrick, Snakes on a Plain, 433 A.D.

Fanciful Irish History

St. Patrick: Enlightener of Ireland

St. Urho’s Day

March 16

St. Urho statue, Menahga, Minnesota

St. Patrick is world-famous for driving the snakes out of Ireland, but the day before St. Patrick’s Day we celebrate an oft-overlooked saint named Urho, who is said to have performed the equally admirable feat of ridding his Finnish homeland of hungry grasshoppers, thus saving Finland’s all-important grape crop, and the Finns themselves, from devastation.

Plaques proclaim St. Urho’s glory, including one in Minnesota that describes the annual ceremony in his honor:

At sunrise on March 16, Finnish women and children dressed in royal purple and nile green gather around the shores of the many lakes in Finland and chant what St. Urho chanted many years ago: “Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen” (Grasshopper, grasshopper, go away!”

Urho’s deeds are recalled in poems like The Legend of Saint Urho, by Linda Johnson. Statues have been erected in his honor. His feast day is celebrated with relish by Finnish communities throughout Minnesota.

But before you go impressing your Finnish friends with all your knowledge about their culture, you should know that, while St. Urho is a symbol of pride for many Finnish-Americans, sadly the Finns themselves are all but ignorant of their great national hero. (Or of the notion that grapes grew there.)

This is because St. Urho is a completely made-up saint. He was conjured up and popularized by Finnish-Americans (most-likely intoxicated) in Minnesota in the mid-1950’s.

Envious of the attention paid to Ireland’s patron saint on May 17, Finnish Minnesotans, created their own hero, possibly inspired by the name of then Finnish Prime Minister Urho Kekkonen. There is some debate over who is to blame—I mean, who is responsible for inventing the now world-famous saint.

Richard Mattson, a department store manager in Virginia, Minnesota, explained,

“[Gene] McCavic, a co-worker at Ketola’s Department Store, chided me in 1953 that the Finns did not have saints like St. Patrick. I told her the Irish aren’t the only ones with great saints. She asked me to name one for the Finns. So I fabricated a story and thought of St. Eero (Eric), St. Jussi (John), and St. Urho. Urho, a common Finnish name, had a more commanding sound.”

— “St. Urho Creator, Richard Matteson, Dies“, Mesabi Daily News, (June 7, 2001), Linda Tyssen Williams; “Well, Here We Are: The Hansons and the Becks” by J. Robert Beck

Mattson’s original St. Urho rid Finland of its frogs, not grasshoppers, a tradition that changed over time.

Soon, the employees of Ketola’s came to respect the Finnish saint, or at least their manager’s Finnish dry humor, and began throwing “St. Urho’s Day” parties as an inside joke for their beloved manager.

The story of St. Urho was reported in the Mesabi Daily News in 1956. That may be where Sulo Havumaki, a school district psychologist in Benmidji, Minnesota got wind of it.

“Sulo was a devout Catholic and, feeling left out because there weren’t any Finnish saints, made one up with tongue in cheek: St. Urho (Maybe he adopted Mattson’s…)” — William Reid

Sulo’s devotion to the obscure saint was well-known in the town. One story goes that when a neighbor’s family took a trip to Finland, they played a rather unusual practical joke on Sulo. They took some very old bones and wood with them and arriving in Finland, found a recent obituary in a Finnish newspaper. From Finland they shipped the wood and bones to Sulo along with a fictitious letter, in the name of the recently deceased…

“Sulo received the letter, which said something like “Dear Prof. Havumaki: I am the keeper of the last relics of St. Urho. News of your faith and dedication to St. Urho have reached me across the ocean. I am dying, and commend to you those last relics because I know you will protect and revere them, and pass them to the next custodian when the time is right…”

William Reid – http://www.sainturho.com/havumaki.htm

Sulo took the saint and ran with it, codifying much of the lore and the rites of the festival that is St. Urho’s Day.

Regardless of the saint’s origin, St. Urho’s Day is a very real reason (excuse) for Finnish-Americans to throw parties and drink beer in his honor.

For these true-believers, St. Patrick’s Day is merely “Hangover Day.”

sturhobobble
from sainturho.com

Ode to Saint Urho
by Gene McGavin

Ooksi kooksi coolama vee
Santia Urho is ta poy for me!
He sase out ta hoppers as pig as pirds.
Neffer peefor haff I hurd tose words!…

…So let’s give a cheer in hower pest vay
On Sixteenth of March, St. Urho’s Tay.

Origin of St. Urho

Bug Girl’s Blog

http://www.brownielocks.com/urho.html

Would the real St. Valentine please stand up?

February 14

Love and peace dude

Valentine #1:

Valentinus was born in Africa around 100 AD. He was schooled in Alexandria, and was taught by a disciple of St. Paul named Theodas.

Valentinus was a Gnostic Christian who taught that God could not be known directly and was neither masculine nor feminine but a combination of both.

The teachings of Valentinus directly contradicted Orthodox Christianity, but he garnered a large following when he moved to Rome around 135 AD.

“Valentinus, the Gnostic who almost became pope, was thus the only man who could have succeeded in gaining a form of permanent positive recognition for the Gnostic approach to the message of Christ.”

Stephan A. Hoeller, A Gnostic for All Season

Valentinus died around 170 AD. The Catholic Church (literally “universal” church) declared Valentinus’s teachings heretical and all its writings were destroyed. Everything we knew about Valentinian Theology came from his detractors until the Nag Hammadi scrolls, discovered in 1945, were translated in recent decades.

Valentine #2:

But it’s unlikely that the Catholic Church would declare a Saint a man whose teachings it deemed heretical. Another candidate for the real St. Valentine is:

Valentinus of Interamna (Turin), a bishop and martyr who miraculously healed the deformed son of Craton, a Greek rhetorician in Rome.

Valentine #3:

Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges a third Valentinus, who was a Christian priest in Rome with miraculous healing powers. He was imprisoned for teaching Christianity. While in prison, the jailer, hearing of Valentinus’s abilities, asked if he could cure his daughter of blindness. Valentinus did so using a special crocus. According to legend, Valentinus and the jailer’s daughter fell in love, and the last note he left to her before his execution (on February 14 of course) was signed “From your Valentine.”

Valentine #4:

The most popular candidate may be #4, whose legend is often merged with #3. Both were said to be Christian priests in Rome and share the same date of execution, February 14, during the short reign of Emperor Claudius II. (268-270)

During Claudius’s reign, Rome was fighting enemies on all sides, and the Emperor was having a tough time restocking the army with fresh recruits. So he temporarily banned marriage, thinking men without families would be more likely to fight in the army.

Valentinus defied the Emperor by conducting wedding services for couples in secret. Valentinus was found out, and was tried and beheaded–like #3–on February 14, 270.

There’s no actual evidence #4 existed as a separate entity from #3. Long before any of the Valentinuses, Romans associated the middle of February with love between the sexes. They celebrated Juno Februata on February 14 and Lupercalia on February 15. As Valentinus’s Saint Day happened to fall right in the middle of the pagan celebrations, it replaced the festivals in name, though not in practice. Over the centuries Valentinus’s legend may have been “spiced up” to explain why we associate this Roman bishop with all things romance.

Love in the Time of V.D. (Valentine’s Day)

February 14

Between Lincoln’s and Washington’s Birthdays in February comes another birthday, one that has been celebrated far longer than either President, but for a man whose life is all but unknown.

wedding
The awakening of spring has always been associated with the blossoming of love. In the Roman calendar February was the last month of the year, a time of purification before the new agrarian planting season.

Lupercalia commemorated the She-wolf that suckled the babies Romulus (founder of Rome) and his brother Remus in a cave on the site of the future capital. On February 15 each year a group of priests known as the Brotherhood of the Wolf, or Luperci, would strip to their birthday suits and sacrifice a dog and goat at the cave. Then they’d put on loincloths of the goat’s skin and go about the streets of Rome smacking women on their backsides with an animal skin lash, known as a februa (from the Latin februare, meaning “to purify”) in a ritual intended to promote fertility and ease the pangs of childbirth.

Romulus, Remus, & Ma Wolf
Romulus, Remus, & Mama Wolf

The Romans celebrated another festival in mid-February: Juno Februata. On the 14th of February eligible young men and women would participate in Roman Spin-the-Bottle. Boys would draw the names of eligible girls and ‘couple up’ during the festivities, sometimes for the entire year.

Around 496 AD Pope Gelasius banned the old pagan rituals and introduced the Festival of the Purification of the Virgin on February 14, which was later moved to February 2. The Church tried to replace to earlier rituals by having boys and girls draw the names of a saint and emulate the life of that saint. For whatever reason, that zany tradition never caught on with the same vigor as the Roman one.

Some scholars say that St. Valentine’s Day was a minor feast with no connection to romance or couples up until the 14th century. It was then that writers such as Chaucer and his contemporaries began referring to it as the day that birds chose their mates.

Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer wrote “The Parliament of Fowls”—referring to birds, not the English governing body—in tribute to Richard II’s engagement to Anne of Bohemia in 1381.

”[it] was on seynt Volantynys day
When euery byrd comyth there to chese his make.”
(It was sent on Saint Valentine’s Day,
When every bird comes there to choose his mate…)

It was a common writing device for poets to link certain events with the saint whose feast was observed that day. However the Valentine Chaucer referred to was the one whose feast was celebrated on May 3, for May 3 was the date of the King’s engagement. Chaucer describes conditions common to late Spring. (Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine.)

The marriage of the royal 16 year-olds Anne and Richard was one based in love rather than politics. It ended with Anne’s death from plague 12 years later. Richard was never the same after her death, and was deposed and killed in 1400…on February 14.

Nearly a dozen ‘Valentines’ were canonized in the first centuries of the Christian Church, and to this day no one really knows which one we celebrate on February 14. (Would the Real Saint Valentine Please Stand Up)

Saint Valentine
St. Valentine

[Others say Valentine’s origin is a case of semantics. That Valentine comes from the Norman-French term galantin, meaning something like “woman-lover” in a chivalrous sense. It’s where we get the words “gallant” and “gallantry”.]