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Out in the driveway, a hairy delivery man in white coveralls and rainbow knit cap pulls a keg from his truck and stages it among eight or nine others as Ken hoists another onto his shoulders.
Shannon and Ken, with experienced help from the kids, prepare for the party: moving tables, signing for deliveries of slabs of meat, chipping ice into buckets, placing candles just so. They cook sugar to pour into the candy cane molds, trim the trees outside with popcorn, cranberries and the homemade canes, roll logs into theatrical seating in front of the bower, and place luminarias every three feet along a path from the house out to the logs.
Shannon answers a question from Carson: “We began having solstice parties I think right away, maybe that first Christmas I moved in. And that was only because I wanted to have a big bad ass Christmas party in the country, make a lot of noise and ruckus. But no one up here in this neck of the woods wants anything to do with something as bourgie or mainstream as Christmas, so we threw a solstice party. For whatever reason, people prefer the idea of a solstice party up here. And ever since.”
“What do you think about Christmas? Generally?”
“Generally?” Shannon dwells heavily on the question. “It’s – “ she looks at her kids, deciding. She lowers her voice. “The way it is out there – " her hand pushes away from her, over the trees. " – In Mainstream AmericaLand – my first reaction is: are you kidding? I mean, from here, off the grid, it seems loud, noisy, stressful. Too busy, too bright. A mess, really. A complete mess. Something to be avoided at all costs." She glances to her kids, sure they haven't been following the conversation. "But my second reaction is, well ... it has its plusses and minuses.”
Shannon continues while images of the solstice party crank up, first with people arriving, friends and neighbors hugging and laughing, the potluck chefs unveiling dishes on the oak table, kids playing in the snow, Ken lighting the luminarias, kegs being tapped. Four or five people watch a huge pig, maybe it’s a boar, roast on a spindle over a fire outside.
“On the one hand people find a way to be charitable and use the, I guess you’d call it, spirit of the season for some good. For some unknown-mystery-of-the-universe reason, this time of year really ignites humans. Don't you think? We’re engaged. With the world, the cosmos, each other. I mean, there is such a thing as kindness, and people do strive to show some. At right about this time of year.
“But on the other hand. Most of what we call Christmas, really isn’t supportable. Not the money, not the insistence of gifts, the wretched traveling. It’s the capitalist mandate, on steroids.
"And the overriding social message that’s sent out,” Shannon continues, “is: this is expected of you now. To participate in it and contribute. Accept it. The messages are loud and clear and reiterate over and over. You should be out, spending money, gathering, collecting, spending again. Because the kids, members of your family, friends, they will think better of you if succeed at this, and on top of that, the economy needs you. If the cash registers are singing, then all is well with the world
“That’s a crazy message," she adds. "No wonder the Christian fundamentalists go haywire over it.”
“The ‘Where’s the Jesus?’ crowd,” Carson suggests.
She chortles. “Exactly! It becomes a sort of cultural in-joke: 'isn’t it funny how we’re all crazy doing this? Getting on line for the toy of the season in a blizzard? Gosh, hope it ends soon! Ha ha!' Society expects you to absolutely burst at the seams with consumption and to spread it around and not really have a great time doing it. Happy holidays!" She winds up making herself laugh.
“I can see why you want to avoid that,” Carson says.
“Right? Well, thing is, we're just like them in our own fucked up way. That's the irony. Neither one of us is a model parent. We're ... we just want our kids to grow up smart, strong and caring, engaged with nature and the universe and not cowed by the expectations of others. That’s what we tell each other. Like anyone else, we make things up as we go along, including having a party at a time of year when the urge is really strong to throw a big party. When it’s dark and cold out.
“The solstice party, I hope, is a little antidote to all that. I told Ken the other day: this is actually a kind of karmic corrective. A little creative craziness in the distant forest.”
Four women in white gowns embroidered with moons and stars, powdered faces, each with the same long blood-red hair, walk in mysterious, four cornered unison; lots of teenagers wearing wool caps with little ears on them, sometimes cat or fox or donkey; a tall and courtly Papageno and Papagena fit bottles of local brew under their beaks; otherwise ordinary-dressed folks, like Ken, shooting rifles in the air; a snowman playing a pan flute; a little girl serenely nibbling a cookie whose crumbs flake down onto her penguin costume.
Not one but five bonfires are lit and burn in a large pentagonal area beyond the alidade, melting the snow, summoning the mud. It compels the biggest bellied men to take off their shirts in the toasty middle and wrestle.
Later, there’s a bareback equestrian barrel race and a kind of nomadic capture-the-flag on horse back starring a fluttering red banner with a real skull (human? really real?) on top; a stilt-walker performance with fire (juggling, eating); a well-attended children’s magic show; a huge snowball rolling race; and the hippy equivalent of Andean pipe players: the ever-present drum circle. One of the drummers is dressed like the Abominable Snowman.We see Ken conferring with Shannon and a few others, notably a small elegant elderly woman in a green and black robe with a tall white collar. She’s the celebrant. They’re looking at the sky, which is black and oblivious with impenetrable cloud cover. They also look at their watches.
“Well, it’s almost ten thirty,” the celebrant says.
Ken inhales with a wet sniff. “We should just do this any way.”
“The fireworks will help,” someone says.
“The solstice will still happen,” Shannon adds, briefly placing her hand on Ken’s arm, reminding but comforting. The small group nods collaboratively.
Carson: “Ken’s plan, from the very beginning was to start this year’s party at midnight and last until dawn, having pointed his sculpture on the exact latitude the first rays of the new, solsticial sun will appear and train them onto the apple tree. He gave up on that, Shannon told me, for practical reasons like no one would stay up that late, least of all the kids. Plan B was using a laser borrowed from the nearby university for the same affect, which Shannon and the fire department [cut to the drum circle] also scuttled. Plan C was the way to go: a huge mercury-vapor lamp used at a local timber camp. Except that his contact for the lamp never arrived. This council is the result.”
“Ok, let’s go,” Ken says. He looks to the celebrant. “When does it happen, again? Officially?”
“Eleven thirty eight.”
“Maybe I can aim some kind of beam ....”
He tugs at his lip thoughtfully, turns, and is gone. Leaving the others to fend for themselves. The council look at each other and then in Ken's direction and then at each other: what’s going on?
“I’ll get us started,” the celebrant eventually announces.
“Despite the behind the scenes weather problems, the ceremony they’ve planned, like Broadway, still must go on. And what that is is a series of rituals taken from ancient lore, mostly northern European. Beginning with the arrival of Beiwe.”
That would be the lady, in a long white leather and fur coat, with a little girl in white fur and leather at her side, who is led around the grounds of the farm in what appears to be a wicker sleigh, lit by swinging lanterns. The little girl tosses small evergreen tips behind them.
“That’s Mary Anne Klieg, as Beiwe, and her daughter Dakota. They’re local. She teaches chemistry at the university. Tradition has it that Beiwe’s carriage is made out of reindeer bones. Her husband Bob is a hunter and he and their friends spent most of the year carefully building this out of deer and moose bones. Gruesome and awesome, all at the same time.
“About Beiwe: according to Professor Wolfstram, to the early Iron Age tribes of Finland, the arrival of Beiwe, and her daughter Bewei-Neia, means a return of green grass for the reindeer to eat. Not only is she a fertility goddess, but is also, given the long winter nights, the bringer of sanity. That’s her job as a deity, bringing sanity.“There are other performances,” Carson says, over corresponding imagery. “Fire dancing. And a mock sword fight between the Oak King and the Holly King."
By the light of bonfires, two large men, dressed like Druids, wield large swords against one another, with great heaving clouds of exhale and body heat. “It lasts until the Oak King, the bringer of the new year, protector of light and warmth, flowers and red robins, vanquishes the Holly King. Who will have his rematch in June. He is the bringer of darkness, contemplation, rejuvenation and wrens. Rudy and Jake here own a bar nearby and hit the Renaissance fair circuit pretty hard each year.”
The winning Oak King, big Jake, then walks to a little boy in a white cape and kneels offering his sword. The boy touches the Oak King’s head and walks to the celebrant standing in Ken’s bower. He gives her an offering of little cakes. Pleased with himself, he runs over to his mother, Mrs. Pappagena, who has taken off her bird head and left it inside. Her son buries himself among her feathers.
The celebrant speaks to big Jake, the Oak King who kneels before her: “Holly King, lord of the waxing year, I name you the victor. Now is the time you take up the scepter and rule the land of the Goddess until the time of the summer solstice, when once again you will do battle with your brother.”
Through this enactment, I kept hearing something on the soundtrack and played it over and over. It’s hard to pick up the first time, but it’s there: a diesel engine running, like from a tractor, coming closer.
“All over the world,” the celebrant continues, to the assembled, “we wait eagerly for the arrival of the sun, the long sun, the sun that brings light, warmth and life. Birth, life, decay and death proceed just as the sun makes its way across the universe, bringing birth life decay and death with it. As it goes, we go. So let us give time to our thoughts of loved ones past.
The party descends to a quiet reflection, though the sound of the tractor nearby is now unavoidable and some in the crowd notice it. When Sasha’s camera swings to the celebrant, you can tell she hears it too. But she marches on.
“The cycles of life are the only truth the universe provides. We find simplicity and truth in these cycles for they teach us love, compassion, courage. To honor the neverending circle and to welcome the return of the light, we light a candle –” as many in the audience do. The celebrant dips her candle into the iron bowl which ignites with a small exciting whoosh. “And we proclaim, return sun, welcome sun, abide with us, sun!”
That appears to be it, but the celebrant looks in a direction as if ‘abide with us’ was a cue to something. Sasha’s camera finds some commotion in the crowd. People stir, look behind them and with minor confusion and awkwardness, separate themselves down the middle of the audience. A few stranded stragglers leap across the empty middle that Shannon is trying to keep clear with a wave of her arms: one side or the other, please.
The celebrant appears to get what’s going on, so she says, loudly, over the sound of a nearby engine, “Ok, well, from the top! Again, we proclaim; Return sun, welcome sun, abide with us, sun!” Hundreds of heads look behind them, to the side, up at the sky, but nothing comes.
The celebrant cocks a May West hip. “Don’t you just hate when you ask for something ... ” she says, and then it comes. Somehow, from a Ken-rigged contrivance with tractor, work lights, and metal sheeting, a fierce light is cast through the bower and poof! The fey little apple tree is lit with a narrow beam of light. It’s actually pretty cool. People hurrah and say “welcome sun!”
And then come the fireworks overhead, from who knows where.
“The party lasted all night,” Carson says. “And it ranks as one of the coolest, most fun nights I’ve ever had. Despite the obvious let down at dawn, when there was no sun. Just a white disk glowing behind the gray cloud cover of midwinter."
More scenes of partying, late into the night. There is music, passed out little kids in animal costumes sleeping over their parent’s shoulders, the roast pig is passed around.
“Is their solstice party any closer to the primal truth of the holiday than my parents’ choir albums, cocktails and aluminum tree? Many of the ancient rituals around the winter solstice, Professor Wolfstram says, involved carnal sacrifice. Bewei, for instance, was celebrated by killing and skinning little white animals. Human sacrifice was not a rarity either and considering the plight of humans in a little understood universe, plunged in darkness, a ritual killing makes sense. You might be willing to appease anyone or anything, in every manner available just to bring the light, and warmth, and food, back.
“Today, though, it just seems ... nostalgic ... to invite Bewei to your solstice party, especially if your guests dig a veneer of bloodsport.”
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| A Thousand Stars for Company © Julianna Swaney |
/continued
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Next: Christmas with Humphrey, prodigal son.
"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011
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