AAAArrrgggghhhh!

Alas,  Mehrlicht is over (spent blissfully with Twin), and real life resumes.  Today was one of  THOSE days.  Actually, there are many different types of THOSE days, so let me be more specific.  This was one of  THOSE difficult, dragging, sagging, tear-streaked, occasionally downright bawling, desperately miserable and miserably desperate, what's the point, I just want to go home and go to bed and sleep for the next three to four hundred years days.

And unfortunately, that's a litote (Greek for understatement.  Okay, here comes an impromptu major tangent:  How well I remember learning the word litote.  I had been dating my ex, Nosson, for a little while, and met him in a classroom at Yeshiva University, where he was studying for the Rabbinate.  In one of his classes that day, the Greek antonyms, litote and hyperbole had come up.  Hyperbole I knew - I think quite a few people know it - but litote??  Totally cool, dude!  Nosson  - that's my ex - called me many things - all of them nice, by the way - but one of them was Hyperbole Hempel, in honor of my sometimes burbling enthusiasm.  Another was Hoover Hempel, a reference to the way I seemed to inhale any food I particularly enjoyed.  Actually, Nosson proposed to me in that same classroom, giving me his grandmother's engagement ring.  When we divorced, I wanted to give it back to him, because of its associations for him, but he insisted I keep it.  I still have it, of course.  I would never sell it, and I am reluctant to wear it.  It doesn't look like today's engagement rings, but I still know its provenance.)

Okay - let's return from memory lane.  I hope my spirits pick up, but I have a feeling it might be several days.  Of course, I can be a master of (benign) mendacity.  When I have to put a good face on things, I can.  I'll just have to wait for the "winter of my discontent" to be "made glorious by the sun of  . .  . "   ---- who knows?

Post-holiday blues got you down? Cheer up! Mehrlicht is coming!

After the excitement (and to be fair, stress of the holiday season) the next month or two of the winter can be pretty much of a downer.  No special days to look forward to, no festivities, no decorations, cards, presents, special foods - just cold, and above all, DARK.  The short days are enough to make anyone glum.  For confirmation, just check out the suicide rates in countries like Sweden and Norway where for much of the year, the country is sunk in almost perpetual night.

That's why, to paraphrase and canibalize a popular song, what the world needs now is Mehrlicht, sweet Mehrlicht.

What, you may ask, is Mehrlicht, and why do we need it?  It is an obscure German/Scandinavian folk holiday, still practiced today in some small communities, but dating back some five or six hundred years.  (The illustration above is from the late 1500s and shows the sun pushing back the night, symbolized by the stars.  The seven candles represent the growing light of the days of the week.) 

Observed on January 21, Mehrlicht celebrates the day when the growing light becomes truly noticeable.  The days grow longer from the Winter Equinox on, but at first the progress is so miniscule, it is a fact acknowledged with the intellect, but not felt with the heart.  It is at the end of January that suddenly the lingering sunlight and longer days become truly noticeable, and relief and joy at turning the corner toward Spring and Summer are felt.

Traditional observances include children in the family, and sometimes even the adults (!)wearing homemade crowns ranging from simple to elaborate proclaiming Mehrlicht; lighting seven candles in the evening, with an eighth, taller candle used to light them which is then displayed as well; Mehrlicht processions, where children and adults wearing their crowns and holding lit tapers walk seven times around the town square (if there still is one!) and formally announce light's victory over darkness; and a light but festive meal featuring eggs, whose bright yellow center is seen as the sun and increasing light of day.There are other observances and customs, of course, and for those people who still observe Mehrlicht who live in a city or non-traditional town, the procession is hardly practical! 

My father, who was born in a very small town in Germany in 1905, told me some wonderful stories about Mehrlicht in his childhood, mostly featuring wonderful confections given to him by visiting relatives (maple sugar sweets and also rock crystal candies).  Each January 21, we would all sit down together and make crowns out of construction paper, glitter, and anything else we could put our hands on, and had a special meal lit by the eight candles.  We sang some simple German songs, too, but I can't quite recall them - they teeter on the edge of my memory - tantalizingly close, but just out of reach.

Below:  a Mehlicht pantomime from about 1910.

At any rate, this year I am striking a blow for the observance of Mehrlicht.  I am going to make a crown, have an egg-rich meal, and light the candles.  I have one of those nifty German contraptions where the heat from the candles make a paddle above them move, and a charming vignette thus revolves while the candles are burning, and I think that will be perfect.  I will wish my friends a joyous Mehrlicht, and give them egg-rich pastries for a holiday treat.

After all, we always need more light in our lives, and Mehrlicht brings it to us when we are weary of the dark and longing for the new growth and hop of spring.  I reluctantly remind my self, though, that darkness is important, too, alas; balance, always balance.  Without the dark night of introspection, rest, and restoration, we would all sputter and burn out, like a candle.  To everything there is a season.  Mehrlicht celebrates the season of light.
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(By the way, for a related post, see 1/6/09.  Above I quoted Ecclesiastices (in the original Hebrew, Koheles) when  I wrote "to everything there is a season."  This post of almost exactly a year ago shows that "There is nothing new under the sun," the word sun being especially appropriate for a discussion of Mehrlicht.  Party on, dudes!)

Without Love, Nothing

I am always on the lookout on Ebay and vintage jewelry sites for old lockets which happen to bear my initials, even if it requires imagination and willful misreading to make them come out right.  I have several MHs, a ring with MTH, and quite a few lockets with other initials that with artistic license I can imagine have, in varying order, MTAH.  In the course of this quest, I often come across jewelry with touching inscriptions, which I also like to collect, if the price is right.  Since most people prefer uninscribed vintage jewelry, and since I don't care if it is 14K or not, the price often is right.

Just now, though, I came across a truly old tiny glass locket, from the 1700s.  Inside, the dust of an old flower.  And at the top, in partially broken lettering, the inscription:  Sans Amour, Rien.  Without Love, Nothing.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I read it, and are clouding them still as I write this. I think of that couple more than 200 years ago, and the love that united them which this locket symbolized. I think of my life and my longing.  Don't we all want love?  And without it, what avails us?  Nothing.

It's snowing!

"It's snowing!"  The excitement of those words is almost electric -"it's snowing!"

 I part the curtains and look outside.  The air is filled with whirling, twirling white flakes, falling miraculously silently on the white carpet forming on the ground beneath them.  Visions of snow men, snow forts, snowball fights, and snow angels dance before my eyes - along with the thought of the warming hot chocolate in front of a wood-burning stove afterwards.

Can anything be more exciting than the alchemy of snow?  My backyard, dreary in winter: blasted pots of dead or dormant summer flowers, an empty swing, fallen leaves that escaped the last raking - suddenly frosted with glittering white snow, sparkling like diamond dust in the sun.   The snow-disguised outdoors becomes a new, unknown world to be explored: part ice palace, part primeval icescape.  The shrubs and trees are ice palaces, beckoning me to enter and look up at their frosty ceilings, with crystal icicle chandeliers and patches of blue sky showing through.  Everything is purified and transformed; the everyday becomes magical.

That's why I love walking in the woods in the winter.  Peace and solitude surround me, and the skeletal majesty of the trees and shrubs outlined in white makes me feel as though I am on holy ground, connected to the eternal beauty and good of the world.  Last week, Twin and I hiked through woods in Mapleton to see two waterfalls.  It was all so beautiful, I impulsively said we should come back every week.  Twin upped it to every five minutes.  The cascading water, bordered on either side with frozen rills, was unearthly in its beauty.  The rocks and boulders, the trees' naked branches - I sigh as I remember it.

The real world is always waiting, though.  Twin and I can't really go back every five minutes, or even every week, to those woods.  Back home, after a snowfall, eventually the snow starts to melt and get drab and dirty and reality seeps through.  That is why it is so important not to let these moments and days go unmarked, unexperienced.  Build a snow person, throw a snowball at someone you love, stand and look, really look at the trees and rooftops and branches and snowflakes.  Their half-remembered magic can carry you through some of reality's tougher times.

But there's plenty of time for reality later - right now: it's snowing!