The Wednesday of Christmas….
Feast of St Elizabeth Anne Seaton ( first saint of the USA canonised in 1975)
Whole salmon poached in white wine
It seems most appropriate that on the day we learn of the result of the Iowa caucuses we should also celebrate the feast of the USA’s first Saint….made Venerable in 1959 and later Beatified in 1962 by Pope John XXIII she was finally Canonised by Paul VI. She was part of the nineteenth century movement of religious closely involved with public education that flourished all over Europe and America. She founded the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph and it was dedicated to the education of poor children.
The eleventh day ( 4 January) marks the commemoration of the “Synaxis of the 70 Apostles”. Since St Stephen is included in these 70 Apostles mentioned in the “Acts of the Apostles”, he is also remembered on that day. This feast is kept in the Orthodox and Eastern Churches.
I haven’t yet said anything about Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. I love the opening of the oratorio but Bach remains, like Wagner, a bit of a musical blind spot for me. But the structure is interesting as the various parts of the oratorio were designed to be performed on different days of the Christmas season. Bach found the liturgy for the days not altogether internally consistent (this is before Pope Paul’s recent transmogrification) so he revised the order can came up with six sections….
The Birth (performed on 25th December)
The Annunciation to the Shepherds (performed 26th Decmeber)
The Adoration of the Shepherds (performed 27th December)
The Circumcision and Naming of Jesus (performed 1st January)
The Journey of the Magi (performed 2nd January)
The Adoration of the Magi (performed 6th January)
Technically this means the last part of the Oratorio is in fact performed in the Season of Epiphany rather than within the Christmas Season.
In our carol of the twelve days we reached eleven pipers piping….pipes were associated with the shepherds and dressing up as shepherds was part of the games performed inside the churches…a bit like mystery plays…a sort of moving crib…with high jinx thrown into the brew…the carol ‘King Jesus hath a garden full of divers flowers…’ mentions pipes and flutes and such…and organ music…was essentially pipe music thought to be most pleasing to God…whether it was also mixed up with Pan and his pipes which played a big part in the Saturnalia of Roman times in unclear but equally probable…oh and in our Christian catechism of the carol …it’s meant to be the eleven good apostles….Judas being the baddy…. you can see as the carol goes on the associations become more fanciful which itself points towards these being a very recent ‘explanation’ of the meaning of the words…