OT: Third candle placeholder

Sorry, nothing more is going to get written tonight. My thoughts have been on the yorzeit of my doctoral adviser and various otherwheres. And I’m not used to celebrating Chanukkah and Christmas at the same time — usually I’m doing one or the other. I always find myself wondering why it’s so much work to celebrate Christmas, although this is a thought that I’ve had for decades, not just tonight. Here, however, more optimistically, for your delectation, are the Maccabeats — the musical face of young modern Orthodoxy — singing “Miracle.”

For a more traditional sound, here’s something a lot of assimilated Jews loved in the nineteenth century, although it was written by a Christian: “See the Conquering Hero Comes” from G.F. Händel’s Judas Maccabbeus. This piece is also a very popular advent tune among Germans — often sung on the first Sunday. Somehow the mixing seems appropriate tonight.

And since we’re on the syncretic track, the solstice was last night. Here’s a poem a friend of mine posted today on facebook, a friend who’s a pagan. Yeah, I think syncretism was the question I wanted to write about a year ago tonight and tonight as well. Somehow the practice of syncretism always interferes with the writing about it. The poem is by Susan Cooper, who wrote the “Dark is Rising” series, known and beloved to many of us — a series of five books that begin with “The Dark is Rising,” a book about the days of Yule.

“So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!”

– Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day

With the pagans of every age, I, too, hope for peace that will drive the dark away. Stay warm in the light, friends.

~ by Servetus on December 23, 2011.