After work today, I came over to the parent’s house to do my part of the interior decorating for Christmas. Since I did it as a surprise one weekend in high school, this has been me joyous job every season– to decorate the stair bannister and the mantle. The mantlepiece is a glorious old antique that I remember going out with my parent’s to hunt for when I was a wee one. It’s oak, with wonderfully clawed feet, a mirror and scroll work.

I generally deck the mantle in light-up garlands of evergreens, with holly intertwined. Upon the garlands goes the brass sleigh, pulled by the brass stag– in the sleigh, a doll of a red-haired maiden in a blue dress, her lap piled high with wrapped fits. the sleigh is being pulled toward the shell tree– a christmas-tree shaped form of seashells and lights. Suspended above, softly waxing and waning stars and globes intimate a night sky filled with stars and planets.

It’s a thoroughly Christmas-y scene, and the only thing in the scene that has to do with Christmas are the presents. Everything else is of decidedly pagan decent. [It is across the room from the mantle that Mom places the creche, the stable and hand painted angels and wise men showing the scene of the Nativity.] The stag is reminiscent of Cernunnos, Herne or Woden (interestingly, thought by some to be one of the pagan per-cursors to Father Christmas), the fire-haired maiden of Brighid, keeper of hearth and forge. As for the tree, the idea comes from the far north-eastern part of Europe (I shall not step into that fight), mixed with a dash of good ol’ fashioned druidism. It is a symbol associated with fire, but the one on my mantle is made of sea shells, invoking a sort of symbolic yin-yang effect.

I wrote yesterday of how Christianity is (to the Christian point of view) a fulfillment of not just the Promises of Judaism, but also a fulfillment of many pagan belief systems. When Christianity was so embraced, old traditions came to have new life and new meaning. The Church chose December 25th to be the Feast of the Lord’s Nativity not because they actually thought that it was really His Birthday, but because of the proximity to the Solstice. But, importantly, they placed it decidedly after Solstice, not on Solstice.  It seems as though Christmas is not meant so much to replace Solstice, or to “steal it” as some might claim, but rather to enhance and be enhanced by the association. Consider, that Solstice is primarily a celebration of Light and Darkness– or, to be a little more precise, of Light in the Darkness. The longest night of the year– after which, the sun rises, and continues to rise earlier and earlier until the Summer Solstice. It is considered the Triumph of the Light, the Light coming into, or returning to, the world.

As traditions merged and enlivened each other, much of the pagan symbolism came to be enriched with fresh, Christian interpretation. Thus, the North-European respect for evergreens– the plants that live when all else has “died”– came to be infused with Christian meaning. This is especially evident in my selection for today, the carol “The Holly and the Ivy.”

Two versions– first, the traditional tune played by George Winston:

And here’s another version– not the traditional tune we know, but still a lovely bit of song: