Happy Boxing Day, and St. Stephen’s Day greetings!
It’s the Second Day of Christmas. There are twelve days to the holiday, after all – through Epiphany on January 6 – even if most of the Christmas music disappears with December 25. So don’t let the post-holiday blues overtake you. It’s not quite time for our hearts to break over Hans Christian Andersen’s Fir Tree. Not quite yet. (Do not ever read this if you want to be happy: http://hca.gilead.org.il/fir_tree.html.)
Today is a big, big holiday all over Europe, and in Canada, and in the Antipodes, and just about anywhere that once served as a European colony – except the U.S., where, for some reason, Madison Avenue has completely overlooked an excellent opportunity to wring a few more dollars out of Christmas. But it’s just as well. For one thing, everyone is already broke. For another, I wouldn’t want capitalism to spoil any more of the rustic traditions.
St. Stephen’s Day is a merry antidote to the subdued piety of December 25. It is, after all, the day Good King Wenceslas looked out, determined to feed and heat the poor. In Spain, the holiday is one more excuse to consume a big meal. In Finland, it is a day of parades and sleigh-rides. In Great Britain, it used to be the custom to thrash with holly branches late risers and female servants. (And you can’t tell me that still doesn’t go on in some of those manor houses.)
In Ireland, St. Stephen’s Day is the Day of the Wren. It’s the day rowdy lads dress up in straw and dance around with stuffed birds (now thankfully fake; they used to kill the real ones), supposedly in an allegorical homage to the birth of Christ, but also as a convenient way to extort treats (see wassailing). These wren boys or mummers show up at one’s house and sing:
The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze,
Although he was little his honour was great,
Jump up me lads and give us a treat.
As I was going to Killenaule,
I met a wren upon the wall.
Up with me wattle and knocked him down,
And brought him in to Carrick Town.
Drooolin, Droolin, where’s your nest?
‘Tis in the bush that I love best
In the tree, the holly tree,
Where all the boys do follow me.
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
And give us a penny to bury the wren.
I followed the wren three miles or more,
Three miles or more three miles or more.
I followed the wren three miles or more,
At six o’clock in the morning.
I have a little box under me arm,
Under me arm under me arm.
I have a little box under me arm,
A penny or tuppence would do it no harm.
Mrs. Clancy’s a very good woman,
a very good woman, a very good woman,
Mrs. Clancy’s a very good woman,
She give us a penny to bury the wren.
Give those boys (and girls) a St. Stephen’s Day pie!
The Clancy Brothers sing “The Wren Song” on “The Mike Douglas Show”
