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Mistletoe Kiss
14 August 2023 19:40Is not the Changeling the holly and the king of the winter feast? Today, I glimpsed a Rowan tree, laden down with berries - that heartstopping flash of red. Like a hawthorn, or a holly tree
I've always assumed it was the old man of the year, a Father-Christmas-esque fairy-face, the last hurrah for the green god before the bitterness of January. But that doesn't wholly fit, beyond both being croneboys. 'Elder person' is right for the time of year, but that doesn't make all elder things the same.
Holly doesn't put me in mind of the winter king, in fact, beyond Wiccan habit that the Holly King is the Oak King's echo (and I've already far departed from the Graves-era Oak-and-Holly-King myth). Holly is lush and abundant - I supposed, a winter echo of the king in summer - but he has never been green. He's dry heather, dry fern, a frosting of morning ice, pale winter suns, the colour of mortal things - tanished gold, wooden beams, wax candles - and russety reds. Holly is poisonous - another Changeling thing. The Winter King is Solar-and-Lunar, tending Skyishpath - that inward-facing mortal dread, isolated and doubtful and probing with his mind what he cannot with his hands. But Christmastide is lush and abundant, turkey by the fire, not a barren hillside, not a cold morning.
The Holly King's feast holds secular Christmastide feelings. I know several pagans who nope out of Christmas altogether, and recently read a vintage post calling for more of us to cut it out; but I feel it's more fencrafty to wind in all of weird britannia, and that has included Christmas cheer since at least 1038AD.
The Changeling makes sense - Christmas is an encounter between an excited and believing child, and a Lunar happening. A child longing for fairy gifts (has your grandmother never told you not to accept them?), a child at risk of being taken away (as in Krampus myths, or as in the Snowman or The Snow Queen) and for adults, the time of year most apt to inflame feelings of childhood wonder. She is both the seeker and the sought: the child waiting by the window, and the abundance of tinsel and dainties. Or a girl probing the most inappropriate parts of Christian life, pushing against bondage - the dancing, the merriment, the caroling, the heathen-feeling bits.
In the popular Christmas 'Cushion Dance', a man laid a cushion before his wished-for partner; she knelt on it, kissed him, and joined the dance. Then she chose her partner in the same way, until everyone was dancing. Perhaps the dancers got their energy from sugar, which richer Tudor people loved. They tipped it into already sweet wine, and held Christmas 'sugar banquets', with elaborate sugar models of castles, dragons, holly and even sugar goblets, all edible
Of course, she would be lady of the mistletoe.
In previous texts, I've suggested the Winter King is this one flourishing of abundance - but that's incoherent too, as his primary theme is struggle against paucity. The kings are all absent at this time of year - the Winter King is a placeholder for feelings about him, but vastly diminished in power. Chrismas is so unavoidably big it risks it feeling like Kings all year round. But the fairy spirits are present without reference to time. Is this too much Changeling? I'm not sure such a thing is possible - for me, at least; the call to wonder and the great dance and to childhood's joy and to getting lost in the woods and straying from the path, is so central - to what I do, at least - that it should never not be Changeling time.
Who else at that time of year would get excited by fresh-falling snow? The Winter King fears and grimly endures it. The Winter Witch knows nothing else. There's long been a parallelling-doubling between the Changeling and the Lightbringer, almost as if they are the sun-and-rebirth-and-misrule gods of two different groups interrupting one anothers jobs. To have two Christmastie feasts almost on top of the other seems right. & it shifts the other spirits around - the Lightbringer, Winter Witch and Winter King on the austere 21st, coldhopeful and defiant for the coming months; the Changeling's carefree forgetfulness and feasting without a care for consequence.
And she brings through different aspects, of course. Lightbringer-as-winter-fairy-devil, twinkle in his eye and a suit of green; the Winter Witch as Lady Bertilak, and yes, the old fatherly man as Father Christmas. Just as they bring through different aspects of her - the lost and lonely orphan, in an emptying castle in the bitterness of winter, who listens too much to the wolves.
One thing I'm conscious of for this Christmastide is that my calendar is full with things I've never celebrated, and they cluster up far too tightly. As well as those two, there are several wild hunt/night-ride nights; and there is Grandmothers Night, the only one of its kind in the year; plus the winter as a whole being the time for the spirits of the dark, although life tends to be so grim at this time of year I'm content with my decision to make it another Solar season; and at least one full moon.
There's options for how to spread them out, & my main concern is setting up something sustainable - in terms of my energy and time - but also in terms of clashing moods, ensuring each of these things has a little time to breathe - and imagining other people in future, a group or a network, what would be a reasonable thing to ask of others so there is no sense of having missed out.
I asked the cards about what my next steps should be overall, & got a very strong indication that I need to be doing more ritual; and so far, I've noticed that it helps me a lot - those images linger with me for days afterwards.
Today, I was musing on what I wanted my landlord to understand, & the phrase 'working garden' came to me. I want an interactive space - I coppice my privets, I let the nettles grow so i can make green fertiliser, I let the wild flowers grow to watch the bees, I let the brambles grow for blackberries, and I don't use a strimmer or a mower because the act of gardening is the pleasure. It's a doing space. For other people, the garden might be a relaxing space, a sitting space, an art installation (where everything is designed and for looking at), or some other kind of active space (like, you need a lawn for the dogs and the kids)
