Christmas Eggs

Colored or painted hard-boiled eggs are more common at Easter, so these six eggs I received for Christmas this year came as a surprise.  I think the story behind them is so sweet, though, that I'm going to adopt the tradition and make it my own!

Each of these eggs carries not just a primitive seasonal illustration but a virtue that when practiced help one to become a more Christ-like person.  It's a not-so-pushy reminder to carry the spirit of the Christmas season into the new year and strive for more peace, love, hope, faith, contentment, and gratitude in your life.

That was enough for me to decide it needed to be my new tradition...

Looking for a little more 'meat' for the story, I wondered if there was any special meaning that eggs might hold.  According to the authors of the Symbolism Project at the University of Michigan, an egg "symbolizes a primeval embryonic form from which the world later emerged... an image of totality enclosed within a shell."  Cool... but pretty deep.  I also learned that eggs have a more mainstream religious significance.  Depending on the path you follow they could symbolize fertility, eternity, or Jesus' emergence from the tomb triumphant over death. Interesting, but kind of a stretch for Christmas.

Tonight's Hallmark movie told me "Traditions are the stories a family tells together."  And there is more to this story!

PEACE

I called to thank the elderly couple who gave them to me and learned that when their children were small, they had a hard time slowing them down for breakfast on Christmas morning so they started putting breakfast in their stockings.  Along with the expected small toys and candy, they found mini boxes of cereal or granola bars, fresh fruit, hot chocolate packets, and boiled eggs. 

LOVE

It got their kids to slow down just a little and eat breakfast in the midst of the present opening frenzy.  

Then one year they had a guest stay with them over the holiday season... a man from India who'd converted to Christianity. 

HOPE

On Christmas Eve, he crept down after the family had gone to sleep and fished out all the eggs and painted beautiful images of the Christmas season on them.  That was the gift he could afford to give them for sharing their hospitality.  She said he was quite the talented artist and they'd tried to keep the painted parts of the shells but they were too fragile. 

FAITH

The man fell ill and passed away and, while not nearly as artistically talented as he had been, they decided to keep the practice of painting the eggs in their Christmas stockings alive in his honor. 

CONTENTMENT

Now their kids are grown and moved away and have grown children of their own so they are sharing this wonderful legacy and tradition with others.

GRATITUDE

I was lucky enough to be a recipient this year!  And next year I will be passing it on!!

The Rock Piles of Appalachia

One of the more charming aspects of living in Appalachia are the stories. When I first heard John Denver sing that "...life is old there" (Country Roads, 1971) it was a truth I didn't have the means to appreciate. Yet. I'm learning that now through the sights and sounds and tastes and endless stories.

Everything has a story here... even the rock piles.

Most often the ones I see have a logical and evident explanation. They've been chiseled and then dry stacked as fences, retaining walls, foundations, stairs, road surfaces and structures. The early American settlers were surely not strangers to hard physical work. Think what it took to heft some of those stones into place even using cantalever!

A partially collapsed retaining wall. These are holding back terraces
which demarcate property lines on the downward side of a hill in
Mount Savage, MD.  If only it were mine... I would love to restore
this charming feature!

The old springhouse on the same property.  Time and neglect and [effective
though historically insensitive] rennovations have left it ravaged almost
beyond repair but how I would like to try...

You might be wondering what a "springhouse" is. I'm going to call it a necessity of both early American life and for those seeking a self-sufficient lifestyle not so tied to today's utility grid. The most basic purpose of a springhouse is to cover a spring with a simple, usually just one room, structure to keep the water clean and potable. It keeps out fallen leaves and animals that could introduce infectious bacteria to the water source. The cold water and stone construction keep a springhouse cool year round so it also provides refrigeration to store foods like cured meats, fruit, vegetables, and dairy products safely away from predators.

And then sometimes you randomly find a huge pile of stacked rocks out in the middle of the forest.  It's neat and ordered and shows intelligent design in its construction. It just doesn't make sense in context of its location. At least not with how the locale is used today. And since Appalachia has been continually populated by uncounted cultures for thousands of years we are left to speculate about the purpose these rocks served and any meanings attributed to them in the distant past. Couple that with a landscape that holds onto the secrets of what may hide deep within its volcanic ancient history...

This example is near Spruceton NY. I found it in this 2008 blogpost from
Rock Piles. They refer to them as cairns, which to me suggests
a burial site.  Perhaps?  It makes for a good story!

And there you have mystery and intrigue... essential ingredients to any good story!

Were these stones laid by some of America's first inhabitants? Perhaps they are altars of worship like The Book of Mormon describes... or trail markers, or defense structures in an ancient war, or hunting blinds maybe? Along with the equally mysterious stone circles (like Scotland's Stonehenge and the smaller less well known circles here in Appalachia) are they evidence of an ancient alien presence? Are they just stones cleared from the fields of a farm that has been reclaimed by nature? The answer, and the story, depends on who you ask!

I would say many of the less easily explained rock piles come from preparing a field for planting crops. Stones were removed to make it possible for the farmer to work his field and produce a crop. They were stacked somewhere out of the way. Most of us who grew up on or around farms or in families that gardened are familiar with the process and have likely spent some time "pickin' rock."  That familiarity tugs at the heartstrings... These rocks remind us that there's something both comforting and disturbing about the temporary nature of our time on Earth. This is work that's as important as it is fleeting... What once served as a family's livelihood is reduced to nothing more than a few tons of stone... and a mystery for future generations to wonder about.

The Battle of New Hope Church

One of my resolutions for 2015 is to spend more time exploring my local surroundings.  So to start off, I thought I'd back up a few months and show you one I finally got to see last July.  I'd been wanting to go look at the site and the historical markers for a long time, but I was waiting for my self-proclaimed history buff companion to decide he could be bothered.  I gave up on that and went with a visiting friend.

Located where the present day Dallas Acworth Highway intersects E. Paulding Ave (which continues west from there as Old Cartersville Road - have I mentioned lately how confusing I find roads that suddenly change names at a random intersection?) is the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, that of New Hope Church, fought in May 1864.  Yes, the battle was fought in and around this very simple and unpretentious little church!

New Hope Church as it appears today.

One of 12 "Unknown" soldiers buried at the
New Hope Cemetery.

"Unnamed, unknown, remain and still remain the bravest soldiers. Our manliest, our boys, our hardy darlings: no picture gives them. Likely, the typical one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands) crawls aside to some bush-clump or ferny tuft on receiving his death-shot; there, sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass, and soil with red blood; the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by; and there, haply with pain and suffering…the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him; the eyes glaze in death;…and there, at last the Bravest Soldier, crumbles in Mother Earth, unburied and unknown."  --  Walt Whitman, Drum Taps 1865

Confederate Cemetery at New Hope Community.

 There’s a cemetery within the cemetery at New Hope Community just outside of Dallas, GA.  It’s a tiny plot with just 13 slightly unkempt graves under a worn Confederate flag.  All but 1 mark the final resting spot of some unknown soldier who paid the ultimate price defending the only life he knew.  History, especially when it involves a conflict, is told (and accepted as true and complete) from the perspective of the winner and these soldiers were on the losing side.  It's easy to overlook them and forget that each was someone’s son… perhaps a brother, husband, father, friend.  Their names and stories are unknown but I'm sure someone's heart hurt when their loved one didn't come home after the war.  And the tragedy of that makes my heart hurt still today.

Another part of the site that I found particularly haunting is the battle trenches just east of the church building.

Confederate dug battle trenches.

A friend with some military history knowledge explained the battle tactics of the time this way.  Because the guns used were neither uniform nor accurate, the soldiers would take aim in groups of 3.  The man in front would lie on his belly, the second man was down on one knee behind him and the third, standing at the back.  All would fire at the same time and then fall to the back of the line to reload.  Picture in your mind's eye that scene happening in a shallow trench like this one!  Fighting in this way increased the odds that one of their combatants would be struck down greatly over having every soldier in one long line.  It's so hard to imagine the brutal conditions of this kind of hand to hand combat.  And it was literally hand to hand...

Front of Sesquicentennial marker.

May of 2014 marked the Sesquicentennial of the Battle of New Hope Church and one of the town’s civic clubs erected a marker honoring the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee, led (I think) by General Hardee. They were the primary Confederate forces trying to block Sherman’s march on Atlanta.  And even though this is counted as Confederate victory, they were outflanked and Union forces advanced on to Kennesaw Mountain (I'll document a visit in another post - it is a better known site maintained by the National Park Service and host to many re-enactments and events).

There are a number of historic markers at this site describing with both text and picture how the troops moved parallel to one another.  You can also get a glimpse of today’s landscape in these pictures and imagine how difficult the journey must have been 150 years ago in dense woods, heat, and humidity.

Markers in the park at the battle site explaining the
logistics and tactics used by the soldiers fighting here.

Visiting these sites that previously were only brief descriptions in a text book sure brings history alive to me in a whole new way.  Those who fought on both sides have my utmost respect!

What Is Halloween?

Last night was the annual celebration of Halloween for those who participate.  Not everyone does.  And I'm not saying there's anything wrong about that choice.  We do Halloween at my house and are already starting to put together ideas for next year's decorations.  After it came up in conversation a couple of times today, I decided maybe I needed to know a little more about what Halloween is.

There's a lot of disagreement about where the holiday itself originated, but the word Halloween is a contraction of the Scottish  phrase All Hallows' Eve.  The origin is Christian and it means 'hallowed evening' or 'holy evening.'  In Scots, eve, meaning evening, is often contracted to e'en or een.  Over time (All) Hallow(s') E(v)en evolved into Halloween.  All Hallows' Eve (also called Hallowmas) was a mass day for all saints and recently departed souls who had yet to reach heaven (still in purgatory) in the primitive Church.  Originally celebrated in May, the date was changed to October 31 at the behest of Pope Gregory IV in 835.

So the day, and the word, have been around for a long time.

On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters
the Devil who tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking
Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping
the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his
soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry
to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses
to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of
hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed
out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his
lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest.
An Irish Christian folk tale

The way it's celebrated in America today is a little more complicated.  Like many of our modern holiday traditions there is a mashup of Christian, Pre-Christian and Pagan ideas and celebratory activities from all over the world combined together and commercialized by clever marketing people.

For example, All Hallow's Eve honored dead loved ones and saints.  It was (maybe still is in some places?) a formal Church service that includes services and prayers dedicated to these people.  You can also find this same idea of a day set aside to honor passed on loved ones in the Latin world's La Dia de Los Muertos where families spend the night feasting and remembering their dead at gravesite.  You also see echos of this theme in the Pagan festivals, which mark the passing of the harvest season into the dark days of winter, of Samhain (Celtic) and Calan Gaeaf (Gaelic - specifically, Welsh).  Samhain/Calan Gaeaf were historically seen as a liminal time, when spirits or faeries could more easily come into our world and were particularly active.  It was (perhaps is?) also seen as a time when the dead revisited their homes and places were set at the table, or by the fire, to welcome them.  Sometimes candles burned in every room to help guide them home.

Household festivities included rituals and games intended to divine one's future, especially regarding death and marriage. Nuts and apples were often used in these divination rituals. Special bonfires were lit and their flames, smoke and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers, and were also used for divination. Some suggest that the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun, helping the "powers of growth" and holding back the decay and darkness of winter.

Souling was a Christian practice carried out in many
English towns on Halloween and Christmas.  It refers
to the practice of children begging for spiced fruit
cakes door to door singing this song (1891 version).

A soul! a soul! a soul-cake!

Please good Missis, a soul-cake!
An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry.
One for Peter, two for Paul
Three for Him who made us all.

Many of the festivals included 'guising' (at least since the 16th century) or 'souling' traveling house to house in costume and reciting verses or singing in exchange for food.  The costume is thought to be a disguise from the mischievous faeries who might wish you some harm.  There are many variations on this theme depending on the specific locale.

The modern images of Halloween draw from these traditions as well as works of Gothic and horror literature (Frankenstein, Dracula or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for example) and horror films (one would be the classic The Mummy).  Images like the skull, a reference to Golgotha in the Christian tradition, serve as a reminder of death and the transitory quality of human life.  Likewise the back walls of many Churches and Cathedrals is decorated with a mural of 'The Last Judgement' complete with graves opening and souls rising to make their way to either heaven (filled with angels) or hell (filled with devils).

In short, there is no single answer to whether Halloween is good or bad.  To see the good or bad is an individual choice.  You can choose the see evil or find meaning in the religious symbology.  You can pick and choose what parts you want to observe, too.  Like most things in life, Halloween is customizable to your specific tastes and wants.  It is just what you make it.

Dreaming of Mid-Winter

Photo courtesy of A Day in the Life of a Fat
Chick's Facebook Page

I know it's been hot enough to keep us all stuck in fantasies of blizzards and snow encrusted pine trees as we wish for a day of weather that calls for mittens and sledding trips but... are we already starting on Christmas preparations?

When I checked the countdown calculator it said there's still 153 days before the big day.  Shouldn't I be able to procrastinate about 140 of them away yet?

Actually we have some pretty big plans for Christmas 2013!  It will be Derek's and my first Christmas in our own home.  And I know he wants to put up enough lights outside (and in) to make it visible from space.  I admit, I'm pretty excited to get my decorations out so we can see how our stuff works together.  And I think we'll end up with something pretty darned impressive by the time it's all rounded up and out of the boxes.  Just thinking about it makes me smile!

And you know I've been saving ideas on Pinterest since the day after last Christmas.  Even on a "secret" Board so everyone will be surprised by the cute little cards and table decorations I'm going to make and the special recipes that come out only for Christmas dinner.  Some of those come from his family, some from mine and some I'm planning on having as new to both of us.  Which is risky since he's beyond picky about what food he will eat... so there'll be some of the old familiar foods presented in a new way.  Christmas 2013 is my chance to make a unique spot to fit into this new family.

Photo credit:  www.dailydawdle.com

For all the advance planning that goes into making Christmas such a beloved time of the year, I still think each holiday needs its own time and space to be enjoyed.  Sometimes I complain about the over-commercialization of them overrunning each other and having the Christmas decorations up for sale in stores before Halloween.  So while I may be plotting and planning and collecting ideas and recipes all year long... Christmas stays in the boxes until after the Thanksgiving turkey has had a few hours to digest.

No more snowy scenes until winter!  Summer should be enjoyed for what it is -- the time for playing in the water, s'mores round the firepit and burgers on the outdoor grill!!