This Sunday, November 25, 2012, is Stir-up Sunday, that is to say it is the Sunday on which you make your Christmas pudding.
Christmas pudding dates from the era before central heating. I read somewhere once that in 1900, the average male spent 11 hours a day outside. Not outside the home but outside. And he generally spent it doing physical labour in the cold and often working while wet.
And all this in a day before modern insulating materials. Back then a winter coat was made of the same but a thicker cloth than a summer one. It was much heavier.
If you think about that a bit, it's easy to see why plum pudding is so rich.
Nowadays, we don't need that richness. But we make and eat Christmas pudding as an act of communion with all the generations of our families who celebrated Christmas before us. Christmas, like any feast that deserves to be called a feast, is a conversation between the living and the dead. It's not a time to be making up new "traditions" because we want something that "speaks to us".
Think about your grandmother and her grandmother and what they did and saw and what they enjoyed and suffered. Do it even if you didn't or don't particularly like them. Then stick a wooden spoon in the pudding and stir it along with them. It's hard work, plum pudding batter is thicker than concrete mix.
The "stir up" part comes from the proper collect of the last week of the liturgical year. We never hear it on the last Sunday anymore because the last Sunday of the year is now always Christ the King which has its own proper collect. It is heard at the regular mass during the rest of the week.
The word "Collect" has an old meaning "gathering". We gather together and we gather ourselves. If you've read enough novels from the late 18th century and early 19th century you will have read a passage where someone loses their cool and is advised to "recollect" themselves. That may not make sense to you because we now use "recollect" to mean "remember" but it meant "pull yourself together" back then.
The collect is a pulling together and it is part of the introductory rites of the mass. It is, in fact, the last part of the introductory rights, which is to say that it is the end of the beginning. And this particular collect begins with the words "stir up" in which our ancestors had the courage to see a divine plan. They concluded that this was a sign that we should make that day the pudding with which we will celebrate the la vita nuova, the new life, a few weeks from now.
As a sign! Think of the courage it takes to see a sign and recognize it as a sign to change your life. You could just dismiss it as coincidence that the words "stir up" appear just at that moment. If you want to live in a world where such things don't happen that is.
Here is the translation of the collect we use today.
She did that because it was considered good luck. And it is. Not in the sense that you may win the lottery or find love but because you will connect yourself to others both living and dead by doing it.
Christmas pudding dates from the era before central heating. I read somewhere once that in 1900, the average male spent 11 hours a day outside. Not outside the home but outside. And he generally spent it doing physical labour in the cold and often working while wet.
And all this in a day before modern insulating materials. Back then a winter coat was made of the same but a thicker cloth than a summer one. It was much heavier.
If you think about that a bit, it's easy to see why plum pudding is so rich.
Nowadays, we don't need that richness. But we make and eat Christmas pudding as an act of communion with all the generations of our families who celebrated Christmas before us. Christmas, like any feast that deserves to be called a feast, is a conversation between the living and the dead. It's not a time to be making up new "traditions" because we want something that "speaks to us".
Think about your grandmother and her grandmother and what they did and saw and what they enjoyed and suffered. Do it even if you didn't or don't particularly like them. Then stick a wooden spoon in the pudding and stir it along with them. It's hard work, plum pudding batter is thicker than concrete mix.
The "stir up" part comes from the proper collect of the last week of the liturgical year. We never hear it on the last Sunday anymore because the last Sunday of the year is now always Christ the King which has its own proper collect. It is heard at the regular mass during the rest of the week.
The word "Collect" has an old meaning "gathering". We gather together and we gather ourselves. If you've read enough novels from the late 18th century and early 19th century you will have read a passage where someone loses their cool and is advised to "recollect" themselves. That may not make sense to you because we now use "recollect" to mean "remember" but it meant "pull yourself together" back then.
The collect is a pulling together and it is part of the introductory rites of the mass. It is, in fact, the last part of the introductory rights, which is to say that it is the end of the beginning. And this particular collect begins with the words "stir up" in which our ancestors had the courage to see a divine plan. They concluded that this was a sign that we should make that day the pudding with which we will celebrate the la vita nuova, the new life, a few weeks from now.
As a sign! Think of the courage it takes to see a sign and recognize it as a sign to change your life. You could just dismiss it as coincidence that the words "stir up" appear just at that moment. If you want to live in a world where such things don't happen that is.
Here is the translation of the collect we use today.
Stir up the will of your faithful, we pray, O Lord,That is the new translation but the prayer goes back centuries. Dante, Frances of Assisi, Paul Claudel, Jane Austen, and Evelyn Waugh all hear this prayer. So did your great grandmother. And then she went home and made her pudding and made everyone in the house come and stir it.
that, striving more eagerly
to bring your divine work to fruitful completion,
they may receive in greater measure
the healing remedies your kindness bestows.
She did that because it was considered good luck. And it is. Not in the sense that you may win the lottery or find love but because you will connect yourself to others both living and dead by doing it.
I was very surprised to hear a "stir-up" collect in Church several weeks ago. It was surprisingly early; I think it may have been just after Canadian Thanksgiving. Maybe this is because we Anglicans don't just stir up and cook our Christmas puds - we then poke holes in them and "feed" them with brandy every 10 days or so until we eat them at Christmas. The longer they have to "feed" on the constant supply of brandy the better. Oh my!
ReplyDeleteIn my family we used brandy or rum. I think it depended on what was in the cabinet when it came time.
DeleteGood for the Anglicans for keeping the stir-up collect alive on Sunday.
The whole question of Christ the King being moved until the end of the year is an interesting one. Perhaps the subject for a blog post someday.