December 21: Lighten Up
Here’s the way to make the sun shine and get rid of all your sorrows: cut a
log, tie a rope to it, drag it around your house or City Hall. Take a bunch of
friends with you. One of them might wear a wolf mask; another, dress up as a pig
or a devil. You drag the log around the house, maybe even walking backwards,
and singing all the time while banging loud instruments. Do it three times.
Once you’re finished, burn the log. By doing this, you will have helped the sun
to return and cleansed yourself and your community of all the lies and
disappointments of the year.
You might be
one of those people who like to turn on the television and keep a fire on the
screen all day. Oddly enough, there’s a connection between you and this ritual.
Wood and fire are not just a source of heat invoked in the winter. For the
Latvians, a block of wood is like the heaviness in your heart. Anything bad
you’ve done to someone, or they to you, the end of the year is the time to get
rid of it. You can do it any time before Christmas, but the best time is
December 21st, on the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. That’s
when it’s time to symbolically bring back the sun. The way you do it is by
Dragging the Log: vilkt bluķi.
That heavy piece of wood was the ritual centrepiece for many Northern
European cultures celebrating Jul: until the Christians stepped in, the
Germans dragged a Julklotz, and the French turned into a confection of
chocolate and whipped cream, the Bûche de Noël. The Catalans dress up their log and stuff
it with presents, the Tio de Nadal. The English tradition focuses on the
burning of the Yule Log.
The Latvian log can be any type of wood, but oak is preferred.
It’s important for everybody in the community to take part in the pulling or
rolling of the log at some point. The worst things are, the more times you
should drag the log around the house. (I can think of some capital cities where
one might need to do that for 24 hours.) The ritual can be repeated in many
places before the log is burned. These days, you might even drag it over to
your neighbours’, attached to a car.
You can interpret the Latvian tradition of vilkt bluķi in many ways: the log is
heavy, as is your heart, as is the state of the world, and so it is a sombre
event. Dragging the darn thing builds up a sweat and makes you feel warm in
minus zero degrees, which makes for good exercise before all those heavy meals.
The melodies of the songs you sing, with their refrain of kalado, kalando,
kaļadā, olilo,
are incantatory: you’re literally singing enchantments and spells that have a
history reaching far beyond Hogwarts. As the folklore specialist Zoja Heimrāte
has pointed out, in Latin, kalenda means change: change feeds your soul.
After pulling that log, and burning it, you can spread the ashes over your
fields as fertilizer, a practice forbidden by the early Christians in the sixth
century, by the way, and later appropriated (the log became the ‘Christ log’.) Burning the log taps into
one of the deepest joys humans have — the discovery of fire and the ability to
create your own mini-sun in the midst of vast darkness.
“All the roads are full of
fires” is the traditional song to sing while dragging the log, and it’s an easy
one, because the melody is very simple (see link below). The roads are full of
fire, but people are in control of the fire; the fire is not a threat. The song
goes on to say that the roads are also full of keys, meaning that a resolution,
or a revelation is near at hand. As the song develops, it says that you’re
going to have to go through a lot of stuff, through ‘everything’. You can’t
avoid the trials and tribulations of life. But ‘ dieviņš’ – Little God, the
divine spark of life – will stand by you and help you get through the darkness.
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| Photo credit: 2x2 2016 |
You can wear your old parka
while pulling the log; you can pull on full Latvian folk costume gear; or you
can go as a mummer. Budeļi – dressing up as a mummer — is a different
ritual and I won’t describe it here at length. But it’s part of a deep
indigenous tradition of taking on the spirits of the natural world, of
transformation. It’s no coincidence that the ritual of dragging the log is
meant to end with various dancing games, played by everybody, young and old, no
matter how cold, around the bonfire. The names of the games describe the world
the Latvians lived in: dancing around the bear, or the game of the Wolf chasing
the Goat, a round which ends with the Wolf and Goat linking arms and spinning
with glee.
I was lucky enough
to be living in Rīga the first time I experienced this ritual, nearly twenty
years ago. My son was maybe eight years old and the two of us went to
Bastejkalns, a hill in a nearby park, right on the edge of the old town. All
the snow had turned to ice and the pathway winding its way up the hill was
impassable. We literally got on all fours and crawled up that hill. Somehow, the
intrepid Skandenieki, one of the most renowned folklorist groups in
Latvia, were up there, ready to sing and celebrate. We dragged a log around,
and sang and danced around the fire in the nearly pitch dark night. It really
did lighten things up.
So, what are you waiting
for? Call up your friends and family; get yourself a log; drag it around your
house three times, and lighten up your heart. Although, it wouldn’t be Latvian
to be that optimistic: the way the log burns will tell you what the future
brings. If it’s bright, things will be good; if it’s weak, reach for the
aspirin. In other words, choose your log carefully. Once you’ve burned it, you’ve
done your part in the recurring battle between the light and the dark.
Song to sing:
Visi ceļi guniem
pilni
Visi ceļi guņiem pilni, 2x
Visi ceļi atslēgām. 2x
Jaš būs ieti visam cauri, 2x
Ar dieviņa palīdzīb’. 2x
Visam gribu ieti cauri, 2x
Ar dieviņa palīdzīb’. 2x
Visam varu ieti cauri, 2x
Ar dieviņa palīdzīb’. 2x
This is the tune: (the Stutes website)
Pulling the log in Rīga:
And finally, here’s another verse you can recite, especially if you want to
be the Log Mother!
Bluķa māte bluķi vēla,
Pašā Bluķa vakarā.
Lai veļ bluķi trīsi reizi,
Nenāks mošķi caur sienmāli.
(The Log Mother rolled the log on Log Night. Roll the log three times, Evil
spirits won’t come through the hay.)
Paldies Baņuta, for the informative
look at the winter solstice tradition of pulling the log! Years ago the Chicago
Latvian scouts and guides put on a winter solstice show at the Museum of Science and Industry. I’ve forgotten a good bit of what we performed, only that
the most popular line was always “Look, there’s the log!” In recent years we
have shared this tradition with friends, and it is always a rowdy, pot-banging
good time!
Baņuta Rubess is a writer and theatre
artist, who has spent a lot of her time in Latvia. Currently, she lives in
Toronto. You can connect with Baņuta on www.banuta.com.
Tomorrow on Day 14 of 24 Days of a
Baltic Christmas – an ode to blood sausage!
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