OT Advent Calendar (& Hanukkah!) Day 3

Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.

Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.

Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Today’s tunes are the “Malpas Wassail” and “Ocho Kandelikas.”

“Wes hæl,” Old English for “be hale” or “be well,” is the origin of the word wassail and makes clear one of the intents—the other being the acquisition of free booze and victuals—of the wassailing tradition. It also captures the spirit of today’s Advent song the “Malpas Wassail.”

Recorded in 1951 as “Cornish Wassail Song” by the Truro Wassail Bowl Singers of Truro, Cornwall, it came to my attention through a recording by (no surprise here; get used to this) The Watersons.

The lyric is charming and the melody is rustic and natural, a Watersons specialty.

Now the harvest being over and Christmas drawing in

Please open your door and let us come in

With our wassail

Chorus (after each verse):

Wassail, wassail

And joy come to our jolly wassail

Here’s the master and mistress sitting down by the fire

While we poor wassail boys do trudge through the mire

With our wassail

Here’s the master and mistress

sitting down at their ease

Put your hands in your pockets

and give what you please

With our wassail

This ancient owd house we will kindly salute

It is your custom you need not dispute

With our wassail

Here’s the saddle and the bridle they’re hung upon the shelf

If you want any more you can it sing yourself

With our wassail

Here’s an health to the master and a long time to live

Since you’ve been so kind and so willing to give

With our wassail

 

Am I wrong, or can you almost just hear the crunch of the snow and see the breath of the chorus of neighbors?

Love it.

Today is also the third night of Hanukkah. I’ll turn it over to my great friend Cantor Jessica Epstein of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, New Jersey.

Flory Jagoda’s (1923-2021) “Ocho Kandelikas” is her reconstruction of a traditional Sephardi tune version for this Ladino text, which is sung here according to the rendition she notated in the regional Balkan dialect once prevalent in Sarajevo and its environs. For her, this was a personal childhood recollection of Hanukka celebrations, when on each night of the festival there were matchmaking parties. Parents planned or tried to plan the future weddings of their children, who were spending the evening singing and dancing. Traditional almond honey cakes known as pastelikos were served as symbols of good (sweet) fortune in that endeavor, and of successful, rewarding, and enduring matches.

Translation by Neil W. Levin: 

Beautiful Hanukka is here, eight candles for me

One candle, two candles, three candles, four candles

Five candles, six candles, seven candles, eight candles for me

I will give many parties with happiness and pleasure

I will eat the little cakes with almonds and honey.

For a further remembrance of her contributions and life click here.