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12 Days of Crazy Holiday Stories and Kitchen Adventures Tammy Haurilick 2023© by Tammy Haurilick All rights reserved. Published 2023. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or yet to be invented, without written permission from the publisher, except in cases of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. BIBLE SCRIPTURES Printed in the United States of America Spirit Media and our logos are trademarks of Spirit Media SPIRIT MEDIA www.spiritmedia.us 1249 Kildaire Farm Rd STE 112 Cary, NC 27511 1 - Books › Christian Books & Bibles › Christian Living › Holidays › Christmas Paperback ISBN:- Audiobook ISBN:- eBook ISBN:- Library of Congress Control Number:- 2 “To my mother and father, Cathy and David, who taught me to appreciate and explore the world.” 3 Waes Hael 4 Foreword G uilt is the ghost of morality past and we have a hell of a haunting going on here in America today. Everyone is feeling guilty about the commercialism of their holidays and how materialistic we as a civilization have become. Well, news flash, folks. We are NOT the first to bemoan the lack of spirituality. Far from it, in fact. From Ancient Roman times, with Seneca the Younger C.E. 50 to Silvae, then to Cromwell in the Restoration Period of-, and yet even further still to the late 1800s in the new America, each and every one of these societies tried to restrict the celebration of Christmas/Winter Solstice in some form or fashion. Those were some crazy days. Twelve crazy days, in fact, that began with a celebration that lasted several months, but due to the constant complaints of those more pious than most, eventually ended up as a twelve-day celebration. This was borrowing a tradition from the Egyptians, who modeled their original twelve-day festival of Horus after their agricultural calendar. In Egypt, extravagant parties were held to celebrate the rebirth of Horus that lasted a full twelve days with ceremonies welcoming the sun and praising the light. When the Babylonians became aware of this celebration, they held one of their own, honoring their own creator/sun god; Marduk. They called this celebration Zagmak and they believed that Marduk was the creator who made the world one of peace, order and beauty. 5 FOREWORD In pre-Christian times, it was a twelve-day celebration of light and harvest, and family and food. Focusing on the harvest, and preparing for the new year to come, it also became a community event where villages and people from different parts of the country came together to share in the bounty of the fall. It served a dual purpose as well: as the social networking apparatus of the time, news was passed along from relatives in different towns, marriages arranged and performed and business conducted. With no other means of communication other than letters or word of mouth, these get-togethers played a vital role in the Society. Each day was celebrated individually for its own reason, but overall, the whole of the festival was focused on togetherness and relaxing, enjoying what they managed to harvest for the winter and making plans for the spring. When Christianity came about, the days became named for various Saints or religious events. Christmas Day itself was a day first venerated by the Pagans as the day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun. To get more converts to Christianity, the Church merely used a play on words, turning the Birth of the Sun into the Birth of the Son. It was just that simple of an idea to appropriate the day, change the spelling of the name of the deity being celebrated and then let the church do its work at spreading the new story. In return for assuring a good turnout at the Celebration of the Savior’s birth, the Church turned a blind eye toward the populace celebrating the Holiday as it had always been celebrated. Remember, NOWHERE in the Bible does it give a specific date for the birth of Christ. The day was chosen in 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicea, where the Bishop of Myra was present (Saint Nicholas). Late December festivities are deeply rooted in popular culture, both in observance of the Winter Solstice and in celebration of leisure and plenty of agricultural societies. The church elders at the time came to the conclusion that if they couldn’t get the populace to convert, then they would have THEIR feast day on the same day as the Pagan’s and get them in there eventually, sideways. Sort of a “if we build it, they will come” theory (homage to Kevin Costner!!). Again, a tradition was born out of what once was quite an ordinary, regular day. Back to the overall downsizing of the celebration from lasting several months to a mere twelve days. Again, the most religious of the time complained mightily about the excesses of the day: From Seneca the younger—from the Epistolae around 50 A.D.: “It is now the month of December, when the greatest part of the city is in a bustle. Loose reins are given to public dissipation; everywhere you may hear the sound of great preparations, as if there were some real difference between the days devoted to Saturn and those for transacting business… Were you here, I would willingly confer with you as to the plan of our conduct; whether we should behave in our usual way, or, to avoid singularity, both take a better supper and throw off the toga.” 6 FOREWORD From the English Restoration in 1644: “Specific penalties were to be imposed on anyone found holding or attending a special Christmas church service, it was ordered that shops and markets were to stay open on 25 December, the Lord Mayor was repeatedly ordered to ensure that London stayed open for business on 25 December, and when it met on 25 December 1656 the second Protectorate Parliament discussed the virtues of passing further legislation clamping down on the celebration of Christmas (though no Bill was, in fact, produced).” As Cotton Mather from the Americas put it in 1687, which his son, Increase Mather also commented on the same in 1712: “The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after a Holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at cards, in revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth...” I have worn my copy of the book “The Battle for Christmas” by Stephen Nissenbaum, a Pulitzer finalist book and a fantastic read, which mentions about how Christ’s Nativity was celebrated: “The Feast of Christ’s Nativity is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking (see Saturnalia and role reversal) and in all Licentious Liberty by Mad Mirth, by Long Eating, by Hard Drinking, by Lewd Gaming, by Rude Reveling…” In 1659, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they made it illegal to observe the holiday in public. It was declared during this time that “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way” will be levied a 5 shilling fine. The law lived a short life and was repealed in 1681 under pressure from London. In 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in one of her novels: “Christmas is coming in a fortnight, and I have got to think up presents for everybody!! Dear me, it’s so tedious!” And let’s also remember that the holiday time frame has been whittled down from lasting several months, starting in late November and going to Candlemas on February 2nd, to a mere twelve days of Christmas, modeled after the Egyptian Agricultural calendar. Guess what else? All holidays are made up. Yup. You heard me. All holidays are fabrications, inventions of time and tradition, boredom and banality. For the people who like to put down Christmas, Kwanzaa, and other holidays as made up and basically say they have no validity... this is what I will say to you. Every holiday, including Christmas, was once just a plain old ordinary day until someone or several someones got together and decided that this day above all others, needed to be recognized. Christmas wasn’t Christmas until the Council 7 FOREWORD at Nicea in 325 A.D. That’s where we got the Nicene Creed from and where all who attended decided that Jesus’ Birthday should be celebrated on December 25th. The one uniting factor behind all holidays is the need to be with other like-minded people. Be it religion, family, or just the need for human contact, people will find a way and a reason to get together to eat, talk, and just be with one another for human companionship. Many cultures the world over perform solstice ceremonies. At the base of these ceremonies is the idea that the Sun would never return unless humans intervened with vigil or frantic celebration. Sort of a pray-up-the-sun and sing-down-the-moon ideology. And perhaps, our impulse to hold onto certain traditions today—candles, evergreens, feasting and generosity—are echoes of a past that extends many thousands of years further than we ever before imagined. Winter solstice was overlaid with Christmas, and the observance of Christmas spread throughout the globe. Along the way, we lost some of the history of our celebrations, a lot of the history actually, to a single seasonal event. Many people—of many different beliefs—are looking to regain that connection now. Which is why I really wanted to write this book, to put the history out there about the song, “Twelve Days of Christmas’ and to revive some old, old traditions of Winter Solstice of various cultures and maybe get people back to celebrating them, for whatever reasons suit them best. Please understand, my intent is NOT to make a definitive statement of the origins of the song, or on the cultures involved, NOR as a sort of final opinion on the religions involved either. Rather, my aim is short and simple. I am going to show the history of one of the most endearing songs of the Season and perhaps remember and revive some pretty interesting and ancient traditions, while also adding a few new, multi-cultural additions. It’s official. Hell has frozen over and I wore flip-flops to the party!! Let me tell you an interesting story that begins with yet another clichéd first line that will quickly (VERY quickly, I assure you) degenerate into a long and detailed story of how I kept myself sane (did too, Dad—back off!) while I spent a year in an Iraqi prison. Inside the wire and heavily armed, but in a prison nonetheless. It was simultaneously the worst year of my life and the greatest blessing that God has ever given me, and I was gifted with that realization in a single moment. That moment occurred when (here comes another clichéd line—wait for it . . . ) “It was a dark and stormy night” in a remote corner of Iraq, the night hell froze over. It was two in the morning or so, sometime in February during the rainy season (who knew? a rainy season in Iraq) and it was so cold that for thirty minutes that dark, windy, wet and miserable pre-dawn morning, for the first time in sixty years, there was snow in southern Iraq. It only lasted a scant half hour and then it went back to the bone numbing cold rain that turned the dirt and sand surrounding my guard tower into the most heavy-ain’t-coming-off-no-how-no-way- 8 FOREWORD is-this-night-EVER-going-to-end mud on your boots ever! Each boot would be quickly coated with this sludge, dry, and then solidify. Then it would attract another layer of mud on your next roving watch, called a Dorea (Door-Ree-Ah) in Arabic, until you literally had feet of clay. I weighed my boots one night after work, just for giggles, and they weighed a whopping fifteen pounds! I figured it to be two pounds boots and thirteen pounds clay. During the course of the rainy Season that winter, I went through two pairs of boots. That red mud could suck the soul right out of you. Putting one foot in front of the other was not a cheery little song from Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer Christmas special but a mantra to be chanted over and over. Anything to get you around the corner and onto the brown mile, where you were guaranteed to find a few solid spots, a few moments of relief. I came away from my year in the country with many things (aside from sand everywhere!!), among them kick-ass calves from the mud, and tight-ass (no pun intended) glutes from NEVER, and I mean NEVER, letting my sit-upon sit upon the toilet seats in the port-a-potties on the Theatre Internment Facility (TIF) or the Forward Operating Base (FOB). Picture a port-a-potty in 145°F heat after consuming 15-20 bottles of water during a shift, and you will get an understanding of the squatting power you can attain. Wait a minute!! This book was supposed to be about the twelve days of Christmas and its history; when will she get around to writing about that? Wait for it, friends. Another thing I learned over there is the value of patience and that sometimes too much information (TMI) can work to your benefit. During the course of this writing, I will occasionally hitchhike off on a tangent that might not seem relevant at the time but will make sense and become pertinent when the time is right. I promise. Let’s return to the clichéd story already in progress. It was a dark and stormy night in a remote corner of Iraq. It was two in the morning or so and I was in my guard tower, staring in complete bewilderment at my outstretched gloved hand that was currently covered in snow. I held my hand up to the light to see the flakes glisten in the sharp air and to simultaneously keep a peripheral eye on the yard below. I usually took my turn in the tower first watch, the zero to four watch. It was quiet, peaceful, little action in the yard, and you could gather your thoughts and think things over. Picture Winnie the Pooh, with his little butterscotch paw, tapping his forehead and going “think, think, think”. Now picture him doing that wearing Kevlar and carrying an M16 with an M203 grenade launcher, and you have me, in my tower at Delta Quad at two in the morning, or thereabouts. Humming a little hum, thinking some minor thinks, and keeping an eye out for individuals considering enrollment in the self-release program at Camp Bucca (that’s escaping to you mere civilians). I started humming the song the twelve days of Christmas and you know how it is when you get a song in your head? Well, try getting one in your head early in the morning with nothing to do but watch an empty yard for four hours!!! It gets you thinking. And I thought, I want to learn more about this song and where it came from. And I thought to myself, when I get off work, I will go and research some at the computer lab at the Liberty Lounge and see what’s what. 9