So many dark hours

[mrissa]

It's that time of year again: time for the lussekatter. Time to light the candles and sing the songs and punch the living hell out of that beautiful golden dough; time to inhale the scent of yeast and saffron and hope in darkness.

There's only one problem.

My lussekatter dough didn't rise.

I suppose it was inevitable that this would happen sometime: every serious baker I know has sometime when their bread just went awry, and I haven't really had one. It was probably time. But the problem with investing small acts with joyful symbolic significance is that when your small act of hope falls flat, you're left struggling to wipe the symbolism off, quick, before it gets all over everything in the wrong places.

"We've got so many dark hours," said my mom on the phone this week. She was talking about life in Minnesota in December, waiting for the Solstice to come, waiting for Christmas, for Santa Lucia Day; waiting for anything, really, anything good, as long as it'll relieve the long hours of night. And we have an aunt in Arvada, my grandparents live in Omaha, and my friend's husband got robbed at gunpoint recently, and me, I fell and hit my head on the door jamb trying to sort the laundry. It is easy to spot the dark hours from here, and not all of them are coming at night.

But it's always easy, and lussekatter are not easy, and that's kind of the whole point. If we were languidly waving light and hope out of the darkness, it would be a whole different metaphor. An easy one. A false one. But sometimes the work of kicking the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight isn't the thing, either. Sometimes we have to be patient. Sometimes we have to be calm. And, heavens forfend, sometimes we have to be flexible.

I spent the day running errands, and the vertigo is no fun, and I am tired. I am not running to Byerly's to start lussekatter at 9:45, and therefore there will be no lussekatter first thing in the morning on Santa Lucia Day here at my house. Where there are supposed to be some. Where my tired and slightly wobbly self was perfectly prepared to use the last vestiges of energy to make them. No. There will be quiet, and there will be a perfectly ordinary breakfast, and the hope that I have manufactured for myself this year out of very expensive spices and apparently defective yeast is the hope that sometimes I will know when to redirect my energy. When it is time to have a quiet half-hour with my book instead, and check in on a friend who's hurting from a serious relationship that broke without much warning, and be gentle with myself and the world instead of fierce. I haven't given up on fierceness. But I also haven't given up on balance. Even with the vertigo. You have to walk pretty carefully with the candles on your head. Balance is part of the symbolism of this holiday, too. And this year, it'll do.

Comments

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Bummer about the bread. If you were in this time zone where it is only 8pm, you could have sent Timprov to Byerly's for more yeast. If you mix more yeast in a quarter cup of warm liquid and let it sit for 5 minutes, you can knead it into your dough and then it will rise.

But alas, now it is nearly 11pm where you are. Too late. :-(

Will you make lussekatter later, so you can still enjoy the flavor?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be contradictory, but it is 10 pm where I am. And markgritter is the one who's still up and about (and, until recently, the only one who could be sent for things), and he would gladly have gone to get me more and better yeast if I'd asked, but by the time I discovered that the yeast was not doing its yeastly duty, I had already waited until my supply of energy was running low.

I don't think I'll make lussekatter yet this year, no. If someone -- markgritter or timprov or my dad or whoever -- specifically asks, we'll see what time I have. But probably not. There are other things, and plenty of them.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Oops! I was thinking about the wrong time zone. I am completely wrong and extend my apologies.

And bummer about the energy running out. I've been there but I'm not always smart enough to quit at that point.

There are many things I only make at the "right" season. Potato latkes at Chanukah (which I skipped this year and had to suffer inferior latkes at the temple). Matzoh ball soup at Passover. And when I make them I wonder why I don't make them more often, because they're so good. (except the latkes. I make excellent latkes but they're a pain and a half to get all the liquid out of the grated potatoes.) But I don't because honestly, I think seasonal things are better when they are part of the proper season, so I understand what you are saying. (Turkey at Thanksgiving is sort of like that, though really I don't think turkey is truly a seasonal thing.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not always smart enough to quit at that point, either, but I'm working on it.

I'm sorry you suffered inferior latkes. That just sounds unfortunate.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I was happy to be able to identify for Reid what holiday they celebrated at his school today:

"We had a holiday. I don't remember which one."

"Did it involve lighting candles and spinning tops?"

"No...There was just one girl, with candles on her head. And she had a special dress, and she gave us yummy bread."

"Was she carrying a plate?"

"Yes, with the bread, cut up in pieces."

Aha! Santa Lucia!

He wanted to know if we could make the bread. I told him our friend Marissa would have the recipe. The last thing he asked me tonight, as he was falling asleep, was if I was still going to ask our friend for the recipe.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Go, Reid's school! The recipe is here (http://www.marissalingen.com/lussekatter.html)

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I love Santa Lucia day buns. I made them last year.

I also once wrote This little essay (http://bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/saffron.html). As far as I know it is accurate, but I think I write better now. :/

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's always good to see improvement in ourselves, right?

The only question I have about that essay is, really, in your tradition the women serve them to the fathers? In ours it's the children to the adults.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Well, in whatever books I read 10 years ago when I wrote that, the tradition was expressed as the eldest daughter serving to her father.

If it was my personal family tradition, I would have taken gender out of it. But I'm an English Irish Catholic Protestant Ukrainian Dutch (Spanish) Ashkenazic Sephardic Jewish American. In none of those traditions am I actually Scandahoovian.

But I do love Santa Lucia day buns.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We don't do DNA tests! Santa Lucia Day is for everyone!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Right, exactly! But I still don't have a longstanding family tradition.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry.

And not.

Because you're right. Sometimes symbolism is just...a lot of effort. But when you put the effort in, then it does work.

It's my tradition to stay up all night, keeping vigil for the sun, on the winter solstice night. Now there's a group of us, but I was the one who started it, because it was my vision of Yule.

And then there have been years when I haven't been getting enough sleep for several days before the solstice, and I can't sleep late the morning before, and somewhere in the wee hours it gets to the point where sleep dep makes me feel ill. And finally I stop and say, "The point of this ritual was not an endurance test, to see if I could tough it out. This is not the celebration I was trying to have." A couple years, I've slunk off to sleep for an hour or two. But last year, I took hold of my symbolism and turned things inside out. I'd been going outside every hour or so to check on the night and see how the stars had moved. And then I went upstairs and went to sleep for a couple hours, to check on the night dreaming as well as waking.

You have a lamp with frustratingly little oil in it, an infuriatingly short stub of a candle right now. It makes me angry for you. But while it would be lovely to celebrate Santa Lucia's day with profligacy of light, this year you will celebrating it by cherishing and tending the smaller allotment of light you've been given, and that's another kind of holiday of light.

I wish you much quiet beauty for tomorrow.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Speaking of light-in-darkness holidays, there's something in that last paragraph that makes me see think the Chanukah story pertains here. I won't retell the official story here because you probably know it. (If not, I can.) But to rephrase it just a little, sometimes when you have done all that you can, there is only a tiny bit of oil left, no matter how hard you've tried. But sometimes, sometimes, with a lot of work and careful tending, and maybe a little outside help, that bit of oil can be just enough to provide the light you need for just long enough to get you through.

I had a couple of very dark hours yesterday, and got some news this morning that is a candle glimmering, and I really needed this, both the original post and the reminder of this side of Chanukah. Thank you both.

[brooksmoses]

I think it's being that sort of year, kind of.

Last year, you posted the recipe for the lussekatter, and, as I was rereading it in early spring along with what you said then about pushing back against the darkness, I realized that I had had need of making lussekatter that winter. And so I sent my future self an email, scheduled to send sometime around now, with the recipe.

That email's sitting on a computer that's wedged under and between moving boxes full of clothes and books, and which hasn't even been turned on for several days. And I'm spending most of my waking hours either working or packing boxes or moving them over here, and all of the kitchen stuff is in entire disarray.

So, yeah. There are times to be gentle with oneself instead of fierce, and I think that this is a year where for me too the right balance is not making the lussekatter. Even if I had been looking forward to them on random odd moments (when I happened to notice the queued-up email) all year.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Some years the symbolism needs to be interior rather than exterior.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I guess you'll be having lussecrackers.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ewwwwwww! Hee. No, see the new entry this morning.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Your light shall always shine, for you alloy
The bitter with the sweet, your griefs with joy.
Your dough won't rise but that won't make you weep:
You understand why midwinter is deep.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, nice! As is mrissa's post. Very, both of them.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Wow. Very pretty!

Lady, I admire your poetic skill. I wish I had a goblet to give you, or a ring. They seem the right tribute, especially in midwinter's darkness.

Chica*---

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

-nods- Seeking after balance and harmony. I'm finding myself rereading Tony Hillerman books, and that thought caught at me last night also.

You say it far better than do I, M'ris.

Peace.

Chica*---

(And I'm happy there was a change today for you.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. In an unexpected way, you helped me.

See, one of my personal traditions, for several years now, is that I spend the solstice night reading quietly by candlelight. Except that this year I will already be out of town come the solstice, and in a place where I cannot perpetuate that tradition. And that was making me very sad.

Your post prompted me to do it on Santa Lucia's Night instead. It actually used to be the solstice, before the Gregorian calendar reform, or so Wikipedia tells me, and anyway it has the kind of associations that make it a suitable replacement night, rather than a random one. So I had a lovely evening with my books and my candles and my music, and it's all because you reminded me of this holiday.

So thank you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad that worked out for you! That sounds like a wonderful holiday compromise to me.