To Grandfather's House and the Return of the Annual Murfin Winter Holidays Music Fest

                             Over the River and Through the Woods  by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

 Note--The launch of this year's Murfin Winter Holidays Music festival was delayed by the illnesses of the proprietor and a lengthy new transcription.

Those all-Christmas music radio stations are already churning out the short rotations of holiday hits.  TV specials from high brow to hip are on almost every night.  There are plenty of ways for you to get your jolly jones for Yuletide tunes satisfied.  But if you are in the mood for a quiet moment each day with a steaming mug of coffee, cocoa, mulled something, or a taste of more adult, the annual Murfin's Winter Holidays Music Festival is for you!

This is how it works:  Every year beginning on the day after Thanksgiving--Black Friday--if you must--until the Feast of the Epiphany/Day of the Three Kings--on January 6, I will post a seasonal song.  And not only sacred and secular Christmas favorites, but also songs celebrating the many winter festivals observed this time of year--Hanukkah, St. Nicholas Day, Santa Lucia, Winter solstice, Boxing Day, and the New Year.  I try to mix the familiar with what might not be so well known including songs from different cultures and new music.  

Of course there will be plenty of time and space for the old chestnuts.  Regular followers know that I am especially fond of the secular songs of the Golden Age of American Christmas Music which stretched roughly from the early 1930's to the late 1970's.

I am also eager to get suggestions and requests.  You can instant message me on Facebook, e-mail pmurfin@sbcglobal.net, or make a comment on a blog entry.

We will kick things off with a traditional Thanksgiving song while the leftovers are still in the Fridge.

Here in Northern Illinois it was a typical gray November Day with temps hovering around freezing and only rare drifting snow flakes,  We never have the king of deep snow cover that would have allowed a sleigh ride to Grandfather's House for Thanksgiving.  But things were different during the Little Ice Age that gripped North America during and after the American Revolution.

That's why the poem Lydia Maria Child published in 1844 and titled A Boy's Thanksgiving Day and later set to music often ends up being sung as a Christmas song.

Child was recalling her own childhood when snow indeed laid deep and thick on the hills and ice froze streams in New England by mid-November.

The Little Ice Age is estimated to have lasted from about 1350 to 1850 and to have been particularly harsh in Europe and North America.  It began after the extended Mid Warm Period which began about 950 and peaked around 1100.  During that time Mediterranean agricultural practices extended deep in Europe.  The Little Ice Age plunge destroyed much of that agricultural base causing widespread famine and suffering.

There were variations of temperatures including short spurts of mild warming.  But especially severe winters clustered abound 1300, 1650,1750, and the last around 1850.  Some experts extend the period almost to the 20th Century to include the epic blizzards of 1886-'87.

The Little Ice Age was truly devastation.  Greenland was completely depopulated of its Norse settlers and Iceland lost half of its population.  Famines in Scandinavia claimed at least 10% of the population, much higher in remote northern farming villages.  Unreliable growing seasons and weakened populations made them much more susceptible in the periodic plagues that swept Europe.  In densely populated cities like London the death tolls were staggering.

During the Little Ice Age rivers, canals, and even sea ice froze for months at a time.  Ice skating became both reliable transportation and a popular diversion in Holland.

Winter sea ice extended  for miles around Ireland and closed major ports.  Great Rivers like the Thames in London, the Rhone and the Rhine froze solid.  A Swedish army was able to march across the seat to attack Copenhagen.  In the Low Countries rivers, canals, ponds and marshes froze solid every Winter encouraging a culture that encouraged ice skating.  Dutch and Flemish depicted it all in their many winter scenes and landscapes--a type of painting virtually unknown during warmer periods.

In North America crop failures encouraged competing and often warring tribes to create political alliances to fairly share hunting grounds which became much more important as crops failed and fisheries froze over.  Thus, the Iroquois Confederacy was born  as well as smaller alliances of tribes scatter along the Eastern Seaboard from Chesapeake Bay north to modern Nova Scotia.

When the folks we call Pilgrims landed on the rocky shores of New England they were seeking not just relief from religious persecution, but a warmer and more hospitable climate than their refuge in frigid Holland.  They were aiming for balmy Virginia but fate and bad weather deposited them  the equally grim north.  They and their soon to arrive Puritan neighbors suffered in the early years and their colonies only began to prosper  in a brief warming period.

 

Deep snow often blanked New England.

The American Revolution was fought in one of the worst cold spells and the weather often played a central role in in the fighting.  If there had not been plenty of snow on the ground and frozen rivers, for instance, Henry Knox could not have hauled all of the heavy artillery from the fort at West Point  to George Washington's troops besieging Boston without oxen dragging the cannons overland on sledges.  Washington and the Continental Army famously endured the heavy snow and bitter cold of Valley Forge.  The same weather kept thee British cooped up in New York and other port cities and not wrecking havoc in the countryside.

By the time of the Revolution New Englanders had established a late autumn Thanksgiving tradition as an alternative holiday to Christmas which was once banned as Papist on onde hand, an orgy of pagan revelry on the other.  The celebration had absolutely nothing to do with a dinner party shared between the Pilgrims and the local natives.  That gathering was long forgotten. It originated in local proclamations of fasting and prayer in thanks for delivery from the native nations after King Philip's War and for local bountiful harvests.  Fasting eventually gave way feasting as a natural part of a harvest festival.

Dates for the observances varied depending on local proclamations but were in late November on some day other than the Sabbath or a Wednesday when mid-week prayer meetings were held.

The celebrations came only after all of the crops were in.  After snow fall came the long hunt for deer, turkey, and other game. Atlantic storms made cod fishing too dangerous.  Larders were filled and the men, at least, were idle.  Women, of course, were expected to prepare and cook the feast.  Younger children with no hope of inheriting the farm typically moved away to find land of their own.  It became customary for them to return to the old homestead for the feast.  And in an era when roads were bad and often impassable, the frozen ground, snow, and rivers made travel easier even over long distances.

So, many a family bundled up, climbed aboard, and headed for the Old Folks' home whether it was just down the road or days away.

                                    Child on the porch of her Wayland home in the post-Civil War era.

These were the happy days Child was recalling.  But she was also 14 years old in the famous Year Without Sunshine.  The 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch East Indies and other volcanic activity spewed enough ash high into the atmosphere to block  the Sun from the Northern Hemisphere for most of the year.  Famine lurked that year but could not completely discouraged the traditional trek home for Thanksgiving.

Unless you are on the southern and eastern shores of the Great Lakes this year there will be scant chance of a sleigh ride for Grandma's pumpkin pie.

The cover of one of many editions of Child's most famous poem.  Although she might have preferred to be remembered for her abolition and women's rights advocacy or her passionate devotion to children's literature, I don't think she would be entirely disappointed.
 

Hear are the original words to Child's poem:  

A Boy's Thanksgiving Day

Over the river, and through the wood,

         to Grandfathers house we go: 

        The horse know the way to carry the sleigh

        Through white and drifting snow. 

 

Over the river, and through the Wood, 

          To Grandfather's house away!

          We could not stop for doll or top,

          For 'tis Thanksgiving Day. 

          Over the river, and through the wood--

          Oh, how the wind does blow!

          It stings the oews and bites the nose

          As over the ground we go.

          Over the river, and through the woods--

          And Straight through the barnyard gate,

          We seem to go extremely slow,

          It is so hard to wait!

          Over the river, and through the wood--

          When Grandmother sees us come,

          She will say, "O dear, the children are here,

          Bring a pie for everyone."

          Over the river, and through the wood--

          Now Grandmother's cap I spy!

          Hurrah for the fun!  Is the pudding done"?

          Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

          --Lydia Maria Child