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yakalskovich) wrote2011-12-04 01:32 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2011-12-04 01:32 pm
Lantern festival at the Nazgul's library
At the library where
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brickling works (the International Youth Library at Blutenburg castle on the outskirts of Munich -- one of the coolest places ever to work!), there is a lantern festival every year during advent, referring to some old Bavarian customs about or around St. Lucy's Day. It takes place on the pond behind the castle, which you here see in last fading light of the evening.
For that, the children of the area who use the 'Book Castle' as an everyday lending library made those little houses, churches, castles and towers from cardboard and coloured transparent paper during the last few weeks at the library, glued them on a bit of wood or clapboard, and brought them to let swim on the pond with a tea light inside for this festival.
They came in a procession with candles from the local church a stone's throw away (complete with brass band playing Christmas carols) and then put the little 'light houses' on the pond. Most hugged the shore, though, as the kids had them on string and wouldn't let them go. The Nazgul said as far as she knew, not letting go wasn't the point of the celebration, but well...
It did look very pretty, though.-
And then we went and had mulled wine at the Christmas market inside the castle.
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And not letting go is good. What if they sank and either the dyes in the paper poisoned the fish, or wires in the superstructure got tangled round a duck? Much better to draw them in when the festival is over and dispose of them safely.
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But along general lines, that's a sensible way of thinking. Especially as it's not running water which would just carry it all away.
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I miss MM, too. A lot, sometimes. This short comment of yours just gave me that entire plot bunny about how some bookish girl who used to do an internship at the Nazgul's library (they do have three to five interns and research students with scholarships from all over the world there at any given time!) introduces that custom for the kids at the Manor day care, and they do it on a pond in Riverwalk Park, for the second or third year already this year, with the kids from the kindergartens and elementary schools of the area, and of course all the Manor kids involved. With stalls offering mulled wine and cider, and little hot somethings from the restaurants in and around Vine Square sold at stalls to nurse in cold hands while watching the little boats drift and chatting to the neighbours while the kids poke their little 'houses' with sticks so they swim out properly. At some stage, some grown-up would just have to fall into the pond while preventing an incautious kid from doing so, and in the morning Charlie (and perhaps two or three helpers that were along to organise he nuts and bolts of the whole thing) would take out some inflatable rubber boats to collect the burned-out lanterns, perhaps having to negotiate with an irate swan who dislikes how much its territory is being invaded...
All the kids people were having are really old enough now. Even little Morgan Temminck is three already and will have her own little house swimming on the pond.
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If I wasn't already impressed with the festival itself, the fact that the kids made those.
And then the Look of it!
Beautiful!
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But yes, it was quite impressive, and I enjoyed being there -- not just for the mulled wine. It would have been more fun, I guess, if I'd had the Little Lady and some of her littler brothers with me.-
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I am Jewish and had no interest in anything Christmas until I lived in Helsinki. The Finns just knock themselves out for Christmas (to combat Winter blues, I guess) and the city was so gorgeous! I used to take walks every night just to see the decorations.
Nobody does that here. It's all plastic and electric lights and inflatable rein deer, etc. Tacky. And an eyesore.
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Celebrations around St. Lucy's Day are actually mostly a) Scandinavian and b) pagan in origin. You get these twelve days before and after Yule when there are dangerous creatures about -- still very extant in Iceland, with Jólasveinar trolls (which I learned about because my sister is a big Iceland fan and wrote a privately published Icelandic cookbook as a birthday present for her husband, centered around those midwinter trolls because they are known for eating the good food served around Christmas), and the festival around the Queen of Lights in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries (at least as far from the original St. Lucy of Syracuse as Santa Claus is from St. Nicolas of Myra) is really an attempt at Christianising those old heathen customs.
I guess the footsore leftovers of the migration age that later gelled into the Bavarians had similar customs; they were some sort of Germanic tribes, after all, mixed in with the original Celtic inhabitants and the Roman settlers that didn't want to leave when the empire officially did.
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Now that would be a great fic!
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I'm so focused on my History Big Bang (vampire!Carlisle and human!Edward), I can't come up with anything. :(
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Something will come to me...
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And an excellent candidate for the tales of terror anthology.
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Thanks!! <3
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You know, in another year, you WILL have to come here for it!!
ETA: Isn't it something that Tiwa would do, too? Hah, this turns out to be a plot bunny warren (see Sal's comment).
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