Lantern festival at the Nazgul's library

[yakalskovich]

At the library where 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.

Comments

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

I think it's beautiful.

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.

[yakalskovich]

The little swimming houses were really gorgeous, and everything was full of hordes of kids and their parents and grandparents and (for some reason) dogs, and lots of baby carriages parked along the path by the pond.

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.

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

I am already smitten with the Yule Lads.

Now that would be a great fic!

[yakalskovich]

This post seems to be Plot Bunny Central! Yes, that would make a great fic. And they do deserve wider recognition -- down with the globalised plastic 'X-Mas' of the mainstreamed Western world, long live fun little niche traditions!

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I can incorporate Yule Lads in an Edward/Carlisle fic...

[yakalskovich]

As long as the Icelandic reference is somehow justified...

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

Carlisle tells Edward folktales?

I'm so focused on my History Big Bang (vampire!Carlisle and human!Edward), I can't come up with anything. :(

[yakalskovich]

They'll be there another year...

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

I know, but now I have Yule Lads on the brain.

Something will come to me...

[yakalskovich]

Course it will! That's the nature of plot bunnies!

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

What are some other obscure Christmas ideas? (For my comm. Jewish. Can't help them on this one.)

[yakalskovich]

Have you heard about Krampus?

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

That is terrifying!

And an excellent candidate for the tales of terror anthology.

[yakalskovich]

Follow the link about pre-Christian alpine customs, and you'll come to a treasure trove! I had truck with the old goddess Perchta that Sunday I went to her grove on the Lady's Isle on Chiemsee.

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

Wow who would have thought Christmas could be so interesting?

Thanks!! <3

[yakalskovich]

Yes it is, once you get away from the plastic American version!

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's all we know here. Lots of shopping and not much else (I guess some people go to Church or some such).

Mostly it's just a bunch of spoiled children being ungrateful brats.

[yakalskovich]

When there are so many amazing traditions to be rediscovered -- what a pity!

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

It's tragic, how watered down everything is in an effort to promote mindless consumerism.

Corporate World 1 Humanity 0

[yakalskovich]

Let's see what happens in the next few years when people start being too broke for real...

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

Are you kidding??? This culture is so brainwashed, people are skipping paying bills in order to buy shit for Xmas. I keep suggesting they try giving their children meaningful experiences (time together backpacking or some such), but it's all iphones and this, that, and the other.

[yakalskovich]

Eventually, money will be done and the Chinese will cut the credit line; and then there is no more shit to buy...

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

This society defines itself but what it owns/consumes (which, tragically, does not mean education).

So long as what you wear/drive/own defines who and what you are, there will always be money, greed, deceit, and the myriad of problems that go with it.

[yakalskovich]

But money will be what the others have, in the case of America, in not too far a future, I'm afraid. I wasn't thinking utopia, I was thinking national bankruptcy and general insurmountable private debt crisis.

[idylchild.livejournal.com]

I think national bankruptcy is a whole lot closer than most people realize. Economics is subject to financial instruments and the governments will continue to pull rabbits out of hats as they all stand to lose if consumers stop consuming.

What bothers me most of all is that increasingly, the corportations are turning to slave labor to keep the profit margin intact. This means that ultimately global society shall be in one of two camps: the enslaved and the consumers.

It's appalling that that is what we are fast becoming.