Wrens and old celebrations

In Ireland and the Isle of Man there is a tradition at Christmas time which uses wrens. In Ireland, on Christmas, boys go out and hunt wrens. The boys are called, 'Wren Boys.' In the Isle of Man, on Christmas Eve, people hunt a wren and then take the wren to the church yard and bury the wren with a solemnity befitting a member of the community. This tradition of the wren clearly has an origin in Celtic lore, and is probably pre-Christian, but how there is a connection between Christmas and wrens, I have no clue.

Nevertheless, the concept of the use of a simple, humble house wren as a symbol of the coming of the King of Kings, born in a cave/stable is appealing. We celebrate a God who chose to throw off the livery of rule to live as one of us. A God who lived like men and felt the pain of living. That is the key to Christmas.

On our family farm, an old, whitewashed wooden out-building stood immediately behind the house, which enclosed the carport where my grandmother parked her car, a coal house which also kept the yard tools, and a smoke house. At Christmas time, the two overwhelming smells of my childhood were the sweet smell of coal smoke and the pungent, musty smell of smoked hams hanging in the smoke house. During my boyhood, when we had travelled back home to Kentucky and Tennessee for Christmas or Thanksgiving, everywhere you went smelled of coal smoke. Coal was commonly used for heat in that area. It was not a smell you smelled often in Indianapolis or Huntsville or Atlanta at the time. As a result, I always associated that sweet smell with the family home, especially during the Winter months and the holidays. During the Winter in that region, a small pile of coal was kept in the coal house for heat, even after the house was converted to natural gas and electricity.

Nothing means Christmas more to me than when I open the door to my mother's kitchen and smell the aroma of a Country Ham just removed from the oven. Some vision of Heaven is contained in the hock, removed from the ham, the greasy, salty fingers of hock meat, stuffed in my mouth, the smoky grease dripping from my fingers. Right after God tells me, "Welcome home, good and faithful servant," there is the expectation that some angel or archangel will offer me a plate of freshly baked ham hock from which to pick those fingers of pork and slowly stuff my yearning mouth. That would certainly be a worthy reward.

On Christmas Day and on Thanksgiving Day at the farm, the front parlor doors were opened up and the coal scuttle was filled with coal to fuel the coal fireplace. I remember watching the coal burn a bright blue on the little coal fireplace. When I was a child there was some sweet magic in watching the black coal turn to a bright blue flame before your eyes. There is a poem by Coleridge in which he refers to the flame in a coal fireplace. There apparently was a tradition in the Lake District that the appearance of such a film portended visitors. Perhaps in my youth, that flame showed the coming of the Christ child.

The smoke of the coal fireplace and the smoke which preserved the hams, provided comfort and sustenance during the gray days of Winter. In my memory, that delicious salty meat and the sweetness of the burning coal were smoked into my soul as a sweet reminder of Christmas's past.