Gathered are near a hundred souls, many having hiked a week from other villages to attend the festival as given by the most senior members of a very large family. All around are stave-built tubs with bronze bindings, sitting over slow fires, steaming with fish-and-vegetable soups, puddings and flanks of beef stewing in brown gravy. The hearth has a score of spits stabbed through fowls, rabbits and slabs of deer meat. Great oaken cauldrons are filled with ale, while nearby are enormous jugs full of mead.
For days, meat has been cut on the snow-covered grounds outside; cut wood has been stacked up for the fires. Men and women have teased one another, sometimes wrestling in the snow, while children hid beneath the longhouse between the pillars, watching their parents and playing with cousins not seen in a year. Now, as the night of the 23 closes, the food is ready for the next day, the children are abed, many of the dwellers are drunk and asleep ... and still tomorrow more will arrive, until the longhouse is crammed to the rafters.
With the morning daylight that comes tomorrow, folks will awake with hearty breakfasts and tankards full of wine plundered from southern vinyards. Porridge will be scooped into wooden bowls and eaten in the fresh air. Towards the evening, as each family arrives and are greeted, the workload climbs until early afternoon and falls off.
Now there are contests and challenges. There is gambling and agreements made about the coming year. As evening comes, the tribe falls to eating — but there's three or four days of festival yet to come, so there's plenty to eat. No one goes hungry. Throughout dinner the loudest and most confident begin to boast about their exploits through the year, telling the story and swaggering in self-satisfaction about their achievements. They show off their possessions, and then give them away to others, exchanging hard won prizes along with presents made of beads, arm-rings, coins, engraved leathers and the occasional drinking vessel.
Here and there, a spellcaster not wishing to frighten the children makes play with fire or the surrounding lights, creating water in empty jugs or producing sounds without sources. Children clap their hands and laugh and parents smile at their little ones. The air is thick and greasy and hot, as everyone feels sleepy and cheerfully stewed.
Midnight of the official holy day approaches and the elders call for silence through the hall. A shaman arises and begins by saying that the omens taken all through the week promise a good year ahead. Next, the hall listens to the one story that every one knows already, that the shaman tells with great emotion and meaning. Tears well in the eyes of strong men; lovers grip their hands together. The tale moves smoothly into the importance of the celebration, and from thence it's place in the tribe's history. The shaman's head lowers, and on cue three singers sitting together begin to intone soft and low.
Others take up the chant, and soon the whole longhouse is singing. The first song is followed by another, then another. Wolves, a mile away, stop in the snow and listen to the resonant sound of more than a hundred singers. For a time the singing is strong, but it ebbs as families curl together, nestling themselves near the embers contained in large iron bowls. Snoring is all that's heard as the first day of celebration comes to an end ... and there are only a few souls who lay awake, comforted by their family, staring at the ill-lit rafters high above their heads.
It is a wonderful time. Well may we contemplate it, for this is the Christmas our ancestors knew, of which we can feel only a small part. Let us be contented and lay in our beds, and remember the singing and the rumblings of our kin, as we gaze at our own rafters.
