Advent 4: Witches, Burning Effigies, Sex and Peaches

After three Sundays of Christmas trees and decorations let’s skip to the other end of the Twelve Days of Christmas and take a trip to Italy.

Among over 170 seasonal gift-bringers around the world that I’ve researched, one of the most famous is la Befana of Italy.

This is an edited version of an essay I have written for my personal Christmas files about la Befana. It is one of many, more academically-based, pieces I have written on various Christmas characters following several years of research. As such it contains more information and sources than I would normally include on this blog. La Befana is one of those characters whose history is so complex and massive that cutting it down has been difficult, but I hope you find what follows is of interest. I’ve expanded information on various lgbt+ aspects of la Befana’s history. So settle down for a longer read than normal.

Today, la Befana is depicted as a witch or old hag. Her name has become synonymous with witches, but not the scary Hallowe’en type but as a kindly old woman.

There are several variations of the legend behind la Befana’s gift-bringing activities. They all date back several centuries. The most common version is that she was an old woman who lived in the Holy Land during the time of Christ’s birth. The Three Kings arrived one night, after being told that la Befana was her village’s best hostess. They told la Befana that they needed to rest overnight on their way to visit the baby Jesus and give him gifts. They invited la Befana to go with them the following morning, but she declined saying there was some housework she needed to do.

The following morning she waved the Three Kings off on their journey. But their mission prayed on her mind and she couldn’t concentrate on her housework, so she decided to go and join them. Gathering up some small gifts to give to the baby Jesus she headed out into the village. But she soon realised that the Kings didn’t tell her which direction they were going. La Befana walked through every town and village looking for the baby Jesus, hoping to give her gifts to Him. Eventually, exhaustion took its toll and she collapsed and died. The baby Jesus, in one of those mysterious events that often occur in legends, took pity on la Befana’s fate and decided that from then on her spirit would be His gift-giving representative in Italy. Today, la Befana leaves gifts for all children in the hope that one of them may be the baby Jesus.

But how did she become a gift-bringer specific to Italy? And what involvement did a gay poet have in her development?

The most generally accepted origin of La Befana’s name is that it comes from the Italian word “Epifania” (=Epiphany), which is a Christian festival celebrated on 6th January and commemorates the arrival of the Three Kings at the Nativity. “Epifania” ultimately derives from the Greek word “epifaneia”, meaning “manifestation, or appearance”. The history of Epiphany is long and complicated and I won’t go into all of it – except for one thing: it’s the original date chosen by Gnostics in the 2nd century as the one on which the birth of Christ was celebrated.

In 2018 I wrote about Christmas and the Gnostics. Basically, the Gnostics were various small sects of Christians spread around the eastern Roman Empire. They didn’t celebrate Christ’s death at Easter, but celebrated his birth instead. Christians didn’t celebrate birthdays, mainly because of high infant mortality rates – they preferred to remember their deaths (like modern memorials and individual burials). Gnostics believed that the world and its inhabitants were evil, and the birth of Christ was a manifestation of God’s goodness, hence they adopted the word “epihaneia” for a special day of prayer and worship to celebrate the event (the name Christmas for Christ’s birth was adopted by Western Roman Christians much later).

One of those eastern Gnostic sects were the Carpocratians in Egypt. They believed that if the world and its people were evil then procreative sex was bad and non-procreative sex (specifically with the same gender) would bring them salvation. Western Christians accused them of being promiscuous and of having gay orgies, but there’s nothing to indicate they were having any more sex than anyone else.

The Gnostics, including the Carpocratians, are believed to be the first to celebrate Christ’s birth on January 6th. When the Western Christian authorities in Rome realised that the eastern Gnostic worship of Christ’s birth was becoming too popular they decided that rather than ban celebrating Christ’s birth they decided to come up with their own date. Unlike the Gnostics, the Western Roman Church used various clues in the New Testament and traditional dates of Christ’s crucifixion to came up with December 25th. Even though the Gnostics eventually faded away, their date of January 6th for Christ’s birth still survives in some east African and central Asian denominations (Eastern Orthodox Christianity also celebrates Christmas Day on January 6th, but it has nothing to do with the Gnostics).

To complicate matters, Roman Christians decided to keep Epiphany as the celebration of the “manifestation” of Christ, the doctrine that Christ was revealed to the world as its Saviour through the arrival of the Three Kings, and this eventually led to many Roman churches, particularly those around the Mediterranean where the Gnostics had been most influential, adopting January 6th as a gift-giving day, They later moved it to St. Nicholas’s Eve, December 5th, and that’s another story on its own.

Italy is one of those Mediterranean regions who adopted Epiphany as their original gift-giving date. They called it Pasca Epiphania, Pasca in this sense means “feast”, a Christian term used for a “holy day”, a day of worship, prayer and commemoration of a specific person or event (ultimately derived from the proto-Indo-European word for “god”). Of course “holy day” is where our modern word “holiday” comes from. There’s so much more to say about the Italian Pasca Epiphania and its origins, but we must concentrate specifically on its link to la Befana.

In winter, and often around Epiphany time, many European nations held bonfires as a traditional celebration in winter. On these bonfires they burned effigies of an old woman, said to represent the old year (much like an old man often represents the Old Year today, though he isn’t burned – this can link us to Baby New Year, an image popularised by gay artist J. C. Leyendecker). This bonfire custom still survives in Italy, whether called Guibiana, Panevin (or Pan e vin), or several other names. In medieval Venice, where the bonfire festival was held near Epiphany, the effigy gradually acquired the name reflecting the date – Befana. The name quickly spread across the whole of Italy (much in the same way as the name of the 17th century terrorist Guy Fawkes, still burned on bonfires in England every November 5th, became misappropriated by the USA in the 19th century to mean “man” or “person”). So, the name Befana was just an Italian slang term for an effigy of an old woman, and was later applied to humans in the meaning of a witch or hag.

But why burn an effigy of an old woman in the first place? Well, it is believed that what was originally burned was a large log on which was painted a face. Sound familiar? It’s the most likely origin of the Christmas log, and the Spanish “pooping log”, the Tìo de Nadal which is burned the day after Christmas Day. So, even if some Christmas traditions in different parts of the world seem unconnected, there is a connection if you go back far enough. And why a woman? Well, those bonfires held in winter were also to celebrate the end of harvest. Most cultures had a female deity that presided over harvest, like the Greek goddess Demeter, so burning effigies of female deities represented the gratitude to the goddess of a fruitful harvest and the hope of a good one the next year (modern New Year celebrations are pretty much the same thing).

The first printed use of the word “befana” in the sense of an old woman occurred in 1535 in a poem called “Sonetto in descrizion dell’Arcivescovo di Firenze”, or “A Sonnet Describing the Archbishop of Florence”. It was written by Francesco Berni (c.1497-1536), a satirist and comic poet whose works often included coded sexual references to boys. The sonnet was a sarcastic dig at the archbishop and begins with the words “Chi vuol veder quantunque pò Natura / In far una fantastica befana”. Translated into English this reads “If you could see what Nature does / In making a fanciful witch”. Berni uses the word “befana” figuratively, using it to call the archbishop an ugly and disgusting old woman. He may even have been using it in the sense of a befana puppet. Perhaps both.

Francecso Berni was born in Florence into a well-connected family. In 1517 he went to live with a Catholic cardinal who was a distant cousin. It was in Rome that Berni began writing poetry. In 1523 the cardinal’s nephew “exiled” Berni to a monastery in Abruzzo near the Adriatic coast over some homosexual scandal. Why exiling Berni to a closed community of men would have removed him from any gay impulses is a mystery. As to the exact nature of the scandal there are no surviving details.

However, it is known that Francesco Berni was a member of an influential group that included other gay writers. His works were so distinctive in their satire and coded gay references that his style has been named after him – Bernesque poetry.

Perhaps the most obvious coded gay references Berni used are contained in private letters to his fellow gay friends. In the letters he asked friends to provide, and thanked them for sending him, “hams”, a slang term for buttocks (with their accompanying young men!), and “peaches”, a slang term for the penis. These “hams” and “peaches” were to be “eaten” himself, as he himself put it, or passed on to other friends.

But, let’s get back to la Befana. The first printed reference to the term befana being used to denote Epiphany occurs on a few years after Berni’s reference, in around 1541. It appears in a comedy play called “La Trinunzia” by Berni’s Florentine contemporary and fellow-writer of Bernesque poetry, (who has no known link to enjoying or passing around Berni’s “hams” and “peaches”), Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1543). In his play a character says the line “Hannomel detto le pecore la notte di befana, che tutte favellano”. This translates into “Hannomel said the sheep on Epiphany night, that they all talk”. This echoes another popular medieval European legend that all animals could talk in human languages on Christmas night.

The use of Befana as the name of an old woman who give gifts at Epiphany, the use we are most familiar with today, comes in another comic poem, a heroic epic called “Il Malmantile Racquistato”, or “Malmantile Recaptured”. It was written by another Florentine writer, Lorenzo Lippi (1606-1665). The poem was published posthumously in 1676.

Lippi’s first reference says: “Le balie si servano della voce befana, per intendere una di quelle larve che nuocono a’bambini, come il bau ecc., e gli persuadono che ci sia la befana cattiva e la buona, e che venga nelle case per la via delcammino.” This translates into English as:” The nurses use the word befana to mean one of those masks that frighten children, like the woof, etc., and they persuade them that there is a bad Befana and a good one, and that she comes into the houses [to reward or punish] along the way.”

That’s the early development of Italy’s “female Santa”, la Befana. There’s so much more history covering her complete transformation into a popular Christmas character, which includes contributions from other Italian gay (or suspected gay) writers such as Giordano Bruno and Count Giacomo Leopardi, but we must leave it at that or we’ll be here until next Advent.

I’ll just conclude by mentioning that la Befana has influenced several other seasonal characters and traditions around the world, which is yet whole new essay in its own right. Briefly, the characters Babushka (Russia), La Vieja de Belen (Dominican Republic), and to some extent Mari Domingi (France), are all old woman with back-stories about hosting the Three Kings and searching for the Baby Jesus.

And that’s it for today, and for 2025. Next year will bring many changes, which you’ll learn about in due course. I want to give you all a BIG THANK YOU for reading my blog, and in particular for reaching the mile-stone of a million page views. I can’t express how humbled and honoured I am that so many people find what I write remotely interesting.

I’ll sign off by wishing you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and wish you all the best for the New Year.

Advent 3: Glittering Trees

One of the more unusual Christmas decorations that has become more prominent in the UK in recent decades is the Christmas spider.

Many people are terrified of spiders, but in a lot of cultures spiders are considered lucky. Here in the UK, for instance, we have what are called “money spiders”. These are tiny spiders that you’d hardly notice, but folk tradition says that if one drops onto your skin, hair or clothes it is a sign that you will be receiving some money soon. Its also bad luck to kill one.

In parts of Eastern Europe and Germany another folk tradition says that you are considered lucky if a spider has spun a web in your Christmas tree. This tradition is the origin of the legend of the Christmas spider.

In the latter part of the 20th century, this legend has spread around the world thanks largely to the internet. The Christmas spider has become so popular that two gay men have written an opera about it. These men are composer Clint Borzoni and librettist John de los Santos.

But before we look at their opera it might be a good idea to recount the most frequently told version of the legend of the Christmas spider for those of you who are not familiar with it.

There was a poor widow who lived with her children near a forest in a small hut. One day a pine cone fell off a tree into the family’s small patch of land outside their front door. Seeing that it had taken root, the widow decided to nurture the sapling, hoping it would grow into a healthy tree by Christmas in a future year. The children were excited and helped their mother to look after the tree as it grew, and after a couple of years it had grown into a beautiful little tree.

However, as Christmas Day approached, the widow had to admit to her children that they would not be able to afford decorations for their tree, not even candles. So, on Christmas Eve the children went to bed somewhat saddened that their Christmas Day will not be as splendid as they had hoped.

Christmas Day dawned, and when the family awoke and went to look outside they saw that frost had developed overnight and that their little Christmas tree was festooned with glittering frost-covered cobwebs.

And here the legends vary. Some say that the light of the dawn had turned the cobweb into strands of gold and silver. Another version says that the Christkind or the local Christmas gift-bringer had made the transformation. Whoever made the change, the result was the same. The poor family had a great Christmas, and afterwards they gathered up the gold and silver strands so that they could buy food to get them through the winter. In yet another version of the legend, the spider filled the tree with her webs in gratitude to the widow for not brushing her out of the tree or killing her.

This legend was probably a 17th century creation to give an origin story to tinsel and lametta, decorations that were first being made at that time in the silver-mining areas of Germany.

Clint Borzoni and John de los Santos brought another interpretation to the legend. Instead of a poor widow, they based their opera on a poor woodcutter and his family. As well as enduring the hardships of a harsh winter, the family were being threatened with eviction from their home by their unscrupulous landlady.

In their opera, called simply “The Christmas Spider”, the basic legend remains the same. The inclusion of the landlady who is not present in the original legend, provides an essential detail that brings a satisfactory resolution to the plight of the poor family. The YouTube video below gives extracts from the opera itself.

This is not the first opera that the two have produced together. In 2015 they wrote “When Adonis Calls”, based on the works of a gay poet Gavin Dillard (b.1954). The basic premise is unoriginal: an author with writer’s block meets a budding young writer who is a great fan. I saw a comedy thriller with the same premise earlier this year. What makes “When Adonis Calls” different is that the relationship between the two characters develops into erotic fantasy rather than murder.

Borzoni and de los Santos wrote their second opera in 2021. Called “The Copper Queen”, it is based on the real-life story of the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona, and its resident ghost Julia Lowell, a prostitute, who committed suicide in the hotel in the 1930s.

Next Sunday we move away from Christmas trees and decorations to look how an Italian Renaissance satirist may have influenced the creation of an Italian gift-bringer.

Advent 2: A Forest You Can Wear

We return to Christmas trees this week, but not the ones you can decorate, but ones that decorate you.

There’s a big trend in the UK of wearing tasteless knitted sweaters and jumpers with terrible or over-the-top seasonal designs a lot of them including Christmas trees. Even Tom Daley has been known to design and wear his own awful Christmas jumpers. But what if you want to wear something that is a bit more subtle?

How about brooches. There’s a lot on sale, but let’s keep with the Christmas tree motif.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records the person who holds the record for owning the most Christmas tree brooches is an openly gay man called Adam Wide (b.1953).

Adam is no stranger to Guinness World Records. From 2009 to 2012 he was its Creative Director, responsible for expanding the organisation’s live record breaking attempts, including using social media. On top of that, after he left Guinness, Adam co-founded a gay rugby club called the Berlin Bruisers who, in 2020, broke the Guinness World Record for the most passes thrown per minute (237 in 3 minutes). However, this record has since been broken by other teams.

Little did I know before researching this that I had actually seen Adam Wide before. In the late 1980s he formed as half of a comedy double act with Babs Sutton called Clarence and Joy Pickles. They performed regularly on a popular Saturday night show I watched called “The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow”.

Adam has been collecting Christmas tree brooches since 1984. In another Christmas-related fact, he bought his first brooch in Copenhagen when he was playing as the Sheriff of Nottingham in a Robin Hood-based pantomime called “Big Sis In Watching You” with the London Toast Theatre, am English language theatre company who perform all over Europe. Not only does this give him a connection to my city of residence (and, more personally, to a former real Sheriff of Nottingham) but his father was born in Nottingham. It’s all worthy of forming part of a future “80 Gays Around the World” series.

Just after the Berlin Bruisers were founded Adam commissioned Mark Mercy, the original designer at Stanley Hagler NYC jewellers to design a Christmas tree brooch in purple and white, the team colours of the Bruisers.

Adam first set the world record with his brooch collection in 2008, when he had 542. Since then the record has been broken several times, even by Adam himself five times. When he was last recorded as the Guinness World Record holder in 2021 his collection contained 7,921 brooches.

Such a massive collection needs to be displayed, and that is exactly what happened in 2023 when Chatsworth House, the famous stately home of the Duke of Devonshire, turned them into a “Christmas Forest”. By then, Adam’s collection had increased to 8,250, breaking his own record again.

You can see Chatsworth’s Christmas Forest in this video in which Adam takes us on a tour of the glittering display.

Next week we’ll look at other glittering decorations that are directly associated with Christmas trees, and their surprising origin legend in a popular Hallowe’en item.

Advent 1: A Seasonal Forest

This year’s 4-part Advent series covers several topics – Christmas decorations, music and literature.

Let’s start by decorating the Christmas tree. A quick history lesson first. The Christmas tree began life as the Paradise Tree that was set up in churches during the Middle Ages on Christmas Eve. This was the centrepiece of the Paradise Play, a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve, whose feast day is December 24th. The Paradise Tree represented the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden and could have been an evergreen, or a deciduous tree with fake leaves, it wasn’t important. The tree would also be decorated with apples (hence the original Christmas baubles invented in the 16th century in Germany were made of red glass) and communion wafers.

The common misinformation and propaganda from people who claim that the Christmas tree is a pre-Christian pagan symbol is not verified by any evidence – it is an unproven opinion based on only one fact, that there were sacred trees in pre-Christian times. The only pre-Christian evidence comes from Judaism, which isn’t paganism. Trees and plants have been used are decorative objects all over the world without any religious context. Do you have some in your home today – are they there as objects of worship? Its like saying Pride marches are pagan festivals because people paraded to Stonehenge thousands of years ago to celebrate the solstice.

The first secular Christmas tree, one erected by the people not the Church, originated in Latvia in the 15th century. There’s an excellent little book called “Inventing the Christmas Tree” by Bernd Brunner. It’s a most diligently researched book, and it is available on Amazon.

Today, Christmas trees start appearing in shopping centres and malls as early as the beginning of November, sometimes earlier. A lot of the trees are traditional, but occasionally you might see an imaginative twist on the usual fir or spruce tree.

For imaginative ideas for your own tree you can do no better than get inspiration from the Christmas trees erected in one of London’s poshest hotels, Claridge’s. The Creative Director behind most of them was Michael Howells (1957-2018), who was also responsible for the production design of films such as “Nanny McPhee” and the tv series “Victoria”. For Claridge’s he collaborated with a “Who’s Who” of designers, many of whom, like himself, were members of the lgbt+ community. The first two Claridge’s Christmas trees in 2009 and 2010 were collaborations between Michael Howells and gay Maltese fashion designer John Galliano. Claridge’s own website has a list and images of all their trees.

Another gay designer who has created a tree for Claridge’s is Guy Oliver (b.1967), but it wasn’t a Christmas tree.

In 2014, Claridge’s invited Guy to design the interior of Fera, their new restaurant. Guy removed some of the interior (non-original) walls which had created barriers in the area, and he brought in new lighting. In the centre of the restaurant he placed a sand-blasted tree, a real one.

Guy Oliver has also designed Christmas trees and decorations for other venues, stately homes, and private residences. Despite creating fabulous decorations which cost hundreds of pounds to make, Guy always tries to be economical with his materials wherever possible. In 2020, when the world was still in covid lockdown, Guy came up with several ideas for Christmas decorations which families and individuals at home could make for themselves without having to do a lot of shopping.

These ere simple ideas, ones that may be familiar to you. Some of them I have tried myself over the years, and they are much better than the commercial versions that cost too much. You can discover his ideas here.

I’ve written a couple of entries myself on Christmas decorations on this blog. Here are links to them:

Three Kings decorations.

Danish pleated hearts and silhouette shapes.

To end with, I’ll tell you about my own decorations. Since 2021, when I began in-depth research into Christmas, I’ve been buying or making figures of various characters associated with the festive season (all in proportion so that they matched in height). Figures of Santa Claus and angels were no problem as they are sold everywhere, but I couldn’t find figures of the Dutch Sinterklaas, the Russian Ded Moroz, or even Krampus, so I began to make my own. For figures I did not make from scratch, I bought dolls and action figures and modified them into the characters I desired.

Below is a photo of figures I had bought or made in time for Christmas 2022. From left to right they are (back row): Pelzmärtl (Bavaria, Germany), St. Lucy (from Sweden and northern Italy), an angel, Santa Claus, Snegurochka (Russian Snow Maiden). Front row: an elf, Tió de Nadal (Spain), Julnisse (Scandinavia). It’s easy to see which I’ve modified and which are as bought.

I’ve added more each year, and now I have 27 different Christmas figures dotted around the room, including Sinterklaas, the Australian Wangkarnal, and Mrs. Claus. This year’s new additions (all made from scratch) are the Christmas Spider, Anguleru (Asturias, Spain), Staffan Ställegrang (Sweden) and the Biggeresel (Baden-Württemberg, Germany).

Next Sunday we’ll look at how a German gay rugby club contributed in creating a decorative Christmas Guinness World Record.

Advent 4: Some Basil for the New Year

Of around a hundred Christmas gift-bringers I have researched over the past four years one of the more well-known is St. Basil (c.330-379). He is the gift-bringer to the Greek nation and the millions of people of Greek heritage around the world. Basil delivers his gifts on New Year’s Night, because his feast day is January 1st. Those of Greek heritage will know more about the traditions associated with him than I do.

Recently, historians has looked at Basil’s close relationship with St. Gregory Nazianzen (c.329-390). An increasing number suggest their relationship was homosexual but platonic. I’m very wary about adding people to my files just because someone said he or she was lgbt+. But, as with St. Francis of Assisi, there might be a grain of truth in this case.

A lot of people in the lgbt+ community, and elsewhere, don’t really understand the concept of Christian love and its written expression. Its not sex. With Saints Basil and Gregory it is pure Christian love – soul-mates without all the baggage of sex. Basil and Gregory may be the perfect patron saints of same-sex couples.

Both were born into wealthy families in what is now Turkey. St. Basil is variously named as Basil of Caesarea or Basil the Great. Many members of his family also became saints – his parents and all of his siblings. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nazianzus, or Gregory the Theologian, was about the same age and, like Basil, both of his parents became saints.

Both were among the first generation of Christians to be born after the Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312 and his decree of religious tolerance of all faiths. This meant that they grew up without the threat of persecution and murder.

Part of their privileged education took place in Caesarea in Cappadocia, now Kayseri in Turkey. It is there that the two saints are thought to have first met just about the time they were approaching 20 years old. They then continued their education in Constantinople, named by and after the emperor. After that they then went to Athens.

In 356 they went their separate ways for a while. Basil travelled around before returning to Caesarea to practice law. Gregory remained in Athens before returning to Nazianzen, the town near his birthplace, after which future historians named him.

Gregory’s father was Bishop of Nazianzen and he ordained his son. Gregory was rather reluctant to accept. It wasn’t because he wasn’t a Christian. Legend says that on the ship sailing to Athens a few years earlier a huge storm threatened to sink the vessel. Gregory prayed that if the ship reached Athens intact he would dedicate his whole life to God. What he had in mind was life as a solitary monk, not an ordained minister in the community. But now that he had accepted ordination his father was now his boss. Years later Gregory wrote that his father’s actions were an “act of tyranny”. Anyway, Gregory did what he thought was best. He ran away.

Meanwhile, Basil gave up the law and, like Gregory, decided on an ascetic, monastic life. However, he soon discovered that solitary living wasn’t for him. He gave away his inheritance and returned to his family estates at Annesi and gathered a few like-minded followers in a monastic commune, which included several members of his family. There Basil wrote extensively on monastic life which became the blueprint for monastic rules in the Greek Orthodox Church. It was to Annesi that Gregory retreated to after he ran away.

Basil attended the Council of Constantinople in 360. This is a significant event in Christian history because it was called to settle a dispute among theologians. Some said that Christ was similar to God the Father but was not God the Son (putting it oversimply). Basil agreed, but by the end of the council he had changed his mind. From this council the current Christian doctrine which developed into the Holy Trinity was formulated. St. Patrick famously illustrated the concept of the Holy Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit) by pointing out that a single shamrock leaf has three separate parts but is still one leaf.

The main supporters of the “losing” side at the council were called the Arians (nothing to do with Aryans and the Nazis) and they were declared heretics. The debate, however, didn’t go away. Both Basil and Gregory were to spend years opposing the Arian supporters. They even agreed to take part in a public debating contest against Arian theologians. They absolutely trashed the Aryans with their arguments and eloquence and were declared victors of the contest.

By 373 Basil had become Bishop of Caesarea and he consecrated Gregory as Bishop of Sasima. Gregory was, again, reluctant to accept and it led to some tension in their friendship. Gregory later told Basil that he was not to be used as a pawn in Basil’s own power play. Despite this, their close relationship remained intact. They had their separate lives, but they lived together on and off, collaborating on various theological treatises or living in communes.

St. Basil died in 329 or 330, on either 1st or 2nd January. No-one knows for certain. This is why both of these dates were chosen as his feast days. He also has several others throughout the year depending on the Christian denomination. In Greek culture his gift-giving day is January 1st.

St. Gregory preached at St. Basil’s funeral, in which he said: “We became everything to each other; we shared the same lodging, the same table, the same desires, the same goal. Our love for each other grew daily and deeper… We seemed to be two bodies with one spirit”.

I’ve read expressions of Christian love, but St. Gregory expressed it far deeper than many of them. Surely, there was more than just Christian love and a bromance between them.

St. Gregory died in January 390. Like Basil he has several feast days throughout the year. The first of these is on January 2nd, on which he is commemorated with St. Basil. Because of their important writings on Christian doctrine and monastic life, as well as their defence against the Aryans, Basil and Gregory were declared Doctors of the Church.

For all his importance as a Christmas-time gift-bringer I cannot find any image of anyone dressing up as St. Basil in the same way that people dress up as Santa Claus in shopping malls or waving at crowds in Christmas parades. I can’t find out why. Perhaps someone else knows and can tell us.

Above is a video which goes into Basil in more detail. I includes stories I haven’t had room to cover, like his influence on your own health – Basil invented hospitals (his hospital is one of the “7 Gay Wonders of the World”, an article I’m preparing for next year).

I’m taking a break in January and will be back on 1st February, so a Joyful Holiday, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to you all.

Advent 3: Christmas is a Bit of a Drag

Modern drag has advanced little since the start of this century (if at all). Much of it is lingering in the style of the 1980s, desperately trying to appear relevant and significant in today’s world, and failing, due to drag’s outdated gay stereotypes. However, it is far advanced from the drag and female impersonations of a hundred years ago.

If we go back further to look at what influenced modern drag we find the British pantomime dame and, even earlier, the character of the Italian commedia dell’arte. And even further back than that, we have comic female characters played by men in medieval mystery plays based on stories in the Bible.

It has to be admitted that these very early drag-like performances were purely for entertainment purposes and no gender identity was assigned to the performer. It is well-known that at one time women were not allowed, or discouraged, to be actors. That meant that any female character, including the Virgin Mary in Christmas nativity plays, were played by men or boys.

One development of the medieval mystery play is one I wrote about in 2019, the French Société Mattachine. In that article I explained how the early gay rights organisation in the USA, the Mattachine Society, was named after these medieval performers.

The Mattachines were not confined to France. The name seems to derive from the Italian “mattaccino”, which comes from “matto” meaning “mad”. From this we understand how the comic characters found in various mattachine groups throughout medieval Europe act in over-the-top performances, as if mad.

If we skip across to Spain we find the matachines who were popular in the 17th century, quite some time after other European variations had begun to die away. Because of this, the Spanish matachines is the form which has survived today – but not in Spain.

The Spanish matachines had developed into a more musical and dance form rather than drama. It still had the stock characters familiar in all its forms in Europe – a hero, a young woman, an old man, a villain, and more pertinent for our purposes today, an old woman played in drag. A particularly Spanish addition to the cast was a bull.

But what have the matachines got to do with Christmas? Bear with me while I digress. We have to look at how the matachines dances evolved after the Spanish colonised Central America. There’s a debate which is pertinent to the matachines, and Christmas in general. It concerns what I believe is a common misconception constantly repeated at this time of year that Christmas traditions are actually pagan. No matter how much research in many academic papers and books I can find no actual proof of this, only a lot of unsupported opinion based on coincidence from the 18th century onwards (not to mention modern crap about Santa and Coca Cola). Thankfully, an increasing number of qualified historians have debunked many of these pagan lies. Just because two things sound or behave the same it doesn’t prove they’re connected.

Usually, the Christian Church is presented as adopting pagan practices to encourage indigenous communities to convert to Christianity. I believe the opposite. I’m not alone in this. This 2021 article on the history of matachines in Mexico from the Universad Nacional Autómona de México comes to the same conclusion. It is becoming clear through modern research that it was newly converted indigenous communities who looked at what Christian practices were similar to their own and then adapted them without losing their own cultural identity. The Christian Church authorities, in their turn, saw no reason to object and, as long as Christian doctrine was followed, accepted the new ethnic take on their practices (except a handful of puritan extremists, like those today who want to ban “Harry Potter” because it “promotes witchcraft”).

The Spanish Conquistadors spread their matachine dances across Central America. In Mexico the Aztecs in particular merged it with their own dance rituals and produced a variation which they still use today, a variation that actually includes a king character based on Moctezuma (Montezuma). This is performed on special occasions, though not often at Christmas as with their US Pueblo counterparts. It also has a slightly different name – matlachine.

The two female characters of the Pueblo matachine are called Malinche and Perejundia (or Abuela). The Perejundia is always played by a man in drag, and the Malinche is now usually played by a girl. They represent opposites. Malinche is a beautiful, young, innocent girl, while Perejundia is an ugly, bawdy and coarse old woman. The video above shows one of the few clear visual representations on YouTube of the bawdy Perejundia.

Usually, matachine dances are performed during Advent, most often on December 12th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrating the conception of the Virgin Mary (often referred to as Our Lady of Guadelupe). This is also the date which is generally considered as the start of Christmas in the Pueblo communities. In fact, several matachine performances have taken place this week. Because the celebration is religious and often performed inside churches, the Perejundia character is sometimes omitted. The video below is the matachine from two days ago in Laredo, Texas. You can see the Malinche played by a very young girl, and the old man character, but no Perejundia.

Prof. Brenda Romero of the University of Colorado, an expert on hispano-indigenous music, has noted that matachines among Pueblo communities have become quite inclusive. She says that gay men (and women, as can be seen in the video below) are actively involved. I may be assuming too much, and this is only my theory, but are some Pueblo gay men specifically drawn to playing the Perjundia in the same way that some gay men in the USA become drag performers? I have absolutely no evidence or proof of this, but it’s an interesting thought.

Whatever the gender identity of the person playing the Perejundia in the Christmas matachines, it is clear that there is a direct line of descent from medieval mystery plays to the commedia dell’arte, the Perejundia, the British pantomime dame and modern drag queens.

Next week we look at a Hellenic Christmas gift-giver and his association with a reluctant priest.

Advent 2: Christmas Werewolves Among Us

Werewolves at Christmas? What have werewolves got to do with Christmas?

Well, forget most of what you think you know, because the werewolf of popular culture has been influenced more by modern film than traditional folklore. Werewolves are part of almost every culture in Europe, and the majority of these tell of how werewolves are only created during the Christmas season.

Perhaps the most widespread belief our European ancestors had was that anyone born on Christmas night, between the hours of sunset on Christmas Eve to dawn on Christmas Day, was automatically inclined to become a werewolf when they reached adulthood. There are variations of this idea, including substituting conception on Christmas night instead of birth, making anyone born on the following September 24th likely to be a future werewolf. While it was known who was born or conceived on those dates there is no evidence that their communities tried to kill them before they reached adulthood in order to prevent them from becoming werewolves.

In medieval Normandy, France, it was believed that anyone who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church during Advent would turn into a werewolf every night until received back into the church by a priest. While in Germany it was believed that anyone born on any of the 12 Days of Christmas would become a werewolf.

The date on which people turned into werewolves also differs from place to place. In Poland they would only transform on Midsummers’ Day or on their birthday, Christmas Day. In Italy they transformed on December 13th, which was the date of the winter solstice before the current calendar was introduced in 1582. There is little indication that the moon had anything to do with any transformation, except from a small region of southern France, and transformation was not restricted to a wolf, it can be any were-animal. The moon effect was introduced by Universal Studios for the 1943 film “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man”.

Belief in a lot of countries say that all werewolves would transform every night after their first transformation until they were either blessed by a priest while in were-form, repented of their sins in church during the day while in human form, or were killed or died.

So, were you born or conceived on any of those dates mentioned? Are you a closeted werewolf and you didn’t know? You’re in good company, because there are many in the lgbt+ community who could be, according to traditional European belief, and here’s a selection of some of them. I haven’t included all the birth dates in Advent or 12 Days of Christmas as mentioned above because there are too many names to include if I do.

Born on December 13th

Anne-Marie Alonzo (1951-2005) – Canadian playwright, novelist, poet and publisher.

Linda Bellos (b. 1950) – British political activist; Leader of Lambeth Council, 1986-8.

Anthony Callea (b. 1982) – Australian singer and actor ("Australian Idol" 2004 runner-up).

Rev. Mari Castellanos (b. 1947) – President, Dignity US Miami chapter.

Jackie Clune (b. 1965) – British singer and actor; former Karen Carpenter tribute singer.

Michelle Duff (b. 1939) – Canadian transgender Grand Prix motorbike racer.

Peter Gajdics (b. 1964) – Canadian writer on surviving conversion therapy.

Anton Hysén (b. 1990) – Swedish footballer (soccer).

Richard Isay (1934-2012) – American writer, broadcaster and psychiatrist.

Hon. Desmond Parsons (1910-1937) – British linguist and aesthete.

Jim Quixley (1931-1991) – Australian children's author; librarian at York University, Toronto.

José Sarria (1923-2013) – American drag performer; 1st known out lgbt person to run for US public office.

Allen Schindler (1969-1992) – Radioman Petty Officer, US Navy (murdered).

Most Rev. Mark Shirilau (1955-2014) – American founding Archbishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Church.

Laís Souza (b. 1988) – Brazilian Olympic gymnast.

Theodora Versteegh (1888-1970) – Dutch classical singer.

Tom Wakefield (1935-1996) – British novelist and short story writer.

Born on December 24th/25th – I’ve included both of these dates because it is difficult to determine who was born between sunset on Christmas Eve and dawn on Christmas Day, the night during which werewolves were born.

Born on December 24th

Bethany Black (b. 1978) – British transgender comedian and actor.

Mauro Bordovsky (b. 1956) - founder member of West Hollywood Aquatics.

Eliza Cook (1818-1889) – British author and Chartist poet.

Dean Corll (1939-1973) – US serial killer (the Houston Mass Murders).

Lee Daniels (b. 1959) – Oscar-winning American film producer ("Monsters Ball").

Maik de Boer (b. 1960) – Dutch fashion stylist and social commentator.

Nathan Fain (1942-1987) – American journalist and co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis.

Deborah Glick (b. 1950) – member of the New York State Assembly since 1991.

Adam Haslett (b. 1970) – American fiction writer; Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Brenda Howard (1946-2005) – pioneering American bisexual activist.

Howard Hughes (1905-1976) – American tycoon, aviator and philanthropist.

Robert Joffrey (1930-1988) – American dancer and choreographer.

Kevin Killian (1952-2019) – American writer and poet.

Dominic Koll (b. 1984) – Austrian Olympic swimmer.

Adam Lippes (b. 1972) – American fashion designer.

Ricky Martin (b. 1971) – Puerto Rican pop singer.

Joep Mesman (b. 1981) – Mr. Gay Netherlands 2006.

Nestor Perlongher   (1949-1992) - Argentinian writer and anthropology professor.

Jim Roth (b. 1968) – Chief Deputy and Attorney, Oklahoma County Commission.

Bob Smith (1958-2018) – American comedian and writer.

Ans van Dijk (1905-1948) – Dutch Nazi collaborator (executed).

Born on December 25th

Ramona Bachmann (b. 1990) – Swiss footballer (Women's World Cup 2015).

MIanne Bagger (b. 1966) – Danish transgender golfer.

Brad Benton (b. 1974) – American gay porn actor (and “Dante’s Cove” gay soap opera)

Albert Cashier (1843-1951) – Irish cross-dressing Union soldier in the American Civil War.

Staceyann Chin (b. 1972) – Jamaican spoken-word poet and activist.

Kenny Everett (1944-1995) – British DJ and entertainer.

Noël Greig (1944-2000) – British actor, director and playwright of the early gay theatre movement.

Christine Johnson (b. 1968) – member of Utah House of Representatives 2007-10.

Christine Kaufmann (b. 1951) – Montana State Senator 2007-17.

Ismael Merchant (1936-2005) – Anglo-Indian film producer.

Jessica Origliasso (b. 1984) – Australian singer-songwriter and actor.

Conny Perrin (b. 1990) – Swiss tennis player.

Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) – Russian classical composer.

Noel Tovey (b. 1934) – Australian dancer, choreographer and actor.

Tonie Walsh (b. 1960) – founder of Irish Queer Archive.

Joey Yale (1949-1986) – American gay porn actor.

Born on January 6th

Jeff Bennett (b. 1965) – American activist; co-founder of Gay.com.

Herman Emmink (1927-2013) – Dutch singer, radio and TV broadcaster.

Juan Goytisolo (1931-2017) – Spanish novelist, poet and essayist.

Bjørn Lomborg (b. 1965) – Danish environmental economist.

Kate McKinnon (b. 1984) – American comedian, impressionist and actor.

Hon. Nancy Ruth (b. 1942) – Ontario Senator, Canada, 2005-17.

Danny Pintauro, (b. 1976) – American actor ("Who's the Boss" child star).

Charlotte Endymion Porter (1857-1942) – American editor and writer.

Walter Sedlemayr (1926-1990) – German actor (murdered).

Hugues Sinclair de Rochemont (1901-1942) – Dutch journalist; member of the Nazi Party.

Hugh Skinner (b. 1985) – British actor (plays Prince William in the UK series “The Windsors”).

Gábor Szeley (b. 1968) – Secretary of State 2006-9; 1st open lgbt member of Hungarian government.

Peter Whittle (b. 1961) – British parliamentary candidate 2015 and 2017.

John Wieners (1934-2002) – American Beat poet.

Born on September 24th

Rt. Hon. Sir Conor Burns (b. 1972) – British MP 2010-24; Minister of State 2019-22.

Luke Clippinger (b. 1972) – member of Maryland House of Delegates since 2011.

Louis Edmonds (1923-2001) – American actor (237 episodes of “All My Children”).

Michelle Ferris (b. 1976) – Australian Olympic cyclist.

Richard Groenendijk (b. 1972) – Dutch comedian, actor and writer.

Simon Hobart (1964-2005) – British club founder (Popstarz), and DJ (Heaven).

Casey Johnson (1979-2010) – American Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical heiress.

Patrick Kelly (1954-1990) – American fashion designer.

Mark Leno (b. 1951) – California State Senator 2008-16.

John Logan (b. 1961) – American playwright and screenwriter (“Gladiator”, “Skyfall”).

Paul Mills (1924-2004) – American Director of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1970-82.

Ross Mathews (b. 1979) – American tv host and personality.

Yves Navarre (1940-1994) – French novelist.

Jack Pierson (b. 1960) – American photographer and artist.

Amy Scholder (b. 1963) – American writer and literary editor.

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) – 4th Earl of Orford; British writer and gothic novel pioneer.

Next Sunday I hope I’ll give what I had originally planned for today, and explain the links between an early American gay rights organisation, British pantomime dames, and Pueblo dances in New Mexico.