Inbetweeners, Silent Day & H-apple New Year

Taken from Lynne’s weekly column ‘Green Scene’ for the Western Mail
30^th December 2023

Inbetweeners

Every year between Christmas and the New Year I write about, well, the week between Christmas and the New Year!  Apparently, there isn’t a specific name for it in English, but in Norway they call it Romjul or Mellomjul, which (not surprisingly) basically means the period between Christmas and New Year.

Chrimbo Limbo is a popular name for the week, because everyone is in ‘limbo’ not knowing what day it is. I’ve heard it called the ‘Festive Perineum’ and will let you work that one out.

And another often-referred to description is ‘Twixtmas’ or ‘Twixmas.’

Some people name it after what many people do during this time – ‘Food Week,’ and other suggestions made on social media include ‘Christmastide’, ‘the void’, the ‘festive period’ or the ‘Taint’.  Apparently one Facebook user said, ‘The time between Christmas and New Year’s Day is called the Nothing Week because nothing you do in this week counts.’

Other relevant posts include, ‘After Christmas is this weird week where the days are fake and time doesn’t exist, and the world doesn’t return back to normal until January 2^nd.’

And, ‘The best week ever – said no one’, or ‘What-day-is-it week’.

One wit commented, ‘The upside of this weird week is that you can put on new socks and pants every day.’

Most of these names and descriptions seem to have been dreamt up and banded about on social media platforms. This is second-hand information though, as this is my second year in a ‘social-media-free-zone’ and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It is literally life changing and so much nicer to be living life in ‘real time’ than on or through a screen.

Silent Day

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” This famous reflection of the 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal has “not aged a bit”, says Kévin Badeau in Le Point. In the digital age, who ever resists the temptation to check their inbox or social media, to “escape the boredom of a metro ride, a doctor’s waiting room, or even a work meeting”? The “almost systematic” search for an escape from boredom says a lot about our times. “We are afraid of doing nothing,” says psychologist Marie-Estelle Dupont, “because our societies value ‘acting’.”

In small doses, “boredom has many virtues”. In the young, it stimulates the development of the imagination. A child deprived of a screen will be “bored for five minutes”, says Dupont, “but then he will use his imagination: he will invent a game, a story, build a cabin, or whatever”. In adults, boredom boosts creativity. In 2013, British psychologists asked volunteers to copy out numbers from a phonebook for 15 minutes. When they were then asked to list “everything that can be done with two cups”, their ideas were far more creative than those from people who hadn’t done the phonebook task. An absence of stimuli can also yield “remarkable works”. The novelist Margaret Mitchell started writing Gone With the Wind when she was immobilised by a broken ankle; Victor Hugo wrote some of his most “illustrious texts”, including Les Misérables, while stuck in exile on Guernsey. To quote the meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein: “Don’t just do something, sit there.”

H-apple New Year

However you are celebrating the New Year, in some parts of Wales people will still be honouring the Welsh tradition of Mari Llwyd, where a horse’s skull is paraded around on a pole, decorated with ribbons and greenery. In years gone by this used to be a real horses skull, but in the last few decades, handcrafted versions have been deemed more appropriate.

No one seems really sure of the origins of the tradition but one Welsh translation of it – ‘Grey Mare’ – connects it to the history of pale horses in Celtic and British mythology.  Many of these horses, like Rhiannon on her white horse in the Mabinogion, could cross over to the underworld.

‘Mari’ is traditionally taken around a village, often between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night, and accompanied by singers.  When the group get to a house, they sing Welsh language songs or ‘wassails’, or more traditionally indulge in a ritual called ‘pwnco’ – an exchange of rude rhymes with the person who lives there. If Mari and her gang get entry, the household is said to have good luck for the year.  I’m not sure what happens if you refuse them.

And if for some reason you are missing out on New Year celebrations on the 31st January, then why not celebrate Hen Galan on the 13^th.  Referred to as ‘the old new year’, it is still celebrated in many parts of Wales in accordance with the old Julian Calendar which was abolished controversially in 1752 and replaced with the Gregorian calendar.

The Welsh tradition is a little like Halloween in so far as children go from door to door singing songs and are given ‘Calennig’, or a ‘reward’ in return – today it’s usually sweets or money but it used to be bread and cheese.

As part of the celebrations, children will often make a decorated apple that they will carry from house to house. The apple, decorated with twigs, evergreen leaves and cloves, is known as a Perllan and is considered to be a ‘lucky charm’.

To make your own Perllan, you will need an apple, some cloves, a few small sticks and some evergreen twigs and leaves.  Press the cloves firmly into the apple.  Push the evergreen leaves in your apple and then put three twigs into your apple to create a tripod. Your apple, or Perllan, should be able to stand on its own.

Of course you don’t have to tae your Perllan door to door you could just have it as a decoration or lucky charm in your own house.

However you welcome in 2024, I hope that it is a kind, gentle year, and may all your weeds be wildflowers.