Happy Twelfth Night!

There was a great social media post earlier today: "Because it's Twelfth Night, Nature has decided to become the Lord of Misrule." (Hence the -60 windchills tomorrow, etc.) And that got me thinking a bit about the Elizabethan calendar--which seems to have a whole different attitude toward winter than we do now. While they celebrated the New Year on March 25th, with lots of fancy gifts to the queen, we've decided to plonk the same holiday just a week after Christmas, when our weather is at its coldest, and the nightly darkness hasn't really begun to recede. I'm beginning to wonder if the Elizabethans didn't have the right idea: spread out the holidays, and celebrate newness when the daffodils are actually coming up.

There's another ramification, as well. Because our New Year (January 1) actually happens before Twelfth Night/Epiphany, we tend to bundle both celebrations up into one snowy/cold idea of renewal, mystery, and frenetic buying of fitness equipment--that is, if we even think about Twelfth Night at all any more. For the Elizabethan court, though, Twelfth Night (associated with the gifts delivered by the Magi to the Christ Child) was a time of snuggly indoor dramatic revelry, with carbtastic cakes and momentary reversals of position. As a release valve in the middle of the winter season, Twelfth Night provided a way to confront the dullness and unrelentingness of winter, without implying that one was supposed to feel renewed, or even "new," in the midst of subzero temperatures. As a person who gravitates toward warmth and little flowers, I like this idea.

However: the best thing, I think, would be to combine the Elizabethan and contemporary New Year celebrations, while keeping Twelfth Night (preferably with lots of plays by Shakespeare). All that needs to happen is for March weather to start in January. (Or, failing that, maybe I could try to grow some early daffodils.)

Sleep, Virtuous Behavior, and the Adage

In a Newsweek article called "Sleep in!" (June 4 & 11, 2012, page 19), Trevor Butterworth gleefully debunks the myth that getting up early is somehow virtuous. In fact, he quotes sleep researcher Till Roenneberg, who says "We need to get rid of the old rule that the early bird catches the worm." But how old is this rule--and what are the sneaky links between early rising and moral standing, from a historical perspective?

"Early to bed, early to rise,/ Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Current in the eighteenth century, this saying links not only intelligence but also wealth to sleeping habits--presumably because those who rise "early" do so in order to work at some form of remunerative labor. Less well known--but no less morally laced--is this early modern adage, quoted by A. Roger Ekirch in At Day's Close (265): "Nature requires five [hours of sleep], custom takes seven, laziness nine, and wickedness, eleven." From a historical standpoint, then, not only the time of rising, but the length of sleep itself reflected a person's inherent moral character.

It's quite interesting, then, to realize that Butterworth's article is calling for a sea change in the way that we ascribe morality to sleep practices. Instead of judging those who sleep late, Butterworth claims, we should view them as victims of "social jet lag"--which "happens when your internal body clock wants you to stay asleep but your external social clock wants you to wake up" (19). Here, the terms of the debate seem to have switched: a sleeper's body is now framed as the correct (or, at least, legitimate) arbiter of waking and sleeping times, and society stands as the cruel taskmaster, forcing the body into routines that can lead to obesity and exhaustion. I'm not quite sure what to make of this shift--but I'm very interested in the way that it tries to decouple sleep from morality, despite hundreds of years of proverbial linkages. 

Night Knitting (or, Knitting in the Dark?)

In his compendious study of nighttime in the Renaissance, At Day's Close, A. Roger Ekirch writes the following:

"Enea Silvio Piccolomni, the future Pope Pius II (1405-1464), while traveling in northern England, observed a large company of women sitting all night by a fire, conversing and cleaning hemp. Less common elsewhere in England, spinning sessions, even in the nineteenth century, remained widespread in the north... Assembling one or two nights a week, work parties could last until one or two in the morning... On frigid nights, the presence of farm animals generated warmth, as did steaming manure. Often, a cottage hearth supplied small quantities of both light and heat... Requiring the sharpest sight, women usually sat up front [nearest to the fire], spinning, knitting, weaving and carding wool either for themselves or for one another" (New York: Norton, 2005, 178-9).

I was intrigued. Given my drawbacks (lack of hearth, lack of female posse, lack of spinning and carding skills, lack of manure), I decided to undertake a modified experiment. Could one really knit in the semi-dark? Would this knitting turn out to be wearable? (Or even recognizable as knitting?)

The procedure: I waited until the sun had almost set, and left the shades partially open. There wasn't much sunlight, but I could still kind of see. (Almost.) Plus, I was using chunky white yarn, which was more visible than, say, a Regia sock blend in dark blue. I knit about seven rounds on a cable/rib hat that I was working on. Then I went to another room, turned on a light, and had a look.

The verdict: Oops. My first cable now had five stitches, instead of six; my second cable had seven, and the strip of ribbing in between looked like something out of a Robert Frost poem. (And not in a good way.)

The analysis: Clearly, I was missing something. How were these ladies, in fact, actually producing garments at one or two in the morning, in minimal lighting conditions, while listening to gossip or fictional tales, with freezing fingers and sleep-deprived brains?

I have come up with three possible theories: 1) They were not, in fact, knitting. That was just a cover for their actual purpose in convening: a plot to overthrow Enea Silvio Piccolomni. 2) The purpose in having the other ladies nearby was to have at least one functioning as a quality control agent. 3) (Possibly the most disturbing option:) They didn't actually care whether their cables all matched. 

So: there you have it. The moral of the story? "Night knitting deserves a well-lit night. I'm not sure all these people understand."