My new series of Book of hours calendar activities-posts is now up an running! Each month, I’ll present a bunch of illustrations from different volumes that I’ve found that has a calendar section with images. A bunch of the different books has the same kind of activity as others, and a few of them have another. Some of them have a bit more unique activities, and some has an activity that might be represented in another month much more often. But there’s some obvious themes in the different seasons, and we’re starting of with the fall! If you press a picture, you’ll get information about land origin and dating.
December is overwhelmingly prone to one activity, and that is the slaughter of pigs. And that doesn’t surprise me very much at all due to the explanation of the abundance of food at Christmas. I’ve always heard that we have such a big feast at Christmas because of the slaughter of animals in the weeks before. Sure, we celebrate Christmas because of the birth of Jesus, but his birth was decided to be December 25th during the 3rd century and other pre Christian celebrations like the winter solstice, Yule and Saturnalia has been celebrated around the same time of the year. So did they slaughter because of the celebrations, or are the celebrations placed that time of year because of the slaughter? The animals had the opportunity to eat and get fat during the summer and fall, as we saw in the previous post about November. And you probably didn’t want to waste food during the harsh winters to keep the animals alive.
The killing itself seems to be something for the men to do, while there’s usually a woman there, collecting the blood from the pig. Nothing goes to waste in a society where food can be scarce. A frying pan with a long handle seems to be the way to go.
The other big activity that we can see a lot of during December is the baking! So more food for the holidays I presume. And to be that makes total sense. Not just the making of food for upcoming festivities, but also it’s a nice and warm activity to do during one of the cold months. So doing indoor chores seems logical!
Most of the bakers seem to be men, only a few women pass by. So maybe a lot of the baking was done by men, or the men we see are the bakers that has monetized the chore and turned it into a business. A lot of the domestic chores were done by women until someone realized, they could make money out of it, and then it became a job for men.
December is very clearly a month for food prep, as I haven’t seem to found an example of something else. So spend the food cooking delicious food, meat or no meat. Maybe give a few historical recipes a chance and see how they turn out.
/Honorable Lady Gele Pechplumin
(Magdalena Morén)
The lazy reenactor girl 