THE BOAR'S HEAD AND

YULE LOG FESTIVAL

AN ANCIENT LEGEND serves as the basis for this Festival: an Oxford University student, while strolling in a forest reading the works of Aristotle, was charged by a wild and raging boar. The student, quick thinking, thrust his volume of Aristotle into the throat of the boar, putting an end to this deadly threat.

THIS TALE WAS FIRST TOLD during a feast at Oxford to celebrate the student's victory. At the feast, the boar's head was born in, thus representing the triumph of reason over brute force. When the Church adapted the Festival, it gained a new, profoundly Christian significance: evil, symbolized by the boar's head, had been overcome by good through the teachings of Christ, symbolized by light. Thus, Christ becomes the snare for evil.

ISAIAH'S PROPHECY, foretelling the coming of Christ into a fractured world, began. 'The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.' In today's troubled times the Festival message is the same, Marching companies, in the costume of Renaissance England, sing the ancient songs of Christendom, as they carry in the gaily bedecked head of a wild boar, symbol of evil which is conquered by the innocent goodness of the Christ Child. The triumph of light over darkness is made graphic in the Christ Candle through its light and sculpted symbols.

ALREADY OLD in tradition when presented at Queens College, Oxford, in 1340, The Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival is perhaps the oldest continuing Festival of the Christmas season. It was a holiday tradition in many great manor houses in England and came to America in Colonial Days. The first known public presentation in America was at Hoosac School, Hoosac, New York, in 1888.

MAY THIS OFFERING of praise to Jesus Christ at the time of His Epiphany recall us to the gift of love given us in the Person of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

January 2000