Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Holiday Wrap-Up 

• A message from our Directors
• The complex legacy of Canada’s “oldest Christmas carol”
• Holiday recipe: The bûche de Noël, Québec’s Yule log cake

 Happy Holidays from Canadian Studies! 

Dear friends,

As we wrap up another year, we extend our warmest greetings to our friends both north and south of the border. We hope that this holiday season is filled with joy, laughter, and family, and that you have the time to enjoy a bûche de Noël or a pot or two of maple taffy!

We are truly grateful for your support. Canada and the U.S. have a special relationship, yet as we look forward to the new year, we predict our work will be more important than ever as that relationship enters a new phase. Your engagement will be critical to forging connections that strengthen that bond through cultural and academic exchange. We are already hard at work scheduling speakers for next semester who can illuminate overlooked and intriguing topics in Canadian Studies. We look forward to a new year where we can celebrate that richness together, and honor the unbreakable ties between our two countries.

Thank you for being an invaluable part of the Canadian Studies Program family. We wish you a merry Christmas, a happy Hannukah, and a bright New Year!

See you in 2025!

Richard A. Rhodes and Hidetaka Hirota

Program Co-Directors

CANADIAN CULTURES

The Complex Legacy of Canada’s “Oldest Christmas Carol”

Any Canadian who attends a holiday concert is likely to hear a rendition of the well-known carol commonly known as The Huron Carol, or ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime. A staple of Canadian Christmas music for over a century, it is often touted as “Canada’s oldest Christmas carol”. It is as well-known for its beautiful melody as for its unique portrayal of a “First Nations” Nativity. The song has been celebrated in Canadian postage stamps, cards, and books, and become internationally known as a symbol of Canadian culture. Yet the song’s history reveals a complex legacy that shows the often painful and ambiguous ways that European settlers and Indigenous inhabitants interacted in the lands of modern Canada, as well as the contradictory ways that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians assess that legacy today.

Image: 1977 Canada Post “Jesous Ahatonhia” stamp. Source: Postage Stamp Guide..

The song now called The Huron Carol dates back to the 17th century. It was originally a simple Nativity carol called Jesous Ahatonhia (“Jesus is born”), written in the Wendat (formerly called Huron) language. Traditionally, it is believed to have been penned in the early 1640s by the French Jesuit missionary St. Jean de Brébeuf. Brébeuf worked at the mission of Sainte-Marie-Among-the-Hurons, in the Wendat’s territory in southern Ontario. Unlike some other missionary groups, the Jesuits pursued a policy of “cultural accommodation”, under which missionaries adapted their messaging and practices to local customs. Brébeuf, a talented linguist, had quickly learned the Wendat language and conducted a detailed ethnography of the Wendat people with the intent of finding cultural similarities that would facilitate conversions. As the Wendat were particularly fond of music, he considered songs to be a particularly effective method of catechism and wrote many in their language.

Image: Portrait of St. Jean de Brébeuf by R. G. Thwaits. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Unfortunately, the French mission brought disaster on the Wendat. European diseases decimated the population, while conversions caused religious divisions that weakened social bonds. Furthermore, the competition between the French and English for beaver pelts spread to their Native allies, inflaming tensions between the Wendat and the Iroquois Confederacy. In 1649, only a few years after Jesous Ahatonhia was written, the Wendat Confederacy was destroyed in a large-scale attack by their Iroquois enemies. (Brébeuf himself was captured and ritually killed during the assault.) The survivors scattered, with some seeking French protection outside Quebec City. There, the refugees established a new village (today’s Wendake Reserve), where the first written reference to Jesous Ahatonhia was made in 1688.

For almost three hundred years, Jesous Ahatonhia remained an obscure song sung only in Wendake. The Wendat notary Paul Tsawenhohi Picard published a French translation in 1899, but it never achieved much popularity.

It was not until 1926 that the song unexpectedly rose to national prominence, after the Canadian journalist Jesse Edgar Middleton published his popular English adaptation (“‘Twas in the moon of wintertime”), which soon became a staple of the Canadian Christmas repertoire. Middleton’s lyrics were entirely new, with only general similarities to the Wendat original. His version depicts the Nativity through a romanticized European view of Native culture. It depicts Jesus born in a bark lodge wrapped in animal pelts, replacing the shepherds with hunters and the Magi with chiefs. It also uses the term “Gitchi Manitou” to refer to God – an Algonquian phrase with no relevance to the Wendat. This reflected a contemporary fascination among white Canadians for supposedly “vanishing” Indigenous cultures – albeit one with little room for living Indigenous people.

Image: J. E. Middleton. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Today, the song is widely known and sung across Canada through dozens of recordings and numerous translations. The Middleton version has been sung by Canadian celebrities like Sarah McLachlan, as well as by foreign singers like Burl Ives (of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer fame.) Nevertheless, as Canada grapples with Reconciliation, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians are re-assessing how and whether they continue to perform The Huron Carol. Middleton’s lyrics in particular have been criticized as stereotypical, but others question the ethics of singing the song at all given the history between Canada’s Indigenous people and Christian missionaries.

For today’s Wendat, opinions are divided on the song’s continued prominence both within and outside their culture. For some, it remains a well-loved Christmas tradition and a way to connect with their ancestors. Others view it as a relic of a painful colonial legacy that tried to erase their traditional beliefs, and a sort of “false culture” written by an outsider. At the same time, for decades Jesous Ahatonhia was the only time that many community members could hear the Wendat language long after it was lost for daily use. Most are excited at the renewed interest by singers across Canada in learning the song in its original language.

There have also been attempts to update the lyrics for the era of Reconciliation. Composer Sarah Quartel commissioned Wendat singer-songwriter Andrée Lévesque-Sioui to write new “decolonized” lyrics for the song, that explore the legacy of colonialism and a hope for a better future. This new version has been equally controversial in Wendake, with some defending the original and others hoping the song will just go away.

Despite the controversy, the song has historically been popular with Indigenous artists from elsewhere in Canada, who appreciated its Indigenous imagery. Singers have performed the song in languages including Inuit, Mi’kmaw, and Cree. Notably, the Cree singer Tom Jackson has toured Canada for almost four decades with an annual holiday charity concert called the “Huron Carole“, raising money for local food banks. If anything, the debate shows the mixed approaches and responses of Canadians of all backgrounds as the country confronts its colonial past and searches for the best way to move forward together.

Holiday Recipe: The Bûche de Noël, Québec’s Yule Log Cake

For many Québécois, the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without the traditional bûche de Noël, or “Yule log”. Unlike its English counterpart, however, this edible log isn’t one you’ll want to burn. Formed from a chocolate Swiss roll filled with jam or cream, this cake is shaped into a log and often decorated with powdered sugar “snow”, berries, and marzipan or merengue mushrooms. They are frequently served for dessert at the réveillon, a lavish feast that traditionally followed the midnight Christmas mass and continued until dawn.

Canadian Living offers a number of variations on this traditional cake sure to please a variety of palates. Or, try this chocolate-cherry recipe from Canadian Baking Show Holiday Week star baker Vandana Jain.

Interested in learning more about the réveillon? Read Montreal-based celebrity chef Chuck Hughes’ reflections on his own family traditions, and learn his recipe for oysters mignonette.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

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