Danish feast dates needed for Kirstin Läersen and Karen Läersdatter
I don't understand the difference between the fixed and the movable feast dates and can't seem to read either of these two christening records.
Father: Läers Hansen (MKQX-7CX) in Bredstrup (farm) in Nørre Naerå Parish
His daughter, Kirsten, christened ___ October ? 1780
Karen Läersdatter, 1784 christened ___ in October 1784, The father is Laers Hansen of Bredstrup (name of farm in Nørre Naerå Parish). The child's name is Karen.
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9ZX-WD3T
Thank you for your assistance!
Joellen McAlister and Kristin Richards
Best Answers
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Probably the reason you are having difficulty with the feast dates for these entries is that neither entry has a feast date mentioned in the record.
The date for Kirsten is 21 [Oct]. If the month is not written down and there is no other indication as to the month, as in this record, you must assume that it is the same month as the previous record. If you look 2 entries down you will see that the entry of 23 ä(fter) Trinitatis, is the burial of Kirsten - so she was christened on 21 October and buried on 29 October.
The christening date for Karen is "Eodem", which is Latin for "the same (as the previous date)", so you have to look to the previous record for the date. That date is 19 ä(fter) Trinitatis = 17 October in 1784. See the Latin Genealogical Word List here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Latin_Genealogical_Word_List#D
As far as the difference between fixed and moveable feast dates, remember that Christmas is always on 25 December, so it would be considered a fixed feast date. Easter is on a different date each year (the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox) so it is a moveable feast date.
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Just a comment on Jul specific to Denmark.
For the church "Christmas" is the 25. December; but when Danes say "Jul" it is the 24. December ["Juleaften", where you have the big dinner with family].
Jul is an old nordic feast day. It was the most important feast day in all of Scandinavia in viking age times (and likely also in the iron age), where all had to attend in a community gathering and you had to pay a fine for not attending. It has also been a day with lots of drinking. Many danish kids today are allowed by the parents to drink their first beer (usually when around 12 years old).
Quote from the crusaders years: "The Welshman left his hunting ; the Scot his fellowship with lice ; the Dane his drinking party ; the Norwegian his raw fish." [from the English perspective]
Knud Lavard "dux" (duke) of Slesvig made once a surprise attacks (1100's AD) on the germans "juleaften". It took the germans by total surprise, because a danish attack would be unthinkable - they were all supposed to be dead-drunk (even though they had been Christians for a 100 years at that time).
Basically all ethnic Danes celebrate "Jul" the 24. December and a few of them will go to church the 25. December.
If a have a class a of lets say ca. 28 students I always ask them what is the most important christian feast day and around 95% will say Jul (and mean the 24. December). Only one or two will know it is actually Easter-sunday.
Again perhaps two of them will go to church the 25. December....
Jul (24. December) has always been the most important feast day in viking age times and in modern times - whatever the church have tried to do about it.
As Norm said: For the church (in the west) Christmas is always on the 25. December.
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Answers
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Thanks you, Norm. I thought that might be what Eodem meant but was having trouble finding it.
Joellen
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Thanks, Niels, for the bonus lesson on Jul! So if I understand correctly, Dec. 24th is the party day with the family, but Christmas (25th) is the religious holiday.
Joellen
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Hi Joellen.
Exactly!
So how many Danes actually attended Christmas in church the 25. is questionable, since many probably was to drunk to go there - and if they went probably were pretty sleepy and hungover.
Historians have figured out that in the middle ages/renaissance every dane (including children) probably drank 3-4 liters of beer every day (because clean water was very rare and you ate a lot of salted food) and to all kinds of social gatherings you drank more than usual.
You drank extra at baptism, when getting apprenticeship, when betrothed, when married, when becoming a master of a craft, at burials, when joining a guild and when others joined your guild, and all religious feasts and then extra extra at Jul.
To drink with others was a sign of you showing them respect and having faith in them. So a leader not drinking with the people below him was taken as a huge insult!
In Denmark some directors of companies still drink with their workers at office parties and many teachers still drink with their students after exams! Though "international" morals are getting more and more prevalent.
For instance the film "Druk" [eng. Another round] with Mads Mikkelsen really shows the danish attitude and it is probably quite alien to a lot of foreigners. It is about gymnasium teachers [my job by the way].
If you want a view into danish culture I can really recommend it!
To be a "real" nobleman was to show that you could drink a lot with your peers -> to be easily drunk under the table by other peers was a sign of weakness.
Look at King Christian IV (and his majestic beer belly) famous for his prowess in eating and drinking. https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_4.#/media/Fil:Christian_IV_(Abraham_Wuchters).jpg
His son (the heir) actually died during heavy drinking in Dresden.
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Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
"Claudius likes to party—a bit too much. He frequently binge drinks, is arguably an alcoholic, but is not an aberration. Hamlet says that Denmark is internationally known for heavy drinking. That’s what Shakespeare would have heard in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth, English writers feared that Denmark had taught their own nation its drinking habits. Synthesizing criticism on alcoholism as an individual problem in Shakespeare’s texts and times with scholarship on national drinking habits in the early modern age, this essay asks what the tragedy of alcoholism looks like when located not on the level of the individual but on the level of a culture, as Shakespeare depicts in Hamlet. Our window into these early modern cultures of drunkenness is sociological studies of American college fraternities plus social-learning theories that explain how one person—one culture—teaches another its habits. For Claudius’s alcoholism is both culturally learned and culturally significant. And, as in fraternities, alcoholism in Hamlet is bound up with ethnicity, wealth, masculinity, and tragedy."
Source (Duke University, Jeffrey R. Wilson): https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/article-abstract/60/1/39/297503/Sigma-Alpha-ElsinoreThe-Culture-of-Drunkenness-in
NB: Did american fraterneties ultimately get their drinking from Denmark......
Cheers (or perhaps "Skål")
Niels
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