Our beautiful cover art is called ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime and it was painted by
watercolour artist Mary Jo Smith. She was inspired by the opening line of the Huron Carol,
which she said fits in well with contemporary Land Acknowledgments honouring the ancestral
guardians of this land and its waterways.
Mary Jo, a longtime resident of the West Hill area, is a member of The Art Guild of Scarborough.
A retired elementary teacher, she enjoyed teaching art to pupils from kindergarten to
Grade 8. Her favourite subjects for painting are floral gardens, autumn and woodland scenes,
and travel landscapes.
By Kathryn Stocks
When I saw that our cover painting for December was called “Twas in the moon of wintertime,” which is the first line of the Huron Carol, I thought that in the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation it would be a perfect way to write about the Indigenous history of this popular Christmas song.
The Huron Carol is attributed to St. Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit missionary at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, who wrote it in 1642. The original lyrics were in the Wendat language and the song was called Jesous Ahatonnia, which means “Jesus is Born.” The tune is from a traditional French folk song.
Upon further reading, however, I discovered that the words of the carol that we’ve come to know and love were actually written in 1927 by a British-born Canadian poet named Jesse Middleton who was not Indigenous. Middleton’s words were not a translation of Brebeuf’s Huron Carol, and they bore almost no relation to the original.
It’s interesting that over the last few decades artists have been singing the Huron Carol in Indigenous languages. Bruce Cockburn was one of the first to use the Wendat words on his 1993 Christmas album, while Indigenous artists like Susan Aglukark and Dolores Sand have performed the song in their respective languages of Inuktitut and Cree.