Helios: * see EndNote<A>

in ancient Greek religion and myth, the god and personification of the Sun, often depicted in art with a radiant crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot through the sky.

 

Pan:

In Greek religion and mythology the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature of mountain wilds, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as the god of fields, groves, wooded glens and often affiliated with sex; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.

 

Christmas (12 long nights):

The 12 days of Xmas became entangled with a much older pagan celebration, the Yule or Yuletide, historically observed by the Germanic peoples at Midwinter with feasting, drinking & sacrifice.  The Winter Solstice with the darkest days of the year was seen as a time when the dead would have particularly good access to the living.  Thus Yule had a religious character linked to older celebrations based on the cult of the dead, the Wild Hunt & the god Odin among others.  The Wild Hunt was a ghostly procession in the winter sky, the god Odin (in Germanic traditions) leading it.  There is also increased supernatural activities of draugar—the un-dead beings who walk the earth.

 

Classical world (& souls):

Greek mythology does not paint a binary picture, with a dark gloomy hell awaiting the dead.  They believed some souls were condemned to a dark existence; after death some went to Tartarus, described as being beneath the underworld & shrouded in utter darkness.  However this seems to be the exception.  Many souls existed in a neutral state.  Another destination for the dead were the Asphodel Meadows, whose ambiguous connotations are far different from the dark & depressing Tartarus.   Similar too are the Mourning Fields which also seem distinct from Tartarus.  Another destination, the Elysian Fields were located on the Earth, on the western edge by the stream of Okeanos (Homer).  These fields were also associated with the Fortunate Isles or the Isles (or Islands) of the Blessed, located in the western ocean at the end of the earth.

 

δωδεκαήμερον:

Greek, twelve days

 

Twelfth Night:

a festival in some branches of Christianity that takes place on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of Epiphany, celebrated as either 5 or 6 January.

 

Tasso (fixed scene)

possibly a reference to Jerusalem Delivered (published 1381) by Tasso, in the Italian tradition of the romantic epic poem.  A largely mythical version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to take Jerusalem; Tasso borrows freely from Greek classics, Homer and Virgil (stories of sieges and warfare) as well as Ludovico Ariosto’s The Frenzy of Orlando (1516).  A characteristic literary devices used was the emotional conundrum endured by characters torn between love & duty (martial valour).  The subject was a historic conflict between Christians & Muslims, a narrative which had a fixed endpoint & could not be endlessly spun out in multiple volumes (a feature lacking in other Renaissance epics).