I’ll be taking the next week off to celebrate the First Day of Winter and the Christmas holiday with my family. I’ll be back next week. Happy Holidays!
Household
Celebrate the First Day of Winter!
December 21 is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Locales above the Arctic Circle, including parts of Canada, Alaska, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Greenland, and the very northern tip of Iceland will experience 24 hours of total darkness. You can find out when the sun will rise and set where you live here.
Winter was a long, dark, and difficult time for many of our forebears. The solstice provided an opportunity for people to celebrate the return of more daylight.
How did ancient people celebrate?
Gift-giving
The ancient Romans exchanged candles and other gifts during Saturnalia, their week-long solstice celebration.
Role-switching
In Persia, the king changed places with one of his subjects on the winter solstice, and the subject was crowned during an elaborate street party.
In Rome, masters and servants switched roles; senators wore simple, rather than elaborate togas; men sometimes dressed as women; fights and grudges were forgotten; and other everyday conventions were put aside.
Candle-lighting
In England and Scandinavia, people lit a Yule log, or oak branch, which was often replaced by a large candle that burned throughout the day.
Bonfires
Japanese Shinto farmers lit fires on the mountain sides to welcome back the sun.
Mistletoe and Evergreen Trees
The British Celts put mistletoe on their altars. And the Germans and Romans decorated their houses with evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands as a symbol of life and renewed fertility.
Sun Festivals
The Hopi celebrated the return of the sun with ceremonies. Priests dressed in animal skins with feathers in their head-dresses to look like the rays of the sun.
Why celebrate the first day of winter?
The holiday season is busy enough for most of us. Why add anything else to the to-do list?
Well, celebrating the first day of each season has many benefits. It offers the perfect opportunity to:
- Note the cyclical changes in the soil, sky, trees, plants, and wildlife.
- Reflect on the lessons each time of year imparts. Winter, for example, reminds us of the importance of quiet, rest, and dormancy.
- Learn about different celebrations around the world.
- Celebrate! And seasonal celebrations are affordable, nature-based, and as easy or elaborate as you want them to be.
- Be grateful for the gifts of food, family, and friendship.
The key to celebrating the first day of winter, when most of us are busy planning other celebrations, is to keep it simple, and choose traditions that give you time to relax and reflect.
Some ideas:
- Establish a table-top, shelf, or mantel to display a seasonal tableau. On the first day of winter, replace the fall decorations with evergreen boughs, pine cones, candles, mistletoe, or whatever symbolizes fall in your family.
- Collect books about the seasons at yard sales, used-book stores, and thrift shops year-round. Choose a special basket or shelf for them, and change them out on the first day of each season. Or take a trip to the library a few days before your celebration. Some of my family’s favorite winter picture-books are: Stella, Queen of the Snow by Mary-Louise Gay; The Big Snow by Berta Hader; The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats; A Kitten Tale by Eric Rohmann; Snow by Cynthia Rylant; Winter is the Warmest Season by Lauren Stringer; and Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.
- Read aloud from The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson.
- Go for a nature walk or go cross-country skiing, and enjoy the brisk air and winter scenery.
- Watch the sun rise and set.
- Make a seasonal feast, with foods like beets, winter squash, potatoes, onions, kale, cabbage, or parsnips.
- Eat by candlelight.
- Blow out the candles and turn off the lights after dinner, sit together quietly, and experience and reflect on darkness.
- Share one thing you’ve lost and one thing you’ve gained over the past year.
- Bring an evergreen bough inside and make it into a wishing tree. Secure the bough in a bucket with rocks. Cut leaves out of green construction paper. Have each person write down a wish for the coming year on each leaf. Hang the leaves on the tree using a hole punch and yarn or ribbon.
- Sit around the fire and tell stories about your best and worst holiday memories.
Resources:
The Winter Solstice by John Matthews
The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays by Anthony aveni
Celebrate the Solstice by Richard Heinberg
Ceremonies of the Seasons by Jennifer Cole
The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson
Do you already celebrate the first day of winter? I’d love to hear about your traditions.
Winter Stargazing: 7 Reasons to Observe the Night Sky
My husband Aaron was a devoted viewer of Jack Horkheimer’s Star Hustler (now Stargazer) when he was growing up in the eighties. Aaron still knows his way around the night sky. Whenever we’re out after dark, he points out stars and planets and entertains me with stories about the constellations. I enjoy it. Moreover, I’ve come to believe that stargazing is good for people, especially in the wintertime.
Why?
Because observing the night sky:
1. Gives us perspective.
Staring up at the infinite universe can make one feel small and one’s problems seem downright minuscule. Sierra Tuscon, a drug rehab center, in Arizona, even incorporates star-gazing into recovery programs. Leslie Davis explains on their website:
For those with mood disorders, the stars are something positive and inspiring to focus on. For people in treatment for addiction, the night sky takes them outside themselves, helps them to feel connected, and gives them a sense of purpose
2. Connects us with nature.
It’s hard not to be in awe of the natural world when examining the night sky. And being aware of the moon’s cycles connects us with nature’s rhythms.
3. Unites us with people all over the world.
We all live on the same Earth and look at the same sky, but it can be easy to forget that when we listen to the news and focus on conflicts around the world.
4. Shows us how life was through most of human history.
Winter was a long, dark, and often scary time for people before Thomas Edison invented the long-lasting incandescent light bulb in 1879. Spending time outside at night shows us how our forebears lived in a way that history textbooks can’t.
5. Gets us outside.
Let’s face it, many of us would stay inside, next to the fire, all winter long if we had the choice. Stargazing is an excellent reason to get outside and prevent that winter ailment that most of us are more than a little familiar with – cabin fever.
6. Is easy, inexpensive, and requires no equipment.
And there’s plenty of room to learn and grow. You can join your local astronomy club, save up for a telescope, or pour over Carl Sagan tomes if you enjoy it.
And…
7. The winter nights are long.
The sun is rising around 7 A.M. and setting around 4:30 in most of the U.S. in December, leaving ample time for stargazing. Why not make the most of all the darkness?
Finding the perfect spot
If you’re lucky, you can turn off all the lights in your house and head out to your backyard or balcony to stargaze.
But maybe you live where city lights block out your view of the stars? Consider contacting your local astronomy club. They may hold free monthly dark-sky meet-ups with amateur astronomers on hand to point out constellations. They also may provide telescopes. Or your city might have an observatory that’s open to the public.
Tips for winter stargazing:
- Get a good star-gazing field guide.
- Go to Night Sky Planner to get viewing condition forecasts for your area.
- Bring along a sky chart. (You can download and print a free one each month here or download a stargazing app for your phone).
- Bundle up.
- Bring blankets, binoculars, snacks, and a thermos of hot chocolate or tea.
- Look for winter constellations – Orion, Taurus, Gemini, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, etc – and bright stars – Polaris, Betelgeuse, and Rigel.
- Learn and tell stories about the constellations.
- If using a stargazing app, look for a red filter feature. It takes the eyes up to 20 minutes to adjust to the dark. And just one burst of light can ruin night vision. But red light is not as damaging to night vision.
- If you need to bring a flashlight, cover it with red filter film (or automotive brake light repair tape).
If the weather’s clear in your area, December is an excellent month for stargazing because it’s when the Gemenid Meteor shower is visible. It usually peaks mid-month.
J. Kelly Beatty writes of the Gemenid shower in Sky and Telescope:
With an average of 100 meteors per hour radiating from near the bright star Castor, this end-of-the-calendar shower is usually one of the year’s best. … Geminid meteors come from 3200 Phaethon, an asteroid discovered in 1983.
If you like this post, check out more of my popular posts about exploring nature:
(Photograph of the night sky taken by By Anne Dirkse (www.annedirkse.com), available via Wikipidia Commons)
Do you like to stargaze? Do you have any tips, or are there resources you recommend?
Last days of Fall
The first day of winter is December 21. Look for a post next week on ways to celebrate!
Right now, I’m savoring these last fleeting days of fall….
Walking in the Rain
From the rocking chair, I have a perfect view of the tree in our front yard. I’m spending quite a bit of time in this rocking chair lately, sitting next to the fire, and reading books, singing, snuggling, and comforting.
So I’ve watched this tree’s leaves change, day by day, from green to fiery red to shriveled brown crisps. And now the tree is barren – twisted branches reaching toward the white sky.
“It’s perpetually 4 o’clock for half the year,” my husband and I joked when we moved to Oregon. We came from Colorado, a state that boasts 300 days of sunshine a year, and we’d been living in the high, mountain desert.
Everyone warned us about Oregon’s dark winters and relentless rain. A friend from Bellingham, Washington shuddered when I said we were moving to the Pacific Northwest.
But I knew I’d love it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Some people walk in the rain and others just get wet.”
I walk in the rain. I love the sound of it pattering on the metal roof and the way it smells in the morning, and how the drops cling to the ivy, and the way it turns the grass almost neon green by the end of December.
I love that the weather men here have dozens of ways to say it’s going to rain – showers and mists, drenchers and drizzles, spates and sprinkles.
And I love winter – bundling up to go outside, eating soup, the smell of bread baking, the fire crackling, the long evenings and still afternoons.
So I’m enjoying this first cloudy, drizzly day of December.
But, I must say, that tree would look lovely with a layer of Colorado snow.
This post is for Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Challenge.
Giving Thanks
A few years ago, gratitude became trendy. People started talking about gratitude journals, boxes, and notebooks. The Secret espoused that being grateful is a means to acquiring more material rewards – a better job, a new car, a diamond ring. Gratitude was supposed to be the answer to a happier life, better sleep, vibrant health, and material wealth.
Around then, I became a tad cynical about gratitude.
Maybe instead of sitting around jotting down our thanks for everything, we should be devoting ourselves to improving our health care and criminal justice systems. We should be spending those gratitude-journaling hours working for people in the developing world who don’t even have running water or a reliable food supply. And we certainly shouldn’t pretend that kids growing up in the slums of Delhi or Mumbai could be rich if they just learned to be more grateful.
Maybe I’d give up on gratitude altogether.
But, as it turns out, I have a pathetically grateful disposition. I can’t seem to turn it off. My cat dies, and I immediately think of how thankful I am to have had eight years with him. My husband’s hours get cut back at work, and my first thought is how fortunate we are that he got a cost of living increase this year. My son wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I lie awake just feeling glad that I get to know him. I fear that someone’s playing self-actualization affirmations while I sleep.
In all seriousness, of course, we can be grateful for what we have while working toward a better world. And remembering our fortunes unquestioningly brings more joy to our lives, which is a worthwhile thing to cultivate. But should we think of gratitude as something that could bring in a bigger paycheck or a new boat? I don’t think so.
Besides, with Thanksgiving a few days a way, it’s those simpler things in life that I’m feeling thankful for – like swings (or ga-gums as my son calls them), sunny afternoons, and backyards and all the creatures that inhabit them.
So here’s to gratitude, just because.
Happy Thanksgiving!
This post is for Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Challenge.
* Read Part 2 of this Thanksgiving post (On Gratititude) here. *