Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Seasonal celebrations

Celebrate the First Day of Spring

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Celebrate the First Day of Spring #spring #familycelebrations #seasons

The first day of spring is nearly here. What better time to start some new traditions? Here are some ideas:

  • Place a bouquet of crocuses, daffodils, tulips, or dandelions in your kids’ bedrooms while they sleep, so they wake up to fresh spring flowers.
  • Go on a hike and identify wildflowers if some are sprouting in your area.
  • Visit a local farm and see if you can get a glimpse of calves, lambs, or chicks in the barnyard.
  • Make dandelion or clover chains if those flowers are coming up where you live. Wear them as spring crowns.
  • Watch the sun rise. (You can find out what time it will rise here.)
  • Sow seeds. Have each family member pick a favorite flower to plant. Designate a special garden, and make a ceremony of it.
  • Establish a table-top, shelf, or mantel to display spring flowers, cherry buds, egg shells, a bird’s nest, or whatever symbolizes springtime in your family.
  • Read books about the season! Some of my family’s favorite spring picture-books are: Spring: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schur, Spring by Ron Hirschi, and Home for a Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.
  • Read aloud from The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth by Ellen Jackson.
  • Make a spring feast with the first crops of the season. Dandelion leaves, steamed nettles, and asparagus are delicious spring greens. Other traditional spring foods include eggs, ham, and sweets.
  • Eat dinner by candlelight.
  • Eat outside if weather permits, or have a picnic on a blanket in the living room.
  • Decorate hard-boiled eggs with natural dyes. Try beets, cranberries, blackberries, or raspberries for red; yellow-onion skins or turmeric for yellow; parsley, spinach, or red-onion skins for green; blueberries for blue; and coffee, pecan hulls, or black-walnut hulls for brown. Or experiment – try whatever’s coming up in your backyard. You can read more about making natural egg dyes in the book Together: Creating Family Traditions.

Or create your own traditions to welcome spring.

Resources for seasonal celebrations:

The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays by Anthony F. Aveni
Ceremonies of the Seasons by Jennifer Cole
The Spring Equinox: Celebrate the Greening of the Earth by Ellen Jackson
Together: Creating Family Traditions by Rondi Hillstrom Davis and Janell Sewall Oakes
The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

*Are you planning a celebration for the first day of spring?*

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Celebrate the First Day of Winter!

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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.

Celebrate the first day of fall!

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The first day of fall, or the autumnal equinox, is September 22 in the Northern Hemisphere. On this day, the sun hovers above the equator, and most of the world enjoys nearly equal amounts of light and darkness. In traditional agricultural societies, the harvest season was drawing to a close, and people were working overtime to prepare stores for the winter months. The equinox was a time to relax, celebrate, and enjoy the bounty of the harvest while anticipating the scarcity or monotony of their winter diet.

In modern times, autumn is a time for new beginnings – a new school year, new clothes, new friends, a new outlook.

How do cultures around the world celebrate the first day of fall?

Asian Moon Festivals

The Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese have been celebrating the equinox with Moon Festivals, or Mid-Autumn Festivals, for 3000 years. In China, families and friends gather to admire the mid-autumn harvest moon, light lanterns, burn incense, and plant trees. They prepare mooncakes – a noodle-like dough filled with bean or lotus seed paste and duck egg yolks or other fillings, which are then steamed, baked, or fried.

Japanese Autumnal Equinox Day

In Japan, the fall equinox is a national holiday. The seven days starting three days before the equinox until three days after is known as Higan. The Japanese spend Higan holding family reunions and visiting family graves, offering flowers, cleaning tombstones, burning incense, and praying. Ohagi, sticky rice covered with adzuki-bean paste or soybean flour, is a popular offering to the deceased.

Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah is a two-day holiday that falls on the first and second day of the month of Tishri on the Jewish calendar – usually between September 5 and October 5 on our calendar. This year it falls from sunset on September 18 to nightfall on September 20. Rosh Hashanah is the “day of judgment” in the Torah. Observors abstain from work and spend the day in the synagogue. A shofar (ram’s horn) is blown many times to waken listeners to the coming judgment. People reflect on mistakes made in the last year and plan changes for the new year. Many observers also practice Tashlikh, or “casting off” on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah. They fill their pockets with pieces of bread, walk to a natural body of water, and empty the bread into the water, symbolically casting off the previous year’s sins. Apples or bread dipped in honey is common Rosh Hashanah fare.

Native American Harvest Ceremonies

Many tribes once celebrated the end of the harvest with equinox ceremonies. The Cherokee gave thanks to all living things at a Nuwati Egwa festival and the Chumash of southern California held a sun ceremony at the end of September. The Miwok in Northern California still celebrate the acorn harvest with a Big Time Festival on the last weekend of September. Traditionally, the Miwok relied on the acorn for food. In the fall, they harvested the fruits, cracked them, ground the meat into meal, rinsed the meal to remove its bitter tannins, and made acorn mush, bread, or soap. At modern Big Time festivals, Miwok and other California tribes perform traditional dances, play hand games, and tell stories.

Create some autumn traditions this year.

Pick activities that you’ll enjoy and want to do year after year. Here are some ideas:

  • Establish a table-top, shelf, or mantel to display a seasonal tableau. On the first day of fall, replace the summer decorations with leaves, ornamental corn, gourds, jack-o-lanterns, acorns, pine cones, 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 fall picture-books are: Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White; Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert; Autumn is for Apples by Michelle Knudsen; Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell; Fall is Not Easy by Marty Kelly; and It’s Fall! by Linda Glaser.
  • Read aloud from The Autumn Equinox by Ellen Jackson.
  • Make Chinese lanterns and hang them in the house or on the porch. Click here or here for a how-to.
  • Visit a local orchard, pick apples, and make apple cider, sauce, or pie.
  • Invite friends over for a harvest feast, prepared with foods from your garden or the farmer’s market. Traditional autumn foods include: pears, squash, pumpkin, apples, stews, and mulled ciders.
  • Bring a pile of blankets out to the porch, yard, or park, cuddle together, and tell stories about your best or worst back-to-school memories.
  • Go on a nature hike and enjoy the crisp air and colorful leaves.
  • Day and night are equal, so it’s the perfect time to talk, as a family, about balance – the importance of it and ways to create more in your lives.
  • After the sun sets, grab a pair of binoculars, cuddle under blankets, and star gaze. Taurus, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, and Ursa Minor reappear in the night sky around the equinox.

Have you started any new family traditions lately? Are you going to celebrate the first day of fall this year? I’d love to hear about it!

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