We are generally trapped by the dominant paradigm of colonialist/commercialist (because the Santa you know and love is a coca-cola marketing campaign) racist/sexist/homophobic ‘holidays’ that seem to permeate the last couple of months of the year. I know, I know, we’ve been told we don’t have any christmas spirit (and you are right, nor do we want either of those things for several reasons). But contrary to the limited scope of how we function in the world, we do enjoy marking the seasons and celebrating life on the longest night of the year.
Our Winter celebrations, however, begin with the Solstice (not end the ‘holiday season’) because it is the long Winter we are hoping to make it through. We have stockings which we fill with treats and small gifts for each other and maybe if it is a good year we can get a gift or two for each other (this would not be one of those years, but maybe next year). We have an ‘Event Calendar’ to mark the December days until the Solstice where we do fun things like make waffle breakfast, listen or make music together, play board games, have spa time (Duende likes to paint our toes while we sit around with face masks), maybe go out and see other people’s lights in the snow, and get a few treats like chocolate or pomegranates. D usually decorates a cover for an old type tray that we’ve filled in the slots with pictures of our ‘events’. Most years she paints or draws some kind of house and we cut out the windows, this year she pencil-colored a ‘sewing kit’ and we cut out the spools of thread. I like it when we take a seasonal walk to see how the land is shifting and our environment changing.
If we get any other presents, we generally just open them before the Solstice. Solstice is just for us and our celebrating together. If we have the morning off of work during our celebration D makes lovely biscuits and we eat them with honey and jam together and then for dinner we get Take-Out (we only get take out maybe 3 times a year, so it’s a big deal for us). This year, hopefully we can still do the latter — last year, it was so busy we had to wait a week.
This year, too, we’re going to take some time off together. Because D is in school, she has the week off (subject to the dominant paradigm, of course) so we want to spend time with her. We will likely relax a bit, clean a bit, and have a couple days out and about in one of Maine’s cute little towns. I’m sure D will take some time to make us biscuits then, and maybe we’ll make some homemade pasta. We’ll do a New Year’s dinner of a beautiful leg of lamb (thank you Mutton Claus!) and an Upside Down Peach Gingercake I’m dying to make.
We manage our lovely celebration despite having to work around the notion that everyone should do what the dominant paradigm dictates — it’s good to remember there are different kinds of folks out there, doing different things, just trying to get along. We hope you enjoy a celebration that doesn’t dictate how others live their lives.
Happy Winter Solstice.
Rock Bottom Homestead 