Wishing you a bright Alban Arthan!

Our Irish-Celtic roots are tugging at us today. We wish all of you a Happy Winter Solstice [Alban Arthan] and a new year full of warmth and light. As we work our own way through some last minute holiday panics, we're almost ready for Christmas next week. 'Twill be a blessing when the preparations are done and the celebrations begin. Already, some of the sprigs of green are dropping prickly leaves that impale our fingers as we tidy up. We have completely failed this year in our efforts to replace the live, potted holly we bought at a big box store a couple of Christmases ago. This Autumn it packed it in finally. The Better Half located some cut branches, but it's not the same. We will be on a campaign to find and care for a variegated holly plant this Spring for next Winter's Solstice.

our recently departed holly plant in better days

Photo by J. Harrington

More and more we've become enamored of a practice of using this time of year to examine what may be holding us back and to cast it off or away so we can better move forward as the sun begins to return  in a few days and a new year is upon us. Until recently, we had done very well holding to a New Year's Resolution we made many years ago, to not make New Year's Resolutions. That whole time, we hadn't once considered the possibility of remaking or renewal of ourselves. We were focused on discrete actions like learning something or losing something like weight. These days we're trying more to create some coherence across our activities. The Druid cycle based on an eightfold wheel of the year and druid festivals helps bring some unity into our life.

We mentioned a few posts ago that we have a family tradition that requires us to find, purchase and read a "Christmas book" each year. This year we chose The Dragon in the Christmas Tree. Even though there are some dragon-lovers in our family, this book might have been more enjoyable if some of us were much younger. (Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea cycle sets a very high standard for the portrayal of dragons.) Anyway, this morning we serendipitously came across what we think will be next year's selection, Merry Midwinter: How to Rediscover the Magic of the Christmas Season.We're hopeful that it may do for humans what Ray Bradbury's Dogs Think that Every Day Is Christmas did for extending the season for canines.

Toward the Winter Solstice

Timothy Steele, 1948

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;   
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

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