Winter Solstice--Yule

We met last night for one of the more intimate celebrations in my 20 years of celebrating the Winter Solstice. We were expecting 25 when the day started but got eight cancellations before the party actually got underway. A total of 17 people actually showed up. But they were people with a lot to share.

I tossed a pork loin roast in the roaster at about noon with a bunch of potatoes and carrots and just let it cook all day as we cleaned and decorated for the party. Just barely got a shower and the Yule Log prepared by the time the first guests arrived. Then drafted them into helping prepare my baked apples and finish the tables.

Dishes of every shape and description showed up, including hors d'oeuvres, salads, veggies, beef borgoyne, fruit compote, paella, cheesecake, and pecan pie. There was also a completely irresistable peanut brittle. Of all the dishes, that one was scraped pretty much clean.

After folks had champagne and were pretty much through their first helping of dinner, I started the evening's rituals.

I have a candle holder that holds three candles, one white for the Maiden goddess, one green for the Matron goddess, and one red for the Crone goddess. I welcome them to our celebration as I light each candle. Then I tell this year's version of the goddess in the underworld. The story is ancient. Starhawk has an excellent version in her book The Spiral Dance. But each year I tell it a little differently. This year, it was specifically to honor a close friend who passed away this fall. She was a phenomenal singer.

The Goddess looked out on the world and saw a place where life was withering and turning brown and dry. And she listened and wept: for the music had gone out of the world.

So she set her face to the underworld and began her journey. When she came to the river across which all the dead must pass, she was challenged and a sword was pointed at her breast. "Who comes before the dread mighty ones?" asked the voice. "It is I, a child of earth and heaven," responded the goddess. "Know you that it is better to fall on my sword and perish than to come before the presence of the mighty with fear in your heart," continued the voice. "I come with perfect love and perfect trust," spoke the goddess calmly. Then she was stripped of all her clothes and jewels and was bound hand and foot, for so must all come who are brought before the Lord of the Underworld.

When she entered his realm, he saw her and loved her. "Why have you come?" asked the Lord. "You have taken the music from the world and all is dying," answered the goddess. "Why do you cause all that I love to die?" "Lady," answered the Lord, "it is the nature of all that lives to die. Here they find peace and gentle music to rest their souls. But pray, do not leave me, for I love you. Stay and be my consort."

And she stayed with him for three days and three nights after which she took the circlet from his head and wove it in music around her waist and said: "I am the circle of rebirth. As all through you must die, so all through me may live again. Therefore enter into me and be reborn." And he entered into her and was reborn again so that now he is not only Lord of the Underworld and Prince of Darkness, but Prince of Light and Lord of the Dance.

And as he entered the birth canal he heard her voice say, "It is a long and lonely road, but do not be afraid. I have walked it before you."

We played a cut from the musician's album and while it played I passed around last year's Yule log. It had multi-colored dripping candles on it last year and was splashed with an incredible amount of wax. Each person placed upon the log the things that they wanted to be rid of from the past year. For the most part this was done in silence, though some mentioned wanting to place the bitterness and anxiety of the past election on the log to leave behind.

Then I put the log in the fireplace where I had a good fire started. It flamed up brilliantly and before the night was over, I made sure it had burned completely to ash. As it was a rather large log, it took the better part of four hours or more for this to be accomplished.

Fortunately, we had adequate food, drink, and stories to last till midnight.

After the main course of dinner, we gathered around the Christmas tree and put our ornaments on the tree. Each guest brought an ornament and a story to tell. Some ornaments were store-bought, chosen from the heart. Some were hand-crafted, and there were even one or two that were virtual. Each ornament represented what the giver wants remembered from their past year. The stories were incredible and it took nearly two hours for sixteen people to tell about their past year. It ranged from people out of work and re-hired to people quitting work to make a life change to a man who had been thirty feet from a lightning strike and a woman who temporarily lost her senses of taste and smell. We heard stories of people who taught school and who walked on fire, who became politically active, who built a home, and who lost loved ones. And each story was heard and shared by all of us.

After dessert and coffee, those who could stay out late gathered back around this year's Yule Log. This year it was a piece of driftwood that we collected on an island in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. On it were 13 candles, each a different size and color, that represent the 13 lunar months of the year. And as we each lit our candles it was with our wishes for the coming year: peace, prosperity, memory of dear ones, hopes for children, putting the divisions of the past electoral season behind us. Then we just shared memories and thoughts as we turned out all the rest of the lights in the room and just watched the candles burn and each other's faces in the candle light.

I don't know why, but this year's ritual left me with a pervading sense of peace and serenity that I don't often feel. Many friends commented on how this celebration brought together so many people of such diverse backgrounds and allowed them a safe time to open up and share things that they would probably not share at any other time of the year, or with any other group of people.

I read through my journal of all the ornaments from the past 17 years (I started collecting them in 1987), and hung many from past years on the tree, remembering the people and the events that they represented. I've begun to pull the ornaments contributed by the four people who have come to my Solstice celebration in the past who have died--three this year. I'm going to braid a long garland out of multi-colored yarn and weave their ornaments into it. As others make that journey, I'll continue to put their ornaments in the garland and to make it thicker as I do so. Eventually, we will all be represented in the garland and perhaps someone else will remember us when they hang this very strange ornament on their Christmas Tree.