Category Archives: Holidays

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Green

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Winter and the Moon of the (highly anticipated) New Year

Tuesday gratefuls: The great conjunction of Jupiter-Saturn. Bertilak de Hautdesert. Gawain. Morgan Le Fay.  Arthur. The Celts. Germans. Swiss. English. Irish. Joseph’s new job. Hawai’i. Maps. Friends.

 

 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight summary.* This long poem is part of the Arthurian tales, perhaps the best known outside of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.

The Green Knight is the most important figure in the poem for our Solstice purposes. Sir Gawain takes on the heavy burden of showing the contradictions between courtly love and chivalry. His role is less significant for Solstice thoughts.

Here a few lines from the poem itself.

“Great wonder of the knight
Folk had in hall, I ween,
   Full fierce he was to sight,
And over all bright green.
the hair of the horse’s head was of green, and his fair, flowing locks clung about his shoulders; and a great beard like a bush hung over his breast, and with his noble hair was cut evenly all round above his elbows, and the lower part of his sleeves was fastened like a king’s mantle. The horse’s mane was crisped and gemmed with many a knot, and folded in with gold thread about the fair green with ever a fillet of hair and one of gold, and his tail and head were intertwisted with gold in the same manner, and bound with a band of bright green, and decked with costly stones and tied with a tight knot above; and about them were ringing many full bright bells of burnished gold. Such a horse or his rider were never seen in that hall before…” wayback machine

He and the horse he rode in on. Green. Green. Green.

At Camelot the great New Year’s feast only awaits the exchanging of gifts to begin. The knights of the round table, Arthur, and Guinevere sit at long trencher tables, chatting and drinking. Their anticipation fades when a commotion erupts. A knight on horseback has ridden into the hall on his horse.

Arthur, not wanting Camelot to look cowardly, agrees to the Green Knight’s challenge after silence in the hall. Cut off his head tonight. In a year and a day find him and offer your neck in return.

Sir Gawain, not wanting Arthur to put his kingship at stake, takes his place. Off comes the Green Knight’s head. It rolls toward the head table and after a bit of searching the green, headless body finds it, and jumps gracefully back on his saddle.

On New Year’s day a year hence Gawain, after a long search starting on All Saint’s Day, finds the Green Chapel. I am known as the Green Chapel Knight, he told Gawain.

The Green Chapel though is no church building. It’s a green mound with openings, like a burial mound. The Green Knight appears.

After three swings, two missed, and one knick on the neck, the Green Knight declares Gawain’s pledge satisfied.

I see two related, but different, relationships to the Winter Solstice in this story. The first, perhaps obvious, perhaps not, concerns the turning of the Great Wheel.

The Green Knight comes to the festive hall on New Year’s eve, not long after the Solstice. The world is still cold. The sun low. Plant life browned and enervated. Chopping off the head of the Green Knight corresponds to the harvest. Even after losing his head, his body, his roots, can find it. He lives yet. Just as plants whose bowed stalks and brown leaves live on underground, ready with stored food for the coming of spring.

All the eating, even the feasting, of the fallow time cannot kill the vegetative life represented by the Green Knight. On the Solstice we stay in the depths, in the darkness, but we also know that on the coming night the light will begin to overtake it. Slowly. Gradually. Until all the Green Heads previously fallen pick themselves up again.

The second correspondence concerns Morgan Le Fay, the withered woman contrasted to the fresh young wife of Bertilak de Hautdesert. A witch and half brother of Arthur, it is Morgan Le Fay who turns Bertilak de Hautdesert into the Green Knight.

Magic. Earth Magic. The green covered burial mound is a chapel. The place of Morgan Le Fay, and the Green Knight may represent the older, nature focused magic, a magic that honored the chaotic reality of the natural world. A magic that confronts the civilized world of revels and knights and governments and agriculture. The organized world. Which can only understand death as finality, not as part of an ongoing cycle.

Christianity adopted a linear view of time. You can see it in a world ending second coming somewhere in the distant future. You can see it in the ominous nature of death. A time of testing, of being sorted, wheat from chaff. Fearing death makes sense if eternal judgment awaits.

Earth magic and the vegetative power of renewal that the Green Knight displays remains in the cyclical world of the Great Wheel. Death. Then, life. Life. Then, death. Decomposition and decay as a good, a way of transforming death into a process, a part of the ongoingness of the Great Wheel.

In both of these interpretations a more ancient, wilder world stands against human conceit. Buildings. Honor. Kings. Not necessarily to displace them, but rather to disrupt them. To remind them of the context of their lives.

Whatever layers we create that push away from the natural world: skyscrapers, airplanes, medicine, family and corporate farms, highways and cars, the natural world is always foundational. Inescapable. The necessary in a contingent world.

Maybe this New Year’s, at a feast near you, a Green Knight will ride in on his Green Horse asking you to cut off his head. What will you do?

 

 

 

 

*The Green Knight came into Arthur’s hall and asked any one of his knights to trade blows.

Sir Gawain accepted this challenge and he was allowed to strike first. He cut off the Green Knight’s head. The latter calmly picked it up and told Gawain to meet him on New Year’s Morning for his turn.

On his way to this meeting, Gawain lodged with a lord and each agreed to give the other what he had obtained during each day of Gawain’s stay. On the first day, when the lord was out hunting, Gawain received a kiss from his wife which was duly passed on. On the second day, he received a brace of kisses which were also passed on. On the third day he was given three kisses and some green lace which would magically protect him, but only the three kisses were passed on.

Having left the lord’s residence, Gawain arrived at the Green Chapel where he was to meet the Green Knight. He knelt for the blow. The Green Knight aimed three blows at Gawain, but the first two did not make contact and the third but lightly cut his neck.

The Green Knight turned out to be the lord with whom he had been staying and he said he would not have cut Gawain at all had the latter told him about the lace. The Green Knight was called Bertilak and he lived at Castle Hutton.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Plants, Science, World History

New Grange. Stonehenge.  Chaco Canyon. Goseck Circle. (Germany) Tulum.

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Winter and the Moon of the New Year (and the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn)

Monday gratefuls: The Winter Solstice. 30 days. Cottagepie from Easy Entrees. Family. Friends. Lights. Jacquie Lawson’s Nordic Advent Calendar. Magic. In an old guy’s heart. Songs. Gifts. The wonder of children.

 

 

Ah. Can you sink into the darkness? Feel its fecund cape wrap round your shoulders? Comforting. Nourishing. Deep. Deep as the depths of your soul. Deep as the depths of time, even beyond time, to the Hawking period before the universe began to expand. Deep as the love you feel for those close to you. Deep as the bounty of mother earth is abundant.

The longest night. It comes to you. The sun low in the sky, the day shortened. Cold weather, perhaps. Early on in humanity’s adventure with the stars they knew. The sun had begun to flee. Even at the height of the growing season, on the summer solstice, the nights had begun to increase in length.

This gradual, oh so gradual, slipping away of the light. Would it continue until the night became all there was? How would the crops grow? The animals get fed? The people stay warm and fed?

But, yes, I imagine they also knew. Last year, too. And the sun returned. And the year before that. Let’s see if we can find the moment, capture the day. That way we can assure each other that the sun will not stay away. Let’s build monuments in stone and wood that capture the light of that day, or the position of the stars on that night.

New Grange. Stonehenge.  Chaco Canyon. Goseck Circle. (Germany) Tulum.

This suggests to me that far from being frightened on this night of nights, the ancients anticipated it, probably looked forward to it. But, they also wanted to be sure it would happen again and again, so they spent vast resources ensuring they would know its arrival.

Can you imagine the celebratory feelings when, just as the stone alignments had predicted in the past, the sun came again through the slot, lined up with the stones? The shaman was right! We would get another growing season. See! Life could go on. Ancient science comforting the masses, just as contemporary science comforts us now with vaccines.

Never in my lifetime have we needed the message of the winter solstice more than this year, this 2020 of cursed memory. As the virus claims more lives, infects more people, remains dangerous especially in the richest nation on earth, we need a sign. Tonight is that sign.

Darkness need not lead to despair. These depths, this night, this virus, are not static. Just as fecund darkness enriches all plant life in the fallow season, so does the light of creation shine each year to enrich the plants in the green time. We know that because tonight teaches about darkness and its twin, the Summer Solstice, teaches us about light. Both necessary. Like the symbol of the Tao.

Rising right now, in the Covid darkness, vaccines have begun to dispel the fear and show us that yes, this pandemic can and will end. We are victims neither of darkness nor the glare of a sun that will not set. The earth teaches us this lesson every year. The Great Wheel turns and so do all the vagaries of life.

Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Wintertide is Coming

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Wintertide  December 21 to February 1

Conifer. Evergreen. Pine. Get it? We live in Conifer, often shop in Evergreen, and I pass through Pine once a month on my way to the Happy Camper in Bailey. Though a bit on the nose, if you visited our mountain towns, you would see how these small communities got their names. Lodgepoles. Ponderosa. Spruce. Dominant here. Greening mountain sides. Out my loft/studio window Black Mountain rises up to 10,000 feet, almost a thousand above our home on the peak of Shadow Mountain. The shadows make it appear Black right now, but in other times of day it is green with the Lodgepoles that cover it. Our backyard. Lodgepole.

This is their season. When they stand green while the Aspen and the Willow and the Ash put away their leaves for the winter. Now, as far back in human history, these trees seem to carry on through the cold and Snow of Winter, ever living, their needles green.

Think of it. The Sun sank lower and lower, the nights grew longer, the air colder. The Maple and the Oak and the Elm and the Willow and the Ironwood all lost their leaves, seemed to shrink into themselves. The gardens had only dead stalks of Beans, Tomatoes, Cabbage. They would stick out, above the first winter Snow, sad and fallen. Dead. The Grasses were brown, bowing to the coming of the Winter King. Nothing that bore food lived. Or, so it seemed.

Except. Conifer. Evergreen. Pine. Maybe a Douglas Fir, a soaring Redwood, a Sequoia. A Jackpine. Still green. Yes. These cold fallow days were not all powerful. Even though the sun had begun to disappear, these trees braved the elements. Still green.

Since Summer’s End, Samain, the time of the last harvest, until Imbolc, February 1st, celebrating the coming of the Ewe’s Milk, there would be no new nourishment from the land, from the world of plants. Even the game in the woods grew thin, suffering the death of the green things as humans did. Fish required chopping through thick ice. Standing in the cold.

Bring in the tree. Bring in the Pine, the Conifer, the Evergreen. Bring them into the house to celebrate the hope, the wish for a new growing season. We need them in the house before the Winter Solstice, when the night and the dark have their victory, light vanquished for as long as it will be all year. Maybe we put stars on them as a Martin Luther tale suggests he did after a Christmas season walk. Or, maybe tree lights remind us of Adam, the first human, who put flaming sticks in the ground for 8 days starting on the Solstice. By the 8th day he trusted the sun would return.

And, bring in a log. A thick one. One that can burn a while. A Yule log. We’ll put it in the fireplace, light it, then put it out each night. At the end of the season we’ll save enough of it to start the fire for the Yule log next Wintertide.

Go outside. Bring in the slash from tree cutting. A few thicker logs. A bonfire! Crackling, sending sparks in the air, up toward the heavens. (not here right now though. wildfires.) Fire. Evergreens. In the fallow time.

Those Romans. Hey, they were something, weren’t they? Saturnalia. Celebrated Jupiter’s overthrow of his father, Saturn. A new world order. It ran from December 17th to December 24th. A lot of decorating,gift giving, feasting, singing songs, giving each other candles to celebrate the eternal light. No Rudolf or Reindeer. Later on.

Lots of other links to these holidays. If you’re interested, find a copy of The Winter Solstice: the Sacred Traditions of Christmas, by John Matthews. Also, good suggestions for celebration.

This winter. This particular winter. Wintertide 2020/2021. So much struggle and pain. So many broken promises. So many damaged homes and souls. And, worsening. Right now. As Wintertide comes into its own. Cases in the quarter million or so a day. Deaths over 370,000. Trump still swinging the wrecking ball. Proud Boys in the streets of D.C. Climate change reappearing. Demands to heal centuries of injustice still heating up the body politic. A divided nation. Oh, my.

So what’s Wintertide all about? Those evergreen Trees that live in the cold and fallow months. Conifer, Pine, Evergreen. The Yule log that burns this year and the next. The long journey into darkness finally comes to a climax. The children of wonder whose births have come to be celebrated now: Attis, Mithras, Baal, Tammuz, Apollo and Dionysus, Jesus. All those architectural monuments to the Winter Solstice: Chichen Itza, New Grange, Stone Henge.

each birth, always

They congregate now, in the fallow time, as human markers of lived hope. Look, the Evergreens can survive! Here’s the piece of the Yule log from last year. Last year! This will end.

Happy birthday baby gods. Reminding us that the true power lives in each of us humans. The sun coming through great hall of New Grange to light up the spirals for seventeen minutes. Kulkukan, the feathered serpent, visible on the steps to the top of the temple at Chichen Itza. We’ve been here before. And made it through.

Trump will leave. We’ll gather round to work on our nation together. The vaccines will arrive and Covid will get pushed back into the ranks of a seasonal flu at most. You and I will see each other. Give those hugs and kisses and handshakes and wiggles that have waited through this benighted year. That’s what Wintertide is all about.

So bring in the mistletoe. Hang some green boughs. Light some candles. Make some glog. Sing songs. Read poetry. We’ll be ok.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Holidays, News of the Strange, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Oh. We live in interesting times.

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Samain and the Moon of the New Year (and the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter)

Saturday gratefuls: 32 days. 32! Nearly finished with the cds. A snowy, snow globe day. Rigel and Kep, our bed warmers. Kate. A wise woman. Smart, too. Vaccines. Coming to an arm near you. Soon. That light in the tunnel went up a bit in brightness. The star over Bethlehem explained? The Winter Solstice. Soon. Staycation.

 

Complex feelings. Friend Tom Crane talked a couple of days ago about the feelings that come up when considering climate change. Made me think about all of us right now. I’ve been labile this week, up and down. Unusual for me. If I get melancholy, I stay there a while. Up and bright? Ditto. But. Covid. Trump. Kate’s long illness. Climate change plus the long road ahead for our nation. Isolation from friends and loved ones.

Bet I’m not the only one experiencing complex emotions. Up. Vaccines. Down. 377,000 deaths. 250,000 + new cases a day. Up. 32 days! Down. Still 32 days left. Up. Renewable energy. Back into the Paris Accords. Down. Baked in heat. Record carbon emissions this year. Up. Jon and Ruth and Gabe on Google Meet. Down. Having to see them on Google Meet. Up. Many good days in a row for Kate. Down. Sudden fatigue yesterday. Up. Good days mean no nausea, no fatigue beyond the usual. Down. Stamina poor.

And these are the big drivers. Every day has mood changes. That unexpected money from the oil well! That crabby e-mail from a relative. Work or relationship stress. Kids. Dogs. Weather. Feelings of self-worth or self-worthlessness. Whatever triggers you. And we all have triggers.

Point. A complex web of stressors has us all dangling in our silken cocoons and each shake of the web warns us that the spider might be coming for her next meal. This is not normal. Where do we go? Out to eat? To a movie? Have friends over? A sabbath service? Take a vacation? Not for most of us. What’s the right metaphor? See-saw. Spider web. Thin ice with cracks. Fingernails on chalkboards. Whatever it is, this is a fraught time. An interesting time.

I’m giving myself permission to feel these movements, up and down, and to react to them. To not be hard on myself for not maintaining an up feeling in down times. Perhaps you need this permission, too.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Holidays, Music, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Music

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Samain and the Moon of the New Year (with the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter)

Friday gratefuls: 1:00 am this morning. Time to think about things. Mark and Riyadh. The Winter Solstice. The Green Knight. The evergreen Trees with lights. That big log that burns this year and next. Presents. Holiday cheer. Diane and her Easy Entrees gift. Yum. CD’s. Music. Especially Chamber Music. And, jazz. And, Janis Joplin. Vaccines. 33 days. His moving van. His moving carcass. Climate Change. Covid. And all of its many blessings.

 

A few years ago, copying Charlie Haislet, I bought a cd carousel. We put as many in it of ours that would fit. It took a long time and we created an elaborate system for knowing where each cd was in the system. Never used it. Moved it out here. It’s big and clunky. Why did I do that, I wondered? We decided to take them out, replace them in their clamshells. Underway, maybe fifty percent done. As we’ve sorted them, I’ve begun to yearn for more music in my life. Again.

Kate and I met at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as you probably know. I went for seventeen years, Kate even longer. When we moved to Andover, driving in became less and less attractive. We would want to go. Mean to go. And sit at home anyhow. I love Mozart, Haydn, Faure, Chopin, Ives, Barber. I love hearing them live. Chamber music, after all. Without the big, to me often overwhelming sound, of a full orchestra. So many memorable evenings at the Ordway in Rice Park. In particular, of course, the one where I finally found the courage to ask Kate out for coffee.

Next. Figuring out a way to connect cd player to the inhouse speakers. Folks before had an elaborate sound system, but we’ve never made it work. Chicken soup? I can do. Wiring? Oy vey. I’m gonna give it the old college try, then hire geek squad or somebody like them if I can’t get it.

It has given Kate and me something to do together twice. putting them in and taking them out. Oh, well. Best laid plans…

Awake last night. Spent a few minutes wondering why I eat so much red meat. Result: I like it. An addictive personality I guess, but I can’t quit. Moved on as anyone pondering matters at 1 am is wont to do. Imaging the ending of Jennie’s Dead. The twilight of the gods. A deomachy. Want to write it. Covid. Vaccines.

Glad for Covid. Got trump on his way. Making us consider our nation and democracy at their core levels of meaning. Sad about the deaths, the isolation from friends and family. Yes. But nothing is only one thing.

Very glad Biden picked Deb Haaland to run the Interior Department. A Native American in charge of the Cabinet department most implicated in crimes against them. Should make for a very interesting four years. “ … I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.” WP And Michael Reagan as head of the EPA. Brenda Mallory will head the White Office of Environmental Quality. Both Black. The Sierra Club has had environmental justice at the forefront of its work for years because communities of color are disproportionately affected by dirty water, polluted air, and toxic waste. So, bout time.

Now we have to win those two Senate races in Georgia. If I were younger and Kate healthier, I’d go to Georgia to work on the campaigns. So, so important.

What a fucking year.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Holidays, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Writing

Electoral College. Today, and Today only. Yes.

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Samain and the 2021 Moon (yes, this moon will be full on December 30th and still big on the 31st. It will light our way out of this god forsaken chunk of chronology.)

Monday gratefuls: Cribbage. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Snow on the ground. Blue Sky overhead. Hanukkah with the grandkids on Wednesday over zoom. Rigel’s visit today to the docs who cured her endocarditis. 37 days. When will he ever leave? The electoral college votes today. The Supreme Court ruled against the Texas lawsuit. Pushing us toward a new gratitude for our system. And, how it needs to change. BLM. Yes. Police radical reform. Yes. A broken medical system reform. Yes. Inclusion of all Americans. Yes. Better education and financial support for working class folks. Yes. Vaccines. That light at the end of the tunnel. Faint, but growing brighter.

 

Sometimes I wish I was more poetic. Less choppy, more graceful in my prose. More metaphorical. More allusive. But. I’m not. I’m a meat and potatoes writer. You can see all the ingredients. Shorter sentences. Phrases. Using those ands, buts, and ors as headers. It’s not so much choice as it is feel. The way things come out, especially when I write Ancientrails. My way. Not a High way. A side road. Might be scenic, though.

Next March Ancientrails will begin its sixteenth year. The longest project I’ve ever engaged. And, I still don’t know it’s purpose. A sort of heads up to my friends and family about life. Sure. It replaced years of handwritten journals. Probably those were more revealing about certain matters, less about others. Ancientrails has turned into a running commentary on my life, Kate’s, dogs, kids, grandkids. Politics. Religion. Art sometimes. If you’re a reader, thanks for following this inner dialogue.

Another staycation starting this week. No exercise. Learning new games we’ve purchased. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Seven Wonders Duel. Twilight Struggle. Doing this and that around the house. Maybe some painting and writing. I’m trying to resolve a persistent inner conflict between caregiving and creative work.

Why is this so hard? Something about my schedule. About when I exercise. Cook. Eat. Nap. Watch TV. I could do things in a different way, but I don’t.

Yes. Even as I write this and read back over it, I can see the dark angel of doubt, of melancholy hovering over it all. Not a place I wanna be. But. Here I am. Again.

My hope. Some downtime will help a new way of organizing my time emerge. Or, an inner assent to this is the way things are now. That my creative work also involves shopping, cooking, caring. Could be. Navel gazing. Yeah.

Let’s hear it for the finality of the electoral college voting today. I don’t like the electoral college for reasons you already know, but I’m happy about its finish line role right now. Start renting the U-Hauls, Don, you’re moving house soon.

How will we move forward? The important question now. In choppy, contentious ways, I imagine. But without the fact confounder. Without the ethical midget. Without the orange hair and funny skin. Without the Dunning-Kruger mind at the helm. Without his cronies. Without his kids. Without him.

We could sink, relieved, into a blinkered return to “normal.” We must not. For, if the Donald has done nothing else, he has made us turn huge spotlights on the cracks in our nation. The Grand Canyons of racial oppression, violent policing, fenced medical care, and a chaotic foreign policy. We see them now. All of us. Time for radical change. Let’s get it going.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Letters, Memories, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

A Wandering Soul

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Sunday gratefuls: Paul’s birthday. Mark Ellis. Mary. Diane. Rigel, keeping me warm. Dr. Bachtel. Cod fingers and steak bits. Onion and Cucumber salad. A Colorado blue Sky day. Colorado road builders. Jeffco snowplow drivers. Whoever invented concrete and macadam. Britain. Wales. Scotland. England. Isle of Man. Druids. The Holy Isle. Castle Conwy. Hawarden, Wales. St. Deniol’s residential library. Chester, England. Horse racing there.

I have my toe in the Christmas Spirit pond. Not fully there, but it’s coming. Feels wonderful. Getting ready to dive into some research on Yule and the Winter Solstice. Where most of the Christmas traditions originate. I love learning about Celtic and Northern European religious traditions. Their pantheons. Their myths and legends. Snorri Sturluson. Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Tolkien’s work. Beowulf. Not sure why but these traditions resonate with my inner life. As does Taoism and the lifeways of the Japanese. Much more so than the New Testament or the Torah. Seems strange that it would be so. But, it is.

Even Diwali and Holi. I’d like to experience Holi at least once. Throwing colored powder at each other to celebrate the riotous colors of spring and the triumph of good over evil? Yes. Messy, beautiful, ecstatic.

Buddhism doesn’t do it for me either. Except certain aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. Yamantaka. Bardo. Again, not sure why. Thin soup for me.

Those traditions that find animacy everywhere like Shinto, many Native American traditions. Yes. Roman and Greek myth, legend. Yes, not in a soul way, but as story, as ancient layers below this civilization in which we live.

Perhaps my soul never left the time into which it was born. Maybe during the journey out of Africa when all things were miraculous. When all things moved and lived and had their being right alongside those of us on pilgrimage to humanity’s future. Or, maybe some shamanic ancestor moved directly into this body. Wondering what it was like far from his or her time.

Whatever the explanation. Once I began to see, and then shed, the totalizing myths I’d been steeped in from birth… Well. I can’t unlearn the fragile and human created nature of them. The scent of fear in them, attempting to make certain an uncertain world. Building meaning for lives out of tissue paper and sealing wax. Like the Catholics who built their English churches over Celtic holy wells. Tried to absorb enough of the Faery Faith to draw the Celts away from their pagan practices. It worked. For a while. As Judaism and Islam work for a while, for many. Zoroastrianism.

Not sure about Hinduism. It seems to want those most early, most primal connections with this place. Great stories like the Ramayana and the Rig Veda. I don’t know it well enough. Maybe never will. The Mahabharata. Many mystical practices. Lots of color and fun. Also, the dark side of caste, of killing Muslims.

This month though, the time of deepest darkness, has inspired so much wonderful music. Story. Celebration. At least for those of us in the temperate latitudes. And, I revel in it. Going down with the longest night into the well of my soul. Coming out to light an evergreen tree, hang mistletoe, holly and ivy. Santa Claus. Elves. Snow. Cold. Icicles. Sleighs. Horses with halters. Fire up the yule log. Wish I could lift a glass of grog, or ambrosia, or single malt scotch. But, alas no.

Guess this is my Sunday unsermon. Leaving one way and seeking others.

Colorado, Family, Holidays, Humanities, Judaism, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

8 Lights for Covid Nights

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Saturday gratefuls: A full week of workouts. Garlic steak bits, Shrimp, Broccoli, Rice. The Cow that died for our meal. The Shrimp, too. 46 days. K=shaped recovery. Essential Workers. Hanukkah. Yule. Winter Solstice. Christmas. Lights. Decorations. Music. Good cheer. Remembering the Maccabees. The menorah. The prayers. Solar Snow shovel. Cod. Drug holiday for mirabegron. Cribbage. 7 Wonders Duel. Deepening intimacy. Covid. Its horrors and its wonders. The election. A new year coming.

Did some decorating yesterday. Will finish today. Up here in the  loft? Pagan mysteries time. Lights. Santa Claus. Ornaments. Christmas quilt. Christmas pillow. Katy did them. Bill’s gift Christmas tie and Santa hat on my Woolly Mammoth. Snow globes with Christmas scenes. Grandma’s holiday music on Pandora. Grandpop’s, too. A tree, too, possibly today.

I’m reclaiming childhood memories and welding them onto the thinking I’ve done. Long since childhood passed. This house is Hanukkah house and I’m glad. This loft is a Christmas without the birth loft and I’m glad. Oh, the weather outside is not as frightful as I’d like, but up here it’s delightful. Down below it’s all dreidels and gelt and candles. Also delightful. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

What are you gettin’ for Hanukkah? For many Jewish kids Hanukkah is the Jewish Christmas. A time for gift giving and receiving. No Santa Claus, but, hey. Many, including those who do give gifts, light the menorah, one candle a night for 8 nights, say the prayers, then it’s done. You can’t blow out the candles and you can’t use them, i.e. read by them, use them to light your way to bed, hunt for a fallen coin. At certain points dreidels come out, gelt-now mostly gold foil wrapped chocolates, singing.

Back of all this. A more interesting story.

Alexander the Great divided up his empire among his favorite generals. Seleucus I Nicator got Western Asia, a large chunk of land that ran from present day Turkey in the west to parts of present day Uzbekistan and Pakistan in the east. They pushed the Ptolemy’s out of Palestine around 200 b.c.e. Hellenization, in which many upper class Jews dropped their religion and adopted Greek lifeways, was already well underway when Antiochus IV Epiphanes took over the Seleucid Empire in 175 b.c.e.

Thus, there was a conflict not only between Jews and the Seleucid empire, but between Hellenizing Jews and those determined to maintain their faith and practice. Antiochus came into the latter conflict by declaring traditional Jewish practice forbidden.* This led to the Maccabean revolt, a guerilla war fought by traditional Jews against the Seleucids. They won.

And, now. Hanukkah. The Seleucids, perhaps Antiochus himself, had profaned the second temple. (see the wiki entry below) When the Maccabees got the temple back, they found all the oil in the temple desecrated save for one amphora that still had its priestly seal intact. Then, a miracle occurs.

No new oil could be obtained for 8 days and the amphora contained only enough for one day. Still, the temple menorah had to be lit. During the night all seven lights were lit. Always. When the temple menorah, which was huge, received oil from the one still blessed amphora, it stayed lit for 8 days until fresh sanctified oil could be had. The miracle.

Though the temple menorah only had seven lights, the Hanukkah menorah has nine. 8 of them commemorate the miracle and the 9th, the shamash, (helper, servant) is lit first and lights the other candles. In the tradition that we follow, on the first night there is one candle, on the second two, on the third three and so on until 8. Kate lights the candles and reads the prayers. I recite them with her. If the kids are here, gifts get distributed. Much like Christmas.

The first level of meaning is the miracle of the oil. That’s the one most recall. The second level of meaning lifts up the willingness of traditional Jews to take up the fight against the mighty Seleucid empire. And win! A third level of meaning is that the traditional Jews fought for the right to be different from their imperial power. Although. The traditional Jews may have also been fighting to reclaim Judaism from the upper classes who had assimilated.

It is a minor holiday compared to the High Holidays, Pesach, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, but it is the holiday most visible to the goyim. And, it has been made to fit into the whole Christmas holiday dither.

Ruth at Beth Evergreen, new year’s 2017, end of Hanukkah

 

*According to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus banned many traditional Jewish and Samaritan[14] religious practices: he made possession of the Torah a capital offense and burned the copies he could find;[24] sabbaths and feasts were banned; circumcision was outlawed, and mothers who circumcised their babies were killed along with their families;[25] and traditional Jewish ritual sacrifice was forbidden. It was said that an idol of Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple and that Israelites set up altars to Greek gods and sacrificed “unclean” animals on them. Wiki

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Holiday Spirit(s)

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Friday gratefuls: Sleep. Cribbage. Kate, always Kate. Rigel, who kept me warm last night. Kep, just because. Nordic Advent calendar by Jacquie Lawson. Advent. The days of our lives. Covid. 46 days. Ruth. Gabe. Jon. Jon’s birthday on the 10th. 52. Hanukkah begins the same day. Santa Claus. Yule logs. Christmas trees. Lights. Ornaments. Holly and ivy. Christmas music. Corny and classical. This wonder-full time.

 

Bloomberg. The magazine. Peak Oil is Suddenly Upon Us. Yet another reason Covid is a blessing. If climate change matters to you, this article is a bit of good news. It features the conclusion that peak oil is behind us by British Petroleum, BP. May it be so. And may we push it along.

Feeling glum has passed. Still ready for that holiday spirit though. That pagan holiday spirit. After all: Evergreen tree, lights, drinking and feasting and gifting, mistletoe, holly and ivy, being with family and friends. None of that in the New Testament. Well, ok. Gifts. The three wise guys. Otherwise it’s Saturnalia and Northern European traditions. Gotta get those decorations.

Cribbage. Playing more of it now. Something Kate and I enjoy. Will try rummikub, too. Just got two two player games: The Twilight Struggle and the Duel. Two more in the mail. Expecting a good while still until the all clear, go breathe on your neighbors without killing them. Keep changing things up a bit.

Kakun thoughts. In conversation with Kate. Trust first. Two leggeds all equal. Life precious. Stay at it. Learn. Serve. Protect. Educate. Create. Work as part of nature, not on it or in spite of it. See. See. Hear. Hear. Clunky so far, but maybe it’ll get smoothed out. I do have a family crest, somewhere. Not sure if it has a motto or not. I’ll try to track it down.

No election fraud. Ballots cast included President and down ballot races. Republicans did ok on down ballot, but the Presidential race is suspect? Come on, guys and gals. Geez.

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My Christmas Wish

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Samain and the Thanksgiving Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Last night Kate said as we were going to sleep, I know one of your gratefuls. OK. Your electric blanket. Oh, yeah. She right. And that down comforter on top of it. Plus, the cold bedroom that makes them both necessary and a joy. In the single digits here. Windows open. Our way. The small Animal which created the narrow tracks that look like a tiny wagon had crossed our snowy driveway. The Mule Deer that came by later. My own, for that matter. The wheel tracks of the garbage taken out yesterday morning. Temporary memories. Our mailbox. Bought one that has a door in the back as well as the front. I can get the mail without standing on Black Mountain Drive as folks drive home from work.

 

Prepping for a Hanukkah post. Advent, too. Yule and the Winter Solstice. Why is our New Year’s in the middle of winter? Kwanza. This is a big holiday month. We need it this year. We also need it to be safe. Hope you have an uncomplicated but joyous holimonth.

My Christmas wish. Please make DJT disappear from the television, social media, and print. I don’t care if he stays in the Whitehouse until US Marshals come to serve him an eviction notice. I’ve coined a phrase, and I don’t want it to offend those who got PTSD in horrendous circumstances, or to demean them in any way, but Post Trump Stress Disorder is real. His voice, his image, news articles about him trigger me. His careful enunciation of outright lies, his presentation as conman in chief shames our country and has been repudiated. Couldn’t we muzzle him for the next 48 days? I have a wire muzzle for Kepler that out to fit him. Or maybe noise cancelling electronic devices when he opens his mouth?

Still feeling glum. I don’t have the holimonth spirit. And, I want it. Gonna find that box of Christmas decorations in the garage and lug it up here. String up some lights. Position my small collection of Christmas snowglobes around. Put out ornaments. I’ve got a spruce on our property to cut for a tree. Not a very big one. While I’m decorating, I’ll hit Pandora’s Christmas music stations.

Oddly, what I miss about Christmas is not the church services, except for the music. I don’t miss the creche. Nor the story of a baby God. I miss the parts of Christmas that make it a family holiday. The tree. The music. The food. That Night Before Christmas feeling. I want to put out a five dollar bill, ok, maybe a twenty, so Santa can go eat at the Rustic Station in Bailey. Get some of those buttermilk pancakes. I’ll put out hay for Rudolph and Dancer and Vixen and all the team. Some milk or whatever elves prefer. This is the Christmas that absorbed so much of the pagan Yule.

Today’s a Happy Camper day. I’ll see the white tops of the Continental Divide as I drive on 285. Snow sprinkled Ponderosa, Lodgepole, Spruce line the highway. At points along the way, tucked away in the tree are the stone chimneys and fireplaces left over from earlier settlers cabins. Not to far from Conifer High School, on the way to 285, are two cabins from that time, too. They’re dotted all over. Plenty on Shadow Mountain Drive. The road goes up steeply and down dramatically. Mountain roads. Each time I drive here I look at the mountains, scan for wildlife, enjoy the odd mix of businesses and homes, some mansions often high up. Five full years this Winter Solstice and it’s all still beautiful and amazing to me.

I’m not a small government guy. Not at all. I believe government has the responsibility to keep all of its citizens healthy, educated, housed, and with adequate nutrition. Even so. I want government to recede, go back to its normal presence in our lives. Post Trump Stress Disorder has made me eager to have him gone and to have words and whole sentences, complete thoughts in the mouths of our government officials. Calm. Quiet. At least until January 20th. Please.