We're about 15 days out from the #equinox , still have time to plan!

#Pagan
#WheelOfTheYear
#SpringEquinox
#AutumnEquinox

A really wonderful piece for knitters to read as we head from Imbolc to Ostara, spring equinox. https://www.moderndailyknitting.com/community/knitting-the-wheel-of-the-year/

Spring is here, and with it comes Ostara—the festival of renewal, balance, and fresh beginnings! Celebrate the season with rituals, nature magic, and new intentions. Dive deeper into the magic of the Spring Equinox with my book, Your Ostara Kit: Rituals, Reflection, and Renewal by a Mental Health Therapist! #Ostara #SpringEquinox #PaganTraditions #WheelOfTheYear #OstaraBook

https://soniamrompoti.com/2025/03/02/ways-to-honor-ostara-a-guide-to-spring-equinox/

An inspirational blog by Mat Auryn:
"Tending the Flame: Holding Onto #Hope in Dark Times
What #Imbolc Teaches Us About Hope"

https://matauryn.substack.com/p/tending-the-flame-holding-onto-hope

#fedicoven Q19 How do you celebrate the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox? (Imbolg)

For me it's Latha Fhèile Brighide & I lay out Brighid's Bed, a ritual attested back to the 1300s in Scotland. Fire & water are also part of this holiday for me so I do a sauna ritual.
I no longer farm cattle with my Nana so I can't go around with food hampers to the farmers with laboring livestock anymore.
#Pagan #Witchcraft #Imbolg #WheelOfTheYear

Yule Advent - December 21

A Crisp, Clear, Cold Solstice Noon

The weather has been determined to be relentlessly seasonal this year, so we got new snow and today has the crisp clarity you only get when it’s very cold. It’s noon on the shortest day, and even though the sun will set in just a few hours, the shift towards longer days is already brewing. Nothing is static on the Wheel of the Year, but much is familiar.

Today is the December solstice. To all who celebrate: Merry Yule! (or Litha, if you're in the southern hemispere & observing the summer solstice).

The shortest day of the year kicks off a time of reflection & introspection for me. But today, I am looking forward to a festive dinner with my family and our dearest neighbors.

Yule Advent - December 15

Missing My Father

Fourteen years ago today, my father died. We’d had less than two weeks from a horrific diagnosis to his death. It ripped a gaping hole in a really awesome family.

With this advent exercise, I’m trying to stay open to all the aspects of the season, and this is always one. As more and more time passes, I worry that I rely on a just a few key stories to tell people about my Dad, that there’s no way I can really capture him in words. I know it’s inevitable he is flattened in the process of remembering, and I hate it.

He was quiet and a great person to have a conversation with. He was kind and could whip out a zinger like nobody else. He was almost as wise as he insisted he was. He took care of people when they needed it, without ever drawing attention to it. He never ever, after a certain point in his life, cut his beard. People said he looked like an old biker. People said he looked like God. He hated being compared to a hobbit, but it was apt. Once, a little girl in a rest stop in December was absolutely sure he was Santa Claus. He hated Christmas, but only to the extent that created a counterpoint to balance out my Mom’s deep love for the season.

One of the last sentences he ever said was “No hagiography,” but it’s hard because there are so many great stories about him. The very last thing he said to me was “fuck off,” and it delighted me. I was teasing him that he could at least see the Christmas tree from his deathbed, wasn’t that lovely, and it was the proper response, the one that told me my dad was still in there.

Here he is as a young man, long before I came along, eating in a canoe on a trip out into the woods with my Mom.

We can’t go down into the depths without grappling with loss.That sounds noble and philosophical, but it’s actually really crappy. Necessary, but crappy.

Yule Advent - December 14

Mulled Wine

Yesterday, I finally got a chance to mull some wine. There’s something about winter in the mix of flavours, about this pre-Yule season, the last flash of the sun’s disc in rounds of orange and citrus flavours. The warming of cinnamon to steel us against the coming cold. The spiciness of cloves and anise, to keep our wits quick when all is dark. The earthy depth of wine and brandy, inviting us to nestle in under blankets and hibernate. It’s simultaneously contradiction and perfect harmony. It’s not just winter, it feels like Yule to me, that tension of opposing emotions at the time of longest night, just before the most extended time to think and be present without the distraction of light.

Yule Advent - December 9

Long (Foggy) Nights

It was still dark when I left the house for work this morning. It was well past sunset when I got home, and I only got home half an hour later than usual. We’re in the last descent to the Solstice now.

It’s quite a bit warmer today, some of the snow is melting and there’s a ton of water vapour in the air, so it was also a magically foggy walk home from the bus. Walking in the fog always gives me the feeling that I could come out absolutely anywhere, step right out of the world into an unknown elsewhere.

Yule Advent - December 8

Nylon Santa

Another of my collection of strange Santas, this one always mine. It was made by my great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister, always known to us as Auntie Brown Sugar. (Her real first name was Lunny.)

This disembodied Santa head was made out of a nylon stocking and has been gracing my walls pretty much my entire life.

Yule Advent - December 7

Blankets

On my mother’s side of the family, warmth is love. I tend to frustrate my family a bit by always being too hot, but I have so many quilts and crocheted blankets from my grandmother and mother.

In fact, so many that when I started crocheting myself, it quickly became apparent that I was going to have to give away most of what I made. Which is fine, I just want to do it to keep my hands busy and as a meditative practice.

After setting the expectation that all I would do was stripes, as I didn’t want to faff about with patterns, my friends have been enjoying themselves coming up with interesting colour schemes for me to riff on.

This Yule season, I’ve finally finished one for a dear friend who requested “Barbenheimer post-apocalypse.” This is what it looks like, and it’s so nice and toasty to have on my lap I’m almost loath to give it up.

Yule Advent - December 5

Snow, Part II

I don’t intend every day to be snow! But we’ve gotten so much over the last four days, with the threat of another 60cm overnight. I trekked to the bus this morning, made it to work, and ended up coming home early. By the end of the day, much of the city was closed down. It’s easily more snow than we’ve gotten in a decade.

There’s a magic to being inside during a snowstorm when you have plenty of storm snacks laid in, when you’ve spent the whole afternoon sleeping because you were having an ocular migraine, when you’re warm and cozy and don’t have to go out. Being storm stayed is such a lovely thing under very specific circumstances, and today was one of those days.

Here a picture from a couple of days ago, when it was at least briefly not snowing.

Yule Advent - December 3

Egg nog!

I always wait until the start of December to start drinking egg nog, then all bets are off until the end of the month. It’s one of my favourite parts of the season, the creamy coolness just delightful. Sometimes there’s a splash of rum added, but when I get the good stuff, it doesn’t need it.

I’m pretty picky about what egg nog, and while I can only get the local organic sublimely good stuff at my in-laws, Farm Boy’s is a very good second choice.

I like having seasonal foods, and so I don’t want to extend it outside the time I associate it with. It means I look forward to the glass bottles every year, and take my time savouring it.

Yule Advent - December 2

I had thought to savour some egg nog today, but then a whole bunch of snow squalls came down off the lake overnight and swept through, so today is all about Snow.

Luckily I’m working from home today, so I get to enjoy the big fat flakes from a warm house, only venturing out to shovel the walk. It’s quiet and muffled under the snow, the shapes of things outside distorted under their new white blankets. The cats are a little freaked out by the white spiders, but have gotten over that and all is calm and cozy here.

Yule Advent - December 1st

I inherited a lot of Santa-related stuff from my mother that I haul out every year as part of my Yuletide decorating.

Hands down my (unironic) favourite is this dude, whom my husband has dubbed “Soul-Hungry Santa.”

#yule. #wheeloftheyear