Solstice Preparations

Happy holidays! Around here we celebrate the winter solstice, the time of the longest night and the promise of the returning sun. It is one of the holidays that Christmas was designed to supersede (since the historical Christ was actually born in May or June according to historians) along with Saturnalia and Hogmanay and likely others. And the "bring a tree inside and decorate it" tradition has its roots in European Pagan tradition associated with the solstice. Thus, we have a tree inside and we decorate it.



The above photo was last night and we were just starting with the little tree. It is a 6 foot tall Frasier fir and was rescued from the saddest, tiny lot at a large hardware store. An added bonus was that it fit entirely inside the Honda Fit and a tarp under it kept the car clean. Late this morning we got around to decorating it more thoroughly.



Our house is pretty small - roughly half the average house size here in the United States - so a small tree is scaled appropriately. We are also quite fortunate in that our cat, Nala, has pretty much no interest in the tree. She notices it and sniffs it, but has no interest in climbing it or (so far) otherwise batting at ornaments. I suppose that could change if she got bored enough. We ran into a bit of a dilemma when we pondered what to put on top of the tree. We do not have a star and an angel is out of the question, so...what? In a flash of inspiration, I remembered my "wire guy", the graduation trophy given to all new members of the aerial dance company I am part of. It has been hanging around since 2006, always near my field of view as I sit at my computer. Why not repurpose it? And the tree has a long, long top branch, and I am a pole dancer, so...



Yep, that fits this house! As I type this Reena is still sifting through the individually wrapped ornaments making sure we did not fail to put up a really cool one, and Pandora is supplying music under the heading of "winter solstice" (which is apparently a pretty broad category to them, but there has been a lot of Pogues so all is well). In addition I have started cold-brewing a batch of coffee for homemade coffee liqueur, and am having a good time dredging through my memory (and my big sister's too) to recall an old family recipe for dinner tonight.

May the joy of the various holidays that remain in the year be yours in abundance.