Tag: winter

Hallowe’en, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

November 1st, is All Saints’ Day, a long-standing holiday in the Catholic tradition that emerged from the ancient pagan holiday Samhain (pronounced Saw-wain) in the Celtic tradition.  It was a  time to bring the herds back for slaughter or wintering, and to prepare for the coming winter. It was also the time when the veil between this world and the spirit world was thinnest, and ghosts walked the earth.  Finally, this holiday weekend is a time to remember those who came before. on All Saints Day and All Souls’ Day (The Mexican Day of the Dead.

The holiday runs from sundown Friday to sundown Sunday.  In observing the holiday from dusk to dusk to dusk, we are following the customs of our Jewish and Celtic forebears, who not only began their  holidays at dusk rather than dawn but also celebrated their respective new year’s days in the late fall, going into and through the darkness to await the return of the light

On All Souls’ Day we will also observe that most annoying of customs, arbitrarily redefining daylight hours t by setting the clocks back an hour. disrupting our biorythms for the four darkest months.

So celebrate! Dress up. Decorate. Carve a pumpkin. Hand out treats. Visit a cemetery.  Remember a loved one, or more than one. Share a memory.  Plan your funeral. Feed the hungry. Remember that every end is also a beginning, and the light and the new year lie ahead..

Here is a poem for this holiday

The darkness begins

The faces of carved pumpkins

Glow from lighted candles within.

Children ring doorbells, costumed, in search of treats.

Or so it once was,

This holiday is now sanitized for safety

Fear of the coming darkness is banished

Replaced by noisy crowds with sugar highs

And costumes not of ghosts and devils

But TV characters and superheroes.

Without the fear and mystery of darkness

Without the silence to let us hear

The sounds of nature once again.

How can we reclaim our rightful role

As partners, not as overlords

Of the turning earth?

Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus

Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.

A Doorway Into Winter

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

A week from today is the Celtic New Year ,October 31st (or November 1st).  Hallowe’en was Samhain (pronounced Sah-wain) in the Celtic tradition.  It was the day when the walls between this world and the spirit world were thinnest, and ghosts walked the earth. It was a day to honor the dead, and to begin again, experiencing the cold and dark of the womb of earth before being reborn again into the light and warmth of spring.

There are many times to celebrate a new year. January 1st is arbitrary, in deep winter, ten days after the winter solstice. (For an economist, that date is important as the start of a new tax year.)  Christians start their new year with Advent, four Sundays before Christmas. Chinese New Year’s Day is in February.  A new school year, for many who are teachers are students, is definitely worth knowing as a fresh start, usually in August or September.  I once hosted a new year’s eve party on August 14th, because Clemson University’s academic calendar and our nine month faculty contracts started on August 15th

.States celebrate a new fiscal year on July 1st, as the federal government used to until it was chronically unable to get a budget passed in time, so it is now October 1st.  The Jewish New Year is a moveable feast, being on a lunar calendar, but like the Celts, the Jews celebrate a new year by going into and through the darkness instead of starting with the return of the light. As for me, I observe two new years: July 1st, the day after my birthday, a new year of my life, and January 1st, because it dictates so many other events and financial matters, and I am an economist by profession and mental framework.

.The idea of going through the darkness and into the light is one worth contemplating, along with the two remarkable cultures that adopted that season as the time to celebrate their new year. The Celts and the Jews were wise and persistent peoples with a great deal of depth of being that persisted from ancient times until the present day.  The darkness they celebrate is a period of renewal—hibernation, reflection, a slowing down of activity, a time for closeness.  Central heating, foodstuffs from all over the world, electric lights, refrigeration, and television have made  winter less different from other seasons of the year in modern industrial culture. We can have fresh blueberries in December, displacing the more traditional holiday fruits. If we are wealthy enough, we can escape the winter cold by becoming snowbirds and spending up to half a year in Florida or Mexico or the Caribbean.

Aside from the expense and inconvenience, that never appealed to me. My body and soul need winter.  I know longer have any yard work to do for at least three or four months. I can turn my attention to nesting, to indoor improvements, to learning new skills and ideas and especially to catching up on my reading. (I have only read 95 books so far this year, the first time I have kept track, and there are so many more!). I can plan what I will do in the year that officially begins on January 1st, start new projects and finish old ones.  I can spend long winter evenings doing jigsaw puzzles and watching documentaries.

Poet Mary Oliver asks us, what we will do with our one wild and precious life?  That’s too big a question for me, but I can decide what to do with this one dark and quiet season before the earth (at least in South Carolina) bursts forth in glorious technicolor, sunshine, and new possibilities and demands. As you enter the darkness, what new possibilities are taking root and growing in the darkness to burst forth in March? How will you use this one precious and wild season of winter?