The Holiday Season: Today

Today many of us yearn to make the holiday season
more meaningful, more loving, perhaps more spiritual.

Candlegrove traces the winter holiday season daily from Thanksgiving through Epiphany.

`November 25, 2007`

Today begins a four-Sunday countdown until the Winter Solstice. Those who observe it can adapt the Christian tradition of Advent, which is a time of preparation and anticipation. Christian Advent begins next Sunday.

`Tips for the day`

As you do your online/mail order shopping, consider making your gifts earth-conscious and meaningful:

For the person with everything
Give in their name to a needy person somewhere in the world an animal that will help the recipient feed themselves and earn income. Through the Heifer Project International, you can sponsor the donation of a goat or sheep, chicks or ducks, honeybees or other gifts. Here's an idea for a corporate office — collect funds toward a Gift Ark, $5,000 that helps 30 families. You receive a gift card to send, describing your donation.

Other charitable gifts
The GreaterGood shopping website portal has numerous Gifts that Give More. Examples:
Send two girls to school in Afghanistan $20
Help cyclone victims in Bangladesh $25
Protect 10 shelter cats with vaccinations $20

Earth-conscious candles
Candles are important ritual objects for the season, and they make wonderful gifts. But did you know that most candles are made of paraffin, which comes from petroleum, a non-renewable resource? The natural, renewable alternative: beeswax candles. Other benefits of beeswax candles: slow burning and sweet honey-like scent. One of my favorite suppliers for beeswax candles: Chase Honey Company of Washington State.

Another holiday favorite is bayberry candles, but these take a tremendous harvest to make -- a bushel of berries yields 4 to 5 pounds of wax.

"A bayberry candle burned to the socket brings food to the larder and gold to the pocket."

Abundant Earth has true Bayberry candles, along with an entire collection of earth-friendly candles

Food gifts that help the earth
My favorite: Endangered Species Chocolate

Winter Solstice 2007: Dec 22, 6:08 am Universal Time

Be sure to adjust for your time zone:
EST: Dec 22, 1:08 am
CST: Dec 22, 12:08 am
MST: Dec 21, 11:08 pm
PST: Dec 21, 10:08 pm

If your holiday celebration depends on knowing sunrise and/or sunset times for winter solstice or any other day in your location, find it online at the U.S. Naval Observatory. The database covers 22,000 US locations. For world locations, you'll need your latitude and longitude.

This site also lists solstices and equinoxes through 2020. You'll need to convert to your time zone from Universal Time.

New documentary to watch for

What Would Jesus Buy?

Planning your holidays?

Some questions to think about:

What does the holiday season mean to me?
How can I simplify?
Here are some tips from the Center for the New American Dream.

Books that can help:
Unplug the Christmas Machine
Simplify Your Christmas
Hundred Dollar Holiday
If you're looking for more reading about winter solstice and holiday traditions, be sure to check out our whole page of recommended titles from Amazon.com.

When shopping online, make it count for more. Support charity as you shop at GreaterGood.com. Current offer: free shipping for U.S. orders over $30!

This season's archive

A note about the commerce links on this site: Candlegrove is essentially non-commercial. In some cases, links from this site yield a small affiliate fee. Half of all funds generated by such links help sustain this site. The other half is donated to environmental organizations.

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