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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. | ||||
December 20, 2007Depending on your time zone, winter solstice arrives late tomorrow night or into the wee hours the following morning. However, measured in minutes, we have already reached the shortest day and the longest night. For about a week around winter solstice, there's no significant change in the length of the daylight. You can check this for yourself for many U.S. and international locations at the U.S. Naval Observatory website. Here in San Francisco, our shortest day is 9 hours, 33 minutes long. The day won't get a minute longer until Christmas. How long is your day in your location? Tips for the dayIf you're planning a Winter Solstice ritual, here are some ideas: Here's a way to observe winter solstice for yourself (assuming you get sunshine on Winter Solstice). It is similar to sun maps found in Zuni homes. At a specific time on the winter solstice, (perhaps sunrise or noon), mark where the sun's rays shine inside your house, with a special mark or sign on a wall, or by hanging a feather or other object that casts a shadow at a specific point. I use an ornament shaped like the sun with a mirror in the center. Then in future years, you'll be able to observe the sun approaching solstice season after season. St. Francis of Assisi's Canticle of Brother Sun is a beautiful prayer. It has the same spirit of reverence and gratitude for the natural world as you'll find in Native American prayers. About Yule logs: There are three modern interpretations of this ancient tradition. The first hews closest to the old ritual: Decorate a good-sized log (traditionally oak, also traditionally not purchased but found) with a few sprigs of evergreen tied in ribbon (probably red) and place it in your fireplace. For a ritual touch, write wishes for the new year on slips of paper and tuck them under the ribbon. The full tradition requires that the log be lighted on Yule (winter solstice or Christmas Eve, or both! your choice) along with a piece of the previous year's Yule log, then extinguished before burning out fully, to save a portion to light with the following year's log, hence completing the cycle of the year. Another interpretation of the tradition demands that the fire be kept going for the 12 days of Yule.For those without fireplaces or for a different take on the tradition, you can create a candle version by taking a smallish log, sawing a flattened side as the base, then drilling holes fat enough to hold candles for a tabletop decoration. Then, of course, there's another interpretation of the Yule log: that over-the-top French dessert, a 19th century fantasy in genoise and chocolate (often festooned with meringue mushrooms). High Martha Stewart points for that one! |
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