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.

`December 4, 2007`

Sundown brings the first night of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.

"Perhaps the only way for the Christmas promise of peace on earth to be achieved is for every religious system to face its human origins and recognize that worshipers in every religious system are nothing but human seekers walking into the mystery and wonder of the God who is beyond anything that the human mind can finally imagine."
--From an essay by John Shelby Spong, on the common roots of Hanukkah and Christmas on Beliefnet.

In the Christian tradition, it's Saint Barbara's Day. The legend of her 3rd or 4th century life in Greece reads like one of those cautionary and violent fairy tales.

A tyrannical father kept her secluded in a tower. Her rebellion was to convert to Christianity and remodel the tower so that it contained three windows for the Trinity. When her father, a pagan, found out, he was enraged (for the conversion, one presumes, not the remodeling!). He had her tortured and served himself as her executioner. Then he was struck by lightning and his body consumed by flames.

This story did not emerge in written form until the 7th century. Barbara was long venerated by the eastern and western branches of the Christian church. The Catholic church removed her from their revised calendar in the late 1960s. In some cultures, her feast day marks the start of the holiday season. Read more at School of the Seasons.

Ancient folklore: on this day, young women would place a branch from a cherry tree in water. If the branch bloomed by Christmas Eve, it was believed the woman was certain to marry the following year.

`Tips for the day`

For Hanukkah, these resources:

Chabad.org has an excellent Chanukah how-to section, recipes, games, multimedia and more.

Looking for a special Hanukkah recipe? Try this directory of links from About.com

For those of us who are interfaith or spiritually eclectic: Chrismukkah.com a hybrid holiday season -- this year's lasts for 21 days!

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.

Take a Hanukkah quiz!

From Beliefnet . Part of this site's enormous Hanukkah feature section

Online Snow Day

Make your own online snowflake, share a message with others, and see what others have done. Five million snowflakes and counting!
SnowDays

Planning your holidays?

Some simple ideas for celebrating Winter Solstice.

Read other ideas from Candlegrove visitors.

Or share your plans with others by leaving me feedback.

The Body Shop - Free Shipping on Order over $50

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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