27/12/2020
https://www.facebook.com/100044335244274/posts/238402910980882/
The Tradition of Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas comes from a slower paced and sometimes simpler time. A time where distant visits were long considered, celebrations were spontaneous, and gifts were hand crafted and often home-made.
A season of little visits, cards and calling upon friends well adapted to pandemic times.
The unexpected starry night warm enough to gather around a bonfire to sing carols, nosh, drink and revel with friends in a snowy landscape - The last minute, socially distant lunch on a sunny afternoon.
In many ways, today helps to kick off the 12 Days of Christmas. Boxing Day and the Feast of Saint Stephen, when Medieval serfs went surfing 😉 for gifts, tokens and scraps from extravagant holiday feasts. The day when a partridge in a pear tree symbolizes pure love and wishes for fruitfulness and abundance.
Scaled back visits this year mean doorstep gift drops and air hugs.
Homemade cookies, port, art, bath-salts, beeswax candles arrive to offer me flavor, light, comfort and ease, and the knowledge that I am remembered or loved.
I while away hours making botanical cards, straining cordials, bottling liqueurs, wrapping up herbal salves and soaps while holding thought and intention for each person who will receive them.
Between sipping on pots of tea and the hot-mulled wine I have kept slow simmering since Christmas, I make pomanders, stuff dates, and prepare chestnuts to roast at the fire. Unhurriedly prepare the next meal.
2020 is a fine year to usher out with the ashes from last years fires. I am feeling the need, deep in my bones, to purge out the old - between sips of mulled wine and bundled visits 😉
I am passing along treasures I can part with to dear friends that I think would enjoy them; bagging and boxing for thrift, gift, compost and bonfire - all that I can part with in order to enter this new year, this new phase unencumbered.
Gardeners know the gift of abundance that can be shared when seeds yield abundance.
1000 points of light were said to be necessary to take care of our citizens, but pandemic has shown how many of our lights are out. There is too much darkness when 6,000 people rely on a single local food shelter - twice the number of families, seniors and exhausted souls they would ordinarily see before the pandemic. Our light is needed, almost as much as rebuilding new systems that will ensure that the ‘least among us’ are cared for as they tend to us from the front lines. But until then, I share seeds- trays of holiday meals, little extravagances, clothes outgrown and hopes and aspirations for a brighter New Year.
Tradition would have us proceed with these little visits, meaningful exchanges, times of joy and glimmers of hope throughout these 12 days of Christmas. Right through Epiphany on the 6th of January when we gave our decorations back over to nature. Pandemic inclines me to do so again this year.
So, here’s to old traditions made new - as we ring out the old year, and plant seeds for joy in the new!
Christmas A Carol for Brown Owl, 1934 (Depression Era) Margaret W. Tarrant; 1888-1959
