Not the traditional Christmas

Do you know, I am feeling so good for December and I think that’s partly because I’ve largely ignored Christmas. I have a tree in the corner of the room and there are lights on it, but we haven’t put the baubles on and there haven’t been carols playing. I have some food in the freezer which will do for Christmas day and it will be a joint effort in terms of cooking; the boys have finally realised, that they are better cooks than me.

I could never pull off the full Christmas dinner, the trifle, the turkey soup, the bubble and squeak for my kids; I don’t enjoy cooking and they don’t enjoy turkey or Christmas pudding or Christmas cake or mince pies, so for a long time we have been relatively unconventional in our choice of foods, sometimes Indian, sometimes steaks and occasionally chicken.

 

Melancholy

Christmas has never had any religious significance for me and it has a whole lot of melancholic nostalgia associated with it. I remember the neighbour across the road when we were children, was in the Salvation Army and so would play carols with the band, and whenever I hear the Salvation Army play, which is rare nowadays, and makes me cry.

Christmas changed when mum died, she was the hub in the wheel that brought my sister and I together and that hasn’t happened since. My mum did it spectacularly, the food, all the trimmings, everything traditional and yet, even with that, there was a sense of sadness because my parents had divorced and so there was always someone missing.

My boys are adults now and so I am grateful that they have chosen to spend this Christmas with me, I know they don’t have to, I know they won’t always and I think that part of the poignancy of Christmas for me are the absent people and the awareness that those present, won’t always be.

 

The Wheel of the Year

Maybe it is midwinter that brings the transitory nature of life into sharp focus. The leaves are gone from the trees and black in the mud. The sky is full of swirling rooks gathering to roost together on the bare branches. The days are short, the nights are long and given a chance all mammals, including humans, would prefer to hibernate.

I spent yesterday morning in the company of women celebrating the winter solstice and will be climbing a hill tomorrow at dawn with friends to do the same and nowadays, it is these rituals, the pagan Wheel of the Year that has more meaning than any Christian or consumerist celebrations.

The Wheel of the Year marks the solstices, the equinoxes and the half festivals in between, connecting human lives with the cycles of nature. There is no fabrication, no marketing, no expectation in these festivals, just an honouring of what is happening within us and within the natural world.

 

Winter Solstice

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day, the longest night, when energy is at its lowest for each of us, for every tree, for our pets, for the wild things. No wonder then that we want to be inside. This is a time for quiet dreaming, for slowing down, for quiet reflection on the year behind and imagining what might come.

It is the marking of this dark time that means the most to me and the gaudiness of Christmas seems jarring with its attempt to encourage us to eat more than we need and buy things we will never use. I will always remember meeting one of my sixth form after Christmas asking how it had been and he told me that they had been hungry on Christmas day because their mum had had to choose between buying them presents and having enough food. She had chosen presents because she didn’t want her kids to feel left out when their friends asked them what they got when they return to school.

When we strip out the selling, what is left is an invitation to gather with those who matter with us, to laugh and sing, to maybe weep and remember. It is a time of year to reflect on what really matters; light, warmth, food, love.

It has been such a relief to step away from the tyrannical pressure of what Christmas should be like and to sink in to the reality of what midwinter is actually like.

 

Winter wondering

I wonder, if you tune in to your mammal body, what it is reaching for, what is needing in this midwinter time? I wonder how midwinter feels to you, once the sleighbells have quietened and the wrapping paper is gone. I wonder what happens if you rest and listen to what is calling you from the dark?

Go well, rest, connect, get outside and listen to what your soft, mammal body is asking for in these next few weeks.

Julie

P.s. On the 1st February, which is Imbolc (the first of the first spring festivals) I am offering a morning of yoga, meditation, coaching reflection and home grown and cooked food at Treflach Farm, 10-1pm, £35. There is no need to have experience of any of the above, we’ll be taking it gently, everyone is welcome.  Message me to book or find out more.

 

Farmotherlands is my award winning collection of poems about nature, farming, community and family. You can buy a copy here.

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Thanks for being here.
Julie

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