Celebrating the Winter Solstice

Celebrating the Winter Solstice

Do you celebrate the Winter Solstice? Most people think of it only as the shortest day or longest night, but ancient farmers relied on the Winter Solstice to tell them when to plant, harvest, and store food for winter. Many worldwide winter celebrations are centered around the Winter Solstice and include the use of plants for decorating and symbolism.

The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a winter festival named after Saturn, the god of agricultural fertility. The event started about December 17 and lasted for seven days and was both a huge fair and a festival of the home. They decorated their houses with rosemary, laurel, holly, ivy and mistletoe and temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life's continuity.

The holly and ivy were important midwinter plants in Great Britain and Ireland, as told in the mysterious medieval carol that mentions the rivalry between them. The lyrics of the 15th century carol refers to an ancient battle between the two, with the Ivy representing the cold gloominess of winter and the Holly King, the jolly spirit of the season.

The oak tree was used in the Celtic and Christian tradition of burning Yule logs, symbolizing the new solar year; the waxing sun, strength and endurance. The Yule log was never bought but received as a gift, found or taken from your own property. Often, the log to be burned at midwinter was chosen early in the year and set aside.

Mistletoe was considered sacred because it grew in the mighty oak tree. It symbolized peace, prosperity, healing and protection and was used in boughs and doorway sprigs throughout Germany and Ireland.

Wheat was used to make festival straw figures, cookies, cakes and breads throughout Rome, Scotland, Germany and Scandinavia to bring good luck and abundance to the upcoming year's harvest.

The Christmas tree is of more recent origin. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated comes from Riga in Latvia in 1519, when a group of local merchants carried an evergreen bedecked with flowers to the marketplace, where they danced around it and then burned it. Another custom in 15th and 16th century Germany was to hang apples on a fir tree as a prop for the miracle play performed on Christmas Eve depicting Adam and Eve being driven out of Paradise.

You can create your own Winter Solstice celebration - it can be as simple as observing the sunrise or sunset. Perhaps you will turn out the lights in your home after sunset, lighting only with candles and/or firelight as a way of experiencing the longest night in the same way as our ancestors. If you want to create your own ritual for the winter solstice, keep in mind that many modern observances involve symbols for three important actions: remembering and appreciating the year that is ending, letting go of the "bad stuff" in the past that we want to leave behind, and then setting an intention or a direction for the new year.

We wish everyone a peaceful Winter Solstice and prosperous 2009.

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