The end of the year is more like the beginning. Or, well, it’s all a circle, a wheel, with no true beginning or end. It spins and spins and we are helpless but to hang on for the duration. Time ebbs forward.
What I mean to say is that, slowly at first, Autumn and Winter are a lull. A sleeping time. A time for quiet, reflection, planning for the warmer, active months. Yule is when that dark yawn stretches and cracks its bones and starts to shake off its slumber. My body and mind’s natural state of calm is at direct odds with work in a retail environment. A kitchen never sleeps. I juggle hams and turkeys, roast root vegetables, boil stocks, dice and dice and dice.
The gentle light from our tree in the living room is a welcome reprieve after nine hours under florescents. I take a long, hot shower to scald off the negativity of the day, imagining that it drips down my body like a thick, black oil. I will the energy into the earth, where it will change, be useful, become something beautiful. I change, too–out of ill-fitted chef’s jacket and kitchen clogs and into something familiar, comfortable–something warm and sleepy that says I have no intention of leaving the house.
I sit in quiet. Maybe with a book. Maybe, like the world around me, I sleep. This hour is sacred, needed, grounding. When my lovers come home from their jobs, the day awakens again, and we tumble forward in time.
But in the hour of my solitude, I am closest with the Winter lull.
Foxglove gazes curiously up at the tree.
Yule is, for me, the point of waking up.The Winter Solstice marks the longest night, and every night after is shorter. Winter is not over, but the sun is starting to come back. The pagan symbolism–the Holly King and the Mother, birth–all imagery of a new beginning, a fresh start. Though traditionally, the banishing of Winter and welcoming of a new year happens in February, on Imbloc, for me, this is it.
My family isn’t pagan, and my partners are spiritually ambiguous. My faith has largely been a personal journey, though that’s a story for another time. Our house celebrations are fairly similar to Christmas, but a few days earlier. This year, our Pack is meeting at Primary House for a late brunch and a small fire. Cooking is spiritual for me. In fact, at this time, the kitchen is the only place I have an altar. So, being able to essentially ritualize cooking a Yule feast in my sacred space is very special to me. Then, of course, we have gifts to exchange, and I hope we’ll have time to paint salt dough ornaments and make pinecone bird feeders.
My kitchen “altar.”
All three of us in Primary House will have the day of Christmas off work, so since we celebrate a different holiday, we’ll have that day to rest and recuperate after a busy retail time. Yellow and I will be celebrating our fourth year of marriage on New Year’s Eve, so we also have that to look forward to.
One Dirty Heathen 