solstice celebrations?

[jessaroo]

wht do you do with your family to celebrate solstice?

[Aeress]

We are celebrating Solstice and Yule this year. We began our celebration by- lighting candles and leaving presents for the 12 Yuletide Gnomes (Lads) who will bring tricks to your house for 12 days if you forget to leave them goodies numbering 13. (12 for each gnome and one for a friend) If they see the treats you will know they have visited because they blew out your candles and left goodies. : We read the Shortest Night which is about solstice.

Tomorrow we have church, where i will do a reading and then come home for an electrical free day. We will hang treats for the birds and bake goodies, eat a nice meal and relax as a family.


With littles in the house, one of which goes to school, we try to keep the celebration in tune with the solstice but alter a bit so that we aren't up late.

[Susana]

tonight will be our first time entertaining others on Solstice. I am so excited! the kids and I have friends coming and my husband invited his parents.

we're having a big potluck dinner and playing Bingo for prizes (just little things), we'll have a fire in the fireplace and my dh is going to play his guitar for us the kids' friends are all spending the night.

happy Solstice everyone!

[stretchmark]

We usually get the kids a candle making kit and then we light it. I want to add more in the future though.

I did go to a japanese tea ceremony and meditation in honor of solstice.

[guestmama9910]

For us, the longest night is the peace and relaxation holiday. We tune out all distractions, put on our pajamas, robes, and slippers, and just plain stay in. I refuse to get carried away with the more commercial and secular side of the holiday, mostly because that would impair the whole peace, relaxation, quiet, calm, dark, wonderfulness of this time of year.

From sundown until sun rise we have lights lit all over our home, if we had a fireplace we'd have a fire going. There's no tree or elaborate decorations, only one wreath, kissing ball, garland, or bough over the "center" of our home (which would be a fireplace if we had one). We cozy down for soup, bread, and marzipan shortcakes with eggnog and mulled wine after sunset (our favorite is Brotherhood Winery's "Holiday Wine," we even toured the winery and stocked up). This is family time, we camp out in the living room and build ourselves forts and nests out of all the household pillows. We mostly play board and card games, play some appropriate music, and tell stories all night long. Right before bed we put out our slipper socks with handfuls of straw in them for the reindeer.

In the morning we make panettone french toast and spend the whole shortest day doing much the same we did last night: relaxing and being a family. Absolutely no traveling, the nearest thing we'll do is take a walk outside. We spend all our time indoors in our pajamas. We eat breakfast foods for every meal on the shortest day. The only gifts we exchange are our stockings, which are mostly filled with food and small gifts. We take the Christmas cracker off the top and pop them right before we eat, so everyone has their tissue crown on.

It probably seems slow and boring, but it's very much us, and very much our faith. Besides, shouldn't every religion/culture/tradition have a holiday that's totally about peace and quiet?
--
AnnaArcturus

[philomom]

For us, it is a soup and solstice party with friends and neighbors. I serve five soups and bread. The guests all bring a little something to share. There's a fire in the fireplace and love and warmth all around. :


Some years I do a bonfire... but this week we've had nine inches of snow.

[Susana]

AnnaA, your post made me feel cozy just reading it! sounds like a wonderful way to celebrate the Solstice

My husband's parents didn't come to our dinner...ended up being more quiet of a night. Hubby played acoustic guitar while my friends and I curled up together and the Yule log burned. Our teenagers and their buddies were all underground in the Guitar Hero lair.
It was pretty perfect the way the night turned out.

[wombatclay]

Did you see the Winter Solstice camp thread? There are tons of Solstice ideas there...

Our family- The girls have a solstice calendar that they "count down the days of yule" on. The calendar is a snowy forest and each night they hang a snow flake in the sky and I tell the story of Mother Holle (each night is a bit different, dd1 likes to toss out suggestions! The only constant is the snow coming from shaking the feather beds).

We usually do one or two Yule related things each week during december. We put up the Yule calendar on the first day, we get a tree the first weekend, we go to the annual ice carving festival, we make a gingerbread house, we make cookies, we attend a winter spiral, we build a "mother cave" and decorate it with images of mothers and infants, we decorate a tree outside with animal treats, we decorate our family altar and make a seasonal wreath for the door.

We also focus on giving during this season... we volunteer at a soup kitchen, at a women's shelter, we pack holiday helper boxes for the thread here on mdc, we go on nature walks to collect garbage that's been left by the road, we hang bird feeders and squirrel treats.

Then Solstice eve we build a huge bonfire out back, have a special dinner, and hang up our stockings. The only electric lights we use that night are the holiday lights on the tree (our house doesn't have many electric lights anyway) and we light all the candles in the mother cave so we can watch them glow in the snow.

Solstice morning we open gifts, see what Mother Holle left in our stockings, and spend the day in low key family snuggle mode.

(we celebrate Christmas with another round of stocking gifts and a celebration with extended family/friends, and then we host La Befana at our 12th night celebrations and again everyone gets a small gift and a silly party... having so many celebrations helps us spread out the season and prevent gift/food/stress overload.)