Solstice Celebration

So, because if I sit here and think I am afraid my head will explode, I will give you a snap shot of last night...

When Maeve was little I enrolled her in a homeschooling cooperative. It was a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous experience. I made some great friends, we made tight connections as families...we practically raised our kids as a tribe. There are ten families that stayed really tight, but the school community as a whole has remained really close, even us, when we moved away. We do an annual Thanksgiving thing together, (we didn't this year, which was why T Day was tough for me this year) we do all the holidays, etc.

Solstice has evolved like this...

We gather at a friend's house..they have a huge yard and a party room/patio we use so we are indoor outdoor...everybody comes, every age. We have a huge bonfire and roast all kinds of things to eat, in addition we have normal potluck. After the fire burns down we make a Yule Log...everybody gets some beeswax which we mold into shapes and put on the log. The idea is, you send out the energy, in the form of beeswax miniature statues, any thing you want to go out with the old year. You can also mold a statue of anything you want to invite into your life. Put it all on the Yule Log and then we have it into the bonfire. Most of us play an instrument so we all take turns. Little kids get laid down as necessary in the big room, inside, on sleeping bags, etc. Adults moslty hang by the fire. As the night wears on, the drummers take over and we dance.

The goal is to keep the fire going through the night, the longest night, so that as the day breaks we have turned the corner...from now on, the light gets stronger and stays longer. It's Autumn that is the end of the warm, and the light. Now we've moved on to the next part. The kids crash...most of the adults crash or go home..(it's an hour for us, we stayed.)

So that's it. We do it every year. It's a fun tradition, especially as we couldn't always all be together on Christmas or Hannakah, this gave us a reason to be together.