Winter Solstice - A Christmas Missive
And my world has shifted yet again.
Yesterday I learned Norse tradition celebrated Christmas on December 21, as Yule, on Winter Solstice, and the sky was burning a beautiful red over the James River at sunset.
Evergreens pervade my thoughts, the very air glows with a softness you can almost touch, lips kissed beneath a clutch of mistletoe, a cheek that brushes past all too fast.
Tall green Christmas trees embrace the heart of home, they fill the void, left by the last light of the old Mother Sun, their branches holding up the blaze.
An expansive presence, they twinkle and they smile with delight and warmth.
They can never stay for long, but while they are here it’s like time stands still, leaving the earth spinning inside, releasing butterflies and robins and other winged dreams to flight once more.
For in the heart of the winter solstice, the laying in of firewood, the planning by the hearth is the promised pulse of birth; that of our Christ child, His passion, the waited-for rebirth of spring.
For the Norse it meant the rebirth of the Sun Goddess.
“A daughter
is birthed by the Sun goddess
after she is swallowed by the wolf
She shall ride
as the gods are dying
the old paths of her mother.*”
And so this spring, I shall ride. And I hope you will come along and ride with me. Remembering the paths of our mothers and charting our own. Remembering our age old call to be stewards of this bold beautiful earth.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, How lovely are your branches. How evergreen.
Merry Christmas!
Anne Poarch • Founder • Basket & Bike
