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Diary #7: "Sleeping Towards Bethlehem"
Before
dashing off to see my family for the first Christmas in five
years, I get to have my own holidays clear and out of the
way. Every year for the past five, I’ve held vigil until
dawn, dancing in circles of 3 or 30, and once almost 100,
hosted beautifully by my usual partner in Solstice crime,
Kat. Red and white candles flicker in our center altar, lit
at sunset and kept burning through to sunrise. We make sure
to keep at least two people circle-dancing all night, and
feast in the morning. We’ve had smaller rituals within
the ritual, at sunset and midnight and sunrise, to mark the
year inside one night. Guests would bring mulled mead and
stories and knitting and drums, and somehow, the sacred focus
on the sun would be held for all fourteen hours -- even when
punctuated by a 5am game of Star Wars Monopoly, or a late
night dash to buy more butter for biscuits (and noting that
at the backwoods 24 hour mart, the cashier had a pentagram
on, and maybe we should invite her back?).
Samhain
might be the most somber of Pagan holidays, but Winter Solstice
is the most soothingly silent -- not in a “Silent Night”
sort of way, more in a rich dreams pulling your warm belly
under the covers silence. Midsummer Night might be most famed
for its dream, but Yule gives me those sleepy visions to guide
the whole year. Amidst the drums and storytelling, something
inside of me would still find a stillness, a place to look
back on the past year and look ahead into the new one. The
darkest time passes, and yields to our dreams, newly-birthed
and still and sticky and red and funny-looking (quite like
Santa after too much cookies & milk), but we love them,
and we promise to keep them warm by the fire.
My
dreams find a home in the pregnant dark (thank you, Thorn
Coyle, for this image!). Fortunately for me, I get a few
days alone with them before I go to see my mother and my grandparents
and my uncle and my brother, to get to know one another, to
see how best to keep them safe until they can really get out
there on their own. (Dreams mature so much faster than babies.)
It must take a lot of work to bring them through to this world.
This
Yule, for the first time in five years, I slept. I said hello
to the sunset coincidentally, smirked at the inflatable snowmen
dotting the suburban landscape of my partner’s hometown,
and let the cold wind lick my skin without blinking an eye,
even if it coming from a strength based on the knowledge that
there was a warm fire waiting for me inside. I could stand
alone in the cold, or I could go sit by the fire and let sleep
guide me. (And there’s no such thing as too much sleep
this time of year, especially with family looming.) Makes
me wonder what those “visions of sugarplums dancing”
were really all about back before Santa got hooked up with
Jesus. Makes me want to get back there and figure it out before
the sun snatches up all this good sleeping time.
Night
night, save a cookie for the elves (what, you think Santa
runs a union shop?)... and hope you have a dream-full belly
of sweets to see the New Year with!
xo.
undiegirl
ps:
that's Kat up there, along with my super secret agent cat,
Vajra. The motion blut is because Vajra is a speed demon and
the world can barely keep up with her, but I thought it was
perfect all the same. *mwah!*
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