And in the space of a few short blog posts, we go from summer to nearly the darkest day of the year.
Tonight, we had supper as a family. A tasty supper off the fancy dishes with special desserts and drinks from pottery chalices all lit by a lovely gift from my sister-in-law.
However, being attended by a three-year old, dinner was also host to a small temper tantrum with no small number of tears.
She got it, though, that we were having a special dinner to recognize the darkest day of the year. My husband was good with it and even got into the food acquisition and preparation. It was low-key. It was good.
My other offer for the time so far has been to buy the local birds the fancy seed (with cashews!) and intent to attend a reiki share tomorrow for sharing of good energies.
In a fit of irony, dinner was held next to the Christmas tree.
Yes, we celebrate Christmas. And by celebrate, I mean that we buy each other small (and I’ve pushed again this year for small) presents and gorge ourselves in the presence of extended family. Though it occurs to me that I am certainly taking advantage of both opportunities – Solstice & Christmas – in my head they are such distinct events.
Solstice is the spiritual event. The season changes. The balance changes. Christmas is a gathering and/or acknowledgment of family. Gifts are exchanged (though I’m trying my damnedest to de-commercialize) and dinner is had. Solstice is, for me, the bigger event. No, it’s certainly not bigger monetarily or in number of guests at my house but it has bigger meaning.
I appreciate the gatherings for Christmas (okay, well, as much as I ever do appreciate a large family gathering…) and, yes, I appreciate the thoughtfulness in the tokens given and received (even as I try to cut back on the sheer stuff for the sake of stuff). It could be argued that the gatherings and tokens could be made part of a Solstice celebration, but I am one of two people in my extended family who celebrate Dec 21 preferentially over Dec 25. And each of our immediate families is good enough to accommodate our celebrations. So we buy into the de-spiritualized holiday of the masses for the larger group of relations.
For me to expect otherwise would be not only rude, but stressfully unrealistic.
Almost as unrealistic as a three-year old never having another temper tantrum.
