It’s been a long time since I celebrated the christian holiday of christmas. And from the looks of me in a whole series of family pictures, I hated the holiday even as a little kid.
My little brother Don and littler brothers Tim and Terry are always smiling, especially Don who was an adorable child (now old and still adorable). Why was I so glum? I wasn’t a pouty kid in any other pictures.
Clearly I was never a fan of christmas, but even less so after I left home and developed a critique of capitalism and christianity. I hated the consumer aspect but also the religious stuff. I joined the Church of Stop Shopping, led by the charismatic Rev. Billy with backup by the incomparable Stop Shopping Choir protesting at malls on black Friday. I still avoid shopping after September (it gets earlier every year) because I can’t stand the holiday music played in stores.
In college, researching the history of religions, we learned that christians had stolen their holidays from pagans and those who had gone before. Christmas co-opted pagan solstice celebrations. They even stole the virgin birth thing. Why not recapture our history; there were so many ancient solstice traditions to choose from!
In the early ‘70s, we dissidents at the Rosa Luxemburg Collective chose to celebrate the Roman winter solstice holiday of Saturnalia. It was essentially a great big party. Traditional roles were reversed. Masters served slaves. Men dressed in women’s clothes and women in men’s. All were set free of their marriage obligations and could have sex with anyone they wanted. The festivities lasted for a couple of weeks at least (no research here; just remembering). Of course, we had already dispensed with gender roles and monogamy so the holiday was really just a continuation of our chosen lifestyle. We cooked sumptuous feasts and ate a lot. We set up an aluminum tree with rotating colored lights in the Vulgar Americana Room. It stayed up all year.
Lately Holly and I have been adding to and making up our own traditions. They change every year because we tend to forget our brilliant ideas from the year before, but for many years now we have been celebrating what we call the Twelve Days of Solstice. The holiday starts on solstice, which this year is December 21, and ends on New Year’s Day.
We incorporate pagan rituals and customs—greenery and garlands, feasting and lights. Solstice signifies the return of light in the Northern Hemisphere, important to our animistic ancestors who worshipped nature. My Swedish grandmother set in her window a brightly painted wooden candelabra which looked very much like a menorah. Her decorations were figures of reindeer and elves made of straw. She made tree ornaments of fat candy canes wrapped in red and white tissue paper. And I still have the slender santa and elf figures that she hand knit and brought out every year.
This year we added some days to the holiday since the full moon appeared on Friday the 13th of December, an especially witchy occurrence. How did we celebrate? We planted winter greens and bulbs in the garden. We made apologies to our mother earth for what our species has wrought. We donated to the porta-potty fund for the homeless here. I archived some papers, an ongoing project. From the hot tub I watched the moon rise twice from behind cloud banks. We toasted our good fortune. And then, with Holly’s reminder that winter is for hibernating, we settled down for a long winter’s nap.
Wishing you a good solstice or as the Swedes say god yul.
tradeswomn musings 