Celebrating the Solstice

We went to the Christmas Revels at Harvard today in beautiful Sanders Auditorium. This year's Revels celebrated the Balkan countries and the music, singing, dancing and stories were fanastic. The solstice predates Christianity, of course, and harkens back to early man, worried that the earth is dying and that a permanent time of cold and darkness will be upon us. The date and the wreath and so many of the symbols we think of as Christmas are really the old pagan symbols of the solstice.

There is something comforting in keeping a tradition going back to pre-history. We have a tree in the room and a wreath on the door and candles and a crackling hearth (no gas logs for us) and they are a kind of solace for the cold and the dark and the waiting for spring. I am not a winter girl, never was. Summer is my season. But we will have winter before spring, and that's the way of things, and keeping the traditions give no small satisfaction, a victory, as it were, over the long dark nights.

I am reading Promiscuous Mode and wondering if I need one more pass thru it. Just one more. This is so difficult, determining when a book is finally ready. When? Hard to say.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Grapeshot