Happy Winter Solstice

The Winter Solstice occurs at 8:19 to night, and of course today is the shortest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere.  Too bad it doesn't correspond to New Year's Day or Christmas.  Of course lots of good pagan symbolism abounds including evergreen trees, wreaths, garlands, and red berries.  Our gardens have two patches of winterberry bushes and the females are loaded with bright red berries, and they look great this year.  Later today TPP must get some firewood, some yule logs, to brighten the house, whether he listens to yuletide carols or not.  Yule is a 12 day celebration/season that begins with Christmas and ends with the 12th night after, and a lot of partridges in pear trees.  This reminds TPP that the Phactors made a pear dessert for a French dinner a week ago.  The ripe pears were marinated in red wine with apple brandy and spices until that got all nicely burgundy in color and then they were served on a bed of homemade  caramel (tricky stuff) but really, really good.
On the whole it is a good season and a good enough reason to celebrate without all the religious over tones.  So be happy, be glad, have drinks and dinners with friends and relatives.  

Banishing the darkness on the winter solstice

Did you notice that the days are getting longer? Yes, the world will not be consumed by darkness as the days continued to shorten. But rather than have fires, or feasts, or religious events to banish the darkness, TPP knows what really does it. On this solstice our premier symbol of rebirth and spring arrived just as we had hoped to banish the darkness and let the sun begin its trek back higher in the sky (Yes, it's axial tilt, but hey.). The first seed and plant catalog came by mail, and just like that things seemed a bit more like spring. Actually it was not all psychological, the high temperature here abouts was around 50 F today and lots of spring sprouts can be seen appearing as things have already had several weeks of quite cold weather in November. If the temps don't get back to a more seasonal range some plants are in for quite a surprise. As it is witchhazels are in flower and so was a dandelion in a protected south-facing location. Either that or they'll be bun-bun nibbles.

Winter Solstice

Sometime today, around 5 pm, is the actual winter solstice, so today is the shortest day, well, not shorter really, but the day with the briefest daylight period of the year, and since our ancestors were quite keen observers the solstice is probably why so many holidays are clustered at this time of year. This is the grand daddy of all winter holidays! Let's see drag some green foliage and red berries into the house and decorate them! Check. Burn a fire! Check. Scare away the dragon/bear/demon that has been consuming the daylight! And maybe appease the gods with food and drink (cover all the bases)! Check. In our minds we tend to associate the solstice with dead of winter, but since the actual climatic seasons lag behind the celestial seasons and images like this may be in the offing, so far our winter has been mild and a white Christmas doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Haiti of happening. Too bad, the estate looks good coated in white; if the weather keeps up like it is going now, the witch hazels will start flowering. The Phactor remembers arriving in London on a trip back from the Asian tropics many years ago on December 21st-22nd, with a long lay-over before flying across the Atlantic to get home (that's still another story), an event that fixed in my mind the actual latitude of that city, which is about 10 degrees north of my present location, and that makes daylight in London a bit more than an hour less than here (tad less than 8 hrs) on the winter solstice. Somehow we tend think of London with its milder climate as having a more southern location. Of course, the abrupt transition from 12 hours of daylight, sun overhead, to 8 hours of daylight, sun low in the sky, and from from tropical climate to temperate winter, lacking proper attire, really helped make this a big impression as this was the first time to have done this. To celebrate the Solstice, the Phactor is cleaning up the semester's paper debris in his office by burning it on the quad! Oh, that's not allowed on campus even if a pagan tradition? Doesn't the university have a policy of religious tolerance? Student sacrifice is out too? Well, maybe recycling fits the season.

Seasonal Holiday Blogging - Phlox News' Phony Outrage

Oh no, some grinchy, scroogey school district is prohibiting kids from wearing Christmas colors, our favorite seasonal red/green motif (Wait until that Canadian guy with all the duct tape finds out!). When Phlox News posts a news article about the War on Christmas it pretty much assures you that it will be borderline hysterical, and not in the ha-ha funny way, although they can be funny in sort of a pathetic way, at least to us educational elites. Now of course all reputable news organizations check their facts, so of course you know Phlox News did not find out their story was completely false until after they posted it, but this is not really about Phlox News because frankly they are not very interesting. What the Phytophactor finds interesting is the idea that red and green are Christmas colors when actually they are pagan through and through, long associated with a Druidic celebration of the winter solstice. What would really cheer up the season, and send Phlox News into a hissy fit, would be little Balder (reference to some almost appropriate Norse mythology) arriving at school dressed in sweater emblazoned with a falalalala deck the halls green and red holly motif (a seasonal blogging theme that has already taken some surprising turns) and after being told he should not be wearing Christmas colors to school he says, “Christmas? I’m a Druid celebrating the arrival of the winter solstice”, so Balder alone gets to keep his sweater right side out and everybody else has to turn their Christmas sweaters inside out. Happy HOLIDAYS Phlox News.

'Tis the Solstice

The winter solstice is today so celebrate Saturnalia and dies natalis invicti Solis,
the birthday of the unconquered sun, with merriment, food and drink, festoons of greenery, decorations, and presents, just as they did in olden times! Me thinks many are decked out in full Saturnalian style.

The days will once again grow longer and Sol warmer. Gardener’s rejoice; the plant catalogs soon will begin arriving in the mail, replete with their promisory pictures, and in only three months you can lubricate those clippers and celebrate the start of another gardening season by removing last year’s raspberry canes, the Phactor's regular gardening prelude.

Wishing you all peace with nature and goodwill toward all.