Happy Yule

I wrote this post for Yule. And then LIFE happened. My blog went down. Zoey got Hand Foot Mouth Disease (boy was that horrific!!) the week before Christmas…Anyways, so it’s late!

It is the Winter Solstice. The shortest, darkest day of the year. But never fear, that means the days are starting to get longer. It’s the festival celebrating the return of the sun. (You can read more about the history here.) Spring is not far away….. (I keep repeating to myself.)

I’ve celebrated the Winter Solstice/Yule for a long time but got out of the habit for a bit. For me, this is a time of reflection, a time to honor nature and the sun, and the official first day of winter.

There are a lot of things you can do to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Nature walks. Decorate your house with greenery. Make cider or Wassail. Have a bonfire. Light some candles. Have a Yule Party. Do a meditation to recharge your spirit and think of your intentions for the winter. Watch the sunrise. Go for a walk in the snow. Bake gingerbread. Donate to charity or volunteer. One tradition is to ring bells on Yule to welcome the light and drive away the darkness.

If you are adventurous, you can bake your own yule log cake! (And if you are fans of GBBO, you’ve seen them make swiss rolls a few times.) In fact, my mom made one of these for my 9th birthday party. (Recipe here.) I’d really like to try and make one of these someday. Someday when I have time. LOL

Recently Logan and I went to a Winter Solstice party that did a spiral walk:

It was very cool! I guess it is a Waldorf tradition. You can read about it here. It was a really fun experience and I’m glad we got to do it.

For the winter solstice, we lit some candles at home and talked about winter. Then a few days later, the marathon of Christmas began. My parents came to town to visit. We hosted a small Christmas Eve dinner.