(no subject)
Sunni: Extremely intelligent in thought and deed you are gifted at communication and finding practical applications for your ideas. You are strong willed and ambitious and need to have passion, freedom and adventure in your life. Always willing to help others your warm, honest and loyal nature ensures that you are loved by all. It is likely that you will achieve a great deal of success and recognition in life. (well, according to this)
our secret santa theme requirements this year had to be a "gag" gift. allison got me a "hangover care kit", & my office chums all giggled around the table, noting how many times i've come in with very bad whiskey headaches and such (i'm TERRIBLE about drinking enough water before i sleep). i mean, i know it's a "gag" gift and everything, but that aspirin will probably come in handy.
MsLadyStardust: i got booted.
rilkeanheart79: booted?
rilkeanheart79: like kicked in the butt off the stage booted?
MsLadyStardust: sort of!
MsLadyStardust: the internet stage!
rilkeanheart79: ha
rilkeanheart79: like a long-ass cane hooked your collar and pulled you off while you were doing the charleston
MsLadyStardust: haha, exactly.
MsLadyStardust: vaudeville style.
rilkeanheart79: word
rilkeanheart79: that would be so cool if people still did that
MsLadyStardust: they should.
rilkeanheart79: but it's such a small niche thing
MsLadyStardust: sorry, j.lo
MsLadyStardust: you got the cane
MsLadyStardust: oop, 50 cent, we regret
rilkeanheart79: it would be nice if someone gave her the laser
TODAY IS YULE. it's also richie's one year accident anniversary. and the longest night of the year. i wanted to buy a rotisserie chicken and make couscous w/ cranberries and pecans and eat salad and watch cute movies, but i have too much work to do. regardless, i'll be at teahouse tonight for knitting. so if anyone is itching for knitting or a pot of lavender berry or simple conversation, drop by, please!
borrowed from _stasha, & a million other people.
1. What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before? something or the other but since i can't remember, it must've not been very significant. watched fireworks on the 4th of july, which is rare, from hammocks nonetheless. broke into the dwarf castle, so i guess that's a first. finally saw get hustle. got hit by two cars in one week. this all makes my life sound really BORING. but trust me, i'm not bored.
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? i don't remember what my new year's resolution was, probably to read a certain # of books a month, and a certain number of recordings and zines a year, and i'm sure i didn't do so. those will probably be the same resolutions for 2006, too!
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? no. but i got a cat. and a bunch of rats my brother breeds had some pinkies.
4. Did anyone close to you die? my aunt betty lee died, and i wasn't close to her, but she was special, she was gonna tell me things when i got "older", but now that i'm older and she's dead, i don't know what these things were. this is a great regret of mine to not know what they were. my great great aunt marguerite died as well. i was around her a lot as a child, & she was kind of the only thing left of my grannie who died last year.
5. What countries did you visit? i was SUPPOSED to go to england and sweden, but i didn't (or was that last year?). and i'm sure those people who said they were gonna get me flights have forgotten about them entirely. sadness. i didn't leave georgia really (except a brief interlude w/ joshua in N.C. mountains, for crumb cake eating and pesto pizza and snuggling).
6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005? a g4 powerbook (hint, hint, rusty!). some kind of musical number open to the public. my craft/recipe zine online. a finished short film. sewing skills & organizational abilities & screen printing supplies in full.
7. What date from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? the time around which my brother almost died. november 1st, in which richie and i started "dating". i know i'll at least always remember the first thing listed.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? moving into my humble abode, i guess! being worthy of a nice fat bonus. otherwise i'm kinda a mess!
9. What was your biggest failure? i fail in that i procrastinate. but have gotten some things done that i hoped to, & am continuing to try to finish the rest. so i guess that's moreso my biggest flaw, though none failures.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? mono, in the beginning of the year. soup can and thumb = stitches. i have a bad ass sinus infection right now. i'm doing pretty well considering.
11. What were the best things you bought? i love my sparks record a lot. also my cowboy boots are sacred. this smoked mozzarella ravoli w/ sun dried tomato purree and basil in marinara, memorably delicious. this feng shui book that hasn't done shit for my cleaning motivation but it was rad in theory. renting donkeyskin & les bonnes femme, & lots of thrift store finds. all this was the second half of the year, the first half of the year is totally fuzzy!!!
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? my mother for not falling apart during my brother's accident. the rare people who indulge in random acts of kindness... i celebrate you all. you are not common.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? can i even count? an entire clique of strange humans in which i used to call "friends". though if my sadness and disgust towards their behavior is warranted, i am unsure. i do know that i don't have time for hard feelings, and i still find them to be interesting + potentially lovely people. i never understood gang mentality, you know, the whole we don't go to their parties, we don't talk like they talk business is all too familiar. tj being a total dick when i was having an anxiety attack. that was fucking disgusting. and a bit of my own behavior.
14. Where did most of your money go? rent, bills, ebay, car insurance, gasoline, martha stewart & various fashion/music magazines, thrift stores, figo, panera, veggie tempura sushi, pizza, health food stores, breakfasts, feminine problems, lots of cafes (almost everyday!). then lots of records, crafting supplies, thrift stores and a fair amount of ikea-ness.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? going to the zoo. which was exciting. but the person i went with was as blase as could be.
16. What song will always remind you of 2005? haircut 100's "love + one" because i listened to it too ridiculously much.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? i AM happiness incarnate. and compared to this time last year, i'm much happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? about the same, though i feel fatter. i was supposed to try to gain some of the weight back from mono, but i guess it's not happening.
iii. richer or poorer? i have much much more money but it's being funneled out elsewhere. so i don't know. mo money, mo problems.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of? worn dresses. jogging/hiking/picnics/archery, outdoorsy things. magickal photography. art projects. zine making. cooking/baking. creation in general. staying out late (i always come home early!!!).
19. What do you wish you'd done less of? giving a shit about things that don't matter. not going to the parties/bars/art/shows that people were always inviting me to. staying home during certain parties/bar/art/shows that i actually went to. going out is always a gamble. procrastinating.
20. How will you be spending Christmas? with my family, being lazy, eating food and perhaps watching movies and reading books and so on.
22. Did you fall in love in 2005? YES!!!
23. How many one-night stands? none. though 3 months of my life felt like a very extended one-night stand in a way.
24. What was your favorite TV program? this wasn't a hot year for tv, and i don't really watch tv much anyway. i guess this is why i have no use for cable, much to miss whiteside's dismay.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? i don't hate. i've forgiven a shit ton of people.
26. What was the best book you read? i quite appreciated prozac nation, i think i'll always remember it in a weird way... i just read it at a really appropriate time of my life.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery? vashti bunyan.
28. What did you want and get? lauren got me a kitten, which i wanted dearly since princee departed. tj brought me flowers once. richie brought me PEACH roses last night, to go with the sunset gerbers that we got over the weekend. boys almost NEVER bring me flowers. well, boyfriends at least. andy & leuwam bought me flowers once, too. so that was amazing. i bought myself flowers before and buy them for myself now, because i never expect people to be so generous as to buy a completely useless but lovely and inexpensive gift for me. but i love flowers. i'm a traditional idioth. i also got to go see the nutcracker ballet, which i really wanted to do last year but did not.
29. What did you want and not get? joshua to record knaves grave. though that's all tentative. tentacles.
30. What was your favorite film of this year? it may be cliche, but i reallly liked kung fu hustle. though i still haven't seen a bunch of movies for the winter, and maybe one of those would compete!
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? watched one of the ewoks movies with joshua, he took me out to dinner. we saw hairspray: the musical a couple of days before that. i turned 23.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? hanging out with cerys. travelling. having better health!
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005? dischevelled dandy, lost boy, vampire business woman, urban forest dweller.
34. What kept you sane? writing & teatime, friends, family, bjork, lavender, lovely noodle bowls, long walks.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? very into brigitte bardot this year. bad cinema has been quite fanciful...
36. What political issue stirred you the most? not sure. could be the war, could be the handlement of hurricane katrina, could be more abortion/birth control debate. could be, could be.
37. Who did you miss? cerys, joshua (at least in the past month, he's soooo busy), laremy, matt sanchez (wherever he may be), sheena, now faithine, and see #13.
38. Who was the best new person you met? probably leuwam (though i think technically we met last year). she is some of the most wonderous company. richie & i interconnected randomly with eyes, then the goofiest i've been in public in a long time around a stranger, teaching him archery with a plastic bow, almost shooting him in the peni with a suction cuplette "arrow". little did i know this wonderous boy that gave me little lights in my eyes, who could be my potential kid power sidekick, would indeed be my BOYFRIEND today!! re-meeting (in a way) mister rusty has also made life immeasurably more pleasent.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005. hold your tongue. don't jump to assumptions. hope those two have sunk in for once.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. "all is full of love, all around you"
Midwinter's Eve: Yule
by Mike Nichols
Our Christian friends are often quite surprised at how enthusiastically we Pagans celebrate the 'Christmas' season. Even though we prefer to use the word 'Yule', and our celebrations may peak a few days before the 25th, we nonetheless follow many of the traditional customs of the season: decorated trees, carolling, presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. We might even go so far as putting up a 'Nativity set', though for us the three central characters are likely to be interpreted as Mother Nature, Father Time, and the Baby Sun-God. None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows the true history of the holiday, of course.
In fact, if truth be known, the holiday of Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, with its associations of Nordic divination, Celtic fertility rites, and Roman Mithraism. That is why John Calvin and other leaders of the Reformation abhorred it; why the Puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it (to them, no day of the year could be more holy than the Sabbath), and why it was even made illegal in Boston! The holiday was already too closely associated with the birth of older Pagan gods and heroes. And many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus and even Arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters worse, many of them pre-dated the Christian Savior.
Ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. It is the Winter Solstice that is being celebrated, seed-time of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God -- by whatever name you choose to call him. On this darkest of nights, the Goddess becomes the Great Mother and once again gives birth. And it makes perfect poetic sense that on the longest night of the winter, 'the dark night of our souls', there springs the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World, the Coel Coeth.
That is why Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday as Christians. Perhaps even more so, as the Christians were rather late in lying claim to it, and tried more than once to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic Fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans and the Yule celebrations of the Celts and Saxons.
There was never much pretense that the date they finally chose was historically accurate. Shepherds just don't 'tend their flocks by night' in the high pastures in the dead of winter! But if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical evidence, this reference may point to sometime in the spring as the time of Jesus' birth. This is because the lambing season occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds are likely to 'watch their flocks by night' -- to make sure the lambing goes well. Knowing this, the Eastern half of the Church continued to reject December 25, preferring a 'movable date' fixed by their astrologers according to the moon.
Thus, despite its shaky start (for over three centuries, no one knew when Jesus was supposed to have been born!), December 25 finally began to catch on. By 529, it was a civic holiday, and all work or public business (except that of cooks, bakers, or any that contributed to the delight of the holiday) was prohibited by the Emperor Justinian. In 563, the Council of Braga forbade fasting on Christmas Day, and four years later the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days from December 25 to Epiphany as a sacred, festive season. This last point is perhaps the hardest to impress upon the modern reader, who is lucky to get a single day off work. Christmas, in the Middle Ages, was not a single day, but rather a period of twelve days, from December 25 to January 6. The Twelve Days of Christmas, in fact. It is certainly lamentable that the modern world has abandoned this approach, along with the popular Twelfth Night celebrations.
Of course, the Christian version of the holiday spread to many countries no faster than Christianity itself, which means that 'Christmas' wasn't celebrated in Ireland until the late fifth century; in England, Switzerland, and Austria until the seventh; in Germany until the eighth; and in the Slavic lands until the ninth and tenth. Not that these countries lacked their own mid-winter celebrations of Yuletide. Long before the world had heard of Jesus, Pagans had been observing the season by bringing in the Yule log, wishing on it, and lighting it from the remains of last year's log. Riddles were posed and answered, magic and rituals were practiced, wild boars were sacrificed and consumed along with large quantities of liquor, corn dollies were carried from house to house while caroling, fertility rites were practiced (girls standing under a sprig of mistletoe were subject to a bit more than a kiss), and divinations were cast for the coming Spring. Many of these Pagan customs, in an appropriately watered-down form, have entered the mainstream of Christian celebration, though most celebrants do not realize (or do not mention it, if they do) their origins.
For modern Witches, Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon 'Yula', meaning 'wheel' of the year) is usually celebrated on the actual Winter Solstice, which may vary by a few days, though it usually occurs on or around December 21st. It is a Lesser Sabbat or Lower Holiday in the modern Pagan calendar, one of the four quarter days of the year, but a very important one. Pagan customs are still enthusiastically followed. Once, the Yule log had been the center of the celebration. It was lighted on the eve of the solstice (it should light on the first try) and must be kept burning for twelve hours, for good luck. It should be made of ash. Later, the Yule tree replaced the Yule log but, instead of burning it, burning candles were placed on it. In Christianity, Protestants might claim that Martin Luther invented the custom, and Catholics might grant St. Boniface the honor, but the custom can demonstrably be traced back through the Roman Saturnalia all the way to ancient Egypt. Needless to say, such a tree should be cut down rather than purchased, and should be disposed of by burning, the proper way to dispatch any sacred object.
Along with the evergreen, the holly and the ivy and the mistletoe were important plants of the season, all symbolizing fertility and everlasting life. Mistletoe was especially venerated by the Celtic Druids, who cut it with a golden sickle on the sixth night of the moon, and believed it to be an aphrodisiac. (Magically -- not medicinally! It's highly toxic!) But aphrodisiacs must have been the smallest part of the Yuletide menu in ancient times, as contemporary reports indicate that the tables fairly creaked under the strain of every type of good food. And drink! The most popular of which was the 'wassail cup' deriving its name from the Anglo-Saxon term 'waes hael' (be whole or hale).
Medieval Christmas folklore seems endless: that animals will all kneel down as the Holy Night arrives, that bees hum the '100th psalm' on Christmas Eve, that a windy Christmas will bring good luck, that a person born on Christmas Day can see the Little People, that a cricket on the hearth brings good luck, that if one opens all the doors of the house at midnight all the evil spirits will depart, that you will have one lucky month for each Christmas pudding you sample, that the tree must be taken down by Twelfth Night or bad luck is sure to follow, that 'if Christmas on a Sunday be, a windy winter we shall see', that 'hours of sun on Christmas Day, so many frosts in the month of May', that one can use the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict the weather for each of the twelve months of the coming year, and so on.
Remembering that most Christmas customs are ultimately based upon older Pagan customs, it only remains for modern Pagans to reclaim their lost traditions. In doing so, we can share many common customs with our Christian friends, albeit with a slightly different interpretation. And thus we all share in the beauty of this most magical of seasons, when the Mother Goddess once again gives birth to the baby Sun God and sets the wheel in motion again. To conclude with a long-overdue paraphrase, 'Goddess bless us, every one!'