Mid-winter
I like Winter Solstice, I do. I love the lights up, and special holiday music, am rather fond of peppermint chocolate - these are bits of mid-winter I enjoy. On Sunday before Solstice, we had a quiet moment and celebrated as a family. I made a nice but not over-the-top dinner of ham and sides, and chocolate cake for dinner. CZ picked out a big log to be our Yule log and we had a procession to go out and find it in the strip of wood out back. We could see the new wall left by the construction crew as they ready to tear up that lovely field to build the new and improved school right behind us. Everyone but Ms. T came out for the Yule Log gathering expedition. She's really going thru some teen slump lately. Sigh. The rest of us were festive, and made up log songs as we carried the prize back inside. I poured some whiskey over the log on the patio, and asked the Gods to send us blessings over the coming year. CZ put the log on the fire, and it flamed up a nice blue as the alcohol burned off. Later, we had a small ritual with quarters called, Earth Mother, and God of the Wild Wood invited in. We read blessings, and dropped stones into water as we wished for good things to come in 2016. I gave each of the kids one gift, a box of chocolates.
It was nice, quite, meaningful.
Then the full force of Christmas roared in. D had to go sing with his school choir over at CHICK-FIL-A on Monday night. A Christmas carol sing at a fast food place. UGH. I could see doing a concert at a hospital or elder care place, but a fast food joint? Ughs. I bought a nasty peppermint crunch milkshake while I waited for things to wrap up, and that was the start of the awful.
Spent the next few days in a mad haze mailing cards, buying gifts, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, making cookies - all in this awful thick, humid fugue of rain. The kids were home after Wednesday, and Thursday was a blur of activity. Chris was a sweetheart and drove the teens to the mall for shopping purposes, and took my bag of cookies for the homeless to the church. Then we had a big dinner on Xmas eve that the kids were meh on, so it was me and CZ with a huge spread of food between us. Gods. I could have just made spaghetti. Xmas was getting pulled out of bed by the little one to get up and open gifts. Some were appreciated, some were hated. So much, too much. Then in the afternoon, over to the grandparents to do it all over again. Ughs. So much food, too much food. Boxing day we had a school friend over to visit & that occupied the kids. The next day, Sunday, I was helping lead a Solstice/New Year service at UUCC, and had to haul over early to that with all the readings for everyone, and blue scarves for people to wear - my co-planner decided we all needed to wear "wintry-blue" for the service.
It went fine, it all went fine. I'm trying to be so grateful that I have family around me, and things to be engaged with. I don't spend my holidays alone wishing for something else. But Still. I'm exhausted. I pulled muscles in my lower back, and feel decrepit and awful. Feel like a truck ran over me. Christmas ran over me. Ugh. I hate that it takes so much out of me to pull a holiday together.