Winter Solstice 2024

In the Northern Hemisphere where I live, winter clamps down cold and dark. Wet, too, now that I'm in western Washington, and if it isn't actually raining it's cloudy or overcast. But then, that last condition is pretty common from October to June, according to a very detailed description of Olympia's weather.

Winter here is more like a long, gray slog than a magical season. It isn't like what we used to experience in Spokane with icicles hanging from the eaves, snow deep enough to build snow caves and enough on the ground to have a good snowball tussle when our kids were younger. 

And yet, and yet.... We have the turn of the seasons. We have the transition from the heat of summer to autumn's cool temperatures and blazing leaves. We have the closing down, the retreat into waiting and stewarding our energies, that comes when the light grows shorter and the darkness longer, longer, until we reach the longest night. The earth has tilted away from Sol, which rides low in the sky.

My ancestry is primarily from England and northwestern Europe, followed by Scotland, Germanic Europe, Wales, Denmark, and a bit of Ireland. In other words, my ancestors lived even farther north than my current latitude. My genes have survived through many, many long, dark winters. I'm good at this.

This is a quiet season, but not a dead one. As poet M.K. Creel writes in "Before the Longest Night" we can "Take inventory of what is becoming—". Seeds lie underground awaiting the signals of temperature and light to awaken, insects go dormant, trees deepen their root systems because they're not expending energy on leaves, blossoms, fruits and nuts. We human animals can learn from this and take this time to rest and restore.

Taking care of ourselves, taking care of others, matters more now than ever. The winter solstice can serve as a reminder to reflect on time passing, on our lives we live moment by moment, day by day, on tending our interior as well as our exterior selves. It can serve as our personal New Year's Eve, the pause between one season and the next.

How might you care for your body today? You might feed it lovingly with good food. You might move it around, gently or vigorously, indoors in the warmth or outside in the cold. How about a walk or a bike ride? Years ago when we lived in snowy Spokane I wrote A Solstice Post: Gifts I Give Myself by Riding in the Winter. Perhaps this is the day you commit or recommit to trying a practice like yoga. You might give the body you inhabit every day a nice, long nap or a hot bath.

For your brain or your heart, maybe you'd like poetry about the winter solstice that I collected a couple of years ago.

How about your senses? Last year for the winter solstice I compiled a selection of ways you can experience the winter solstice through your senses (and more poems). I'll add the Winter Solstice playlist on Spotify from the All We Can Save Project.

For your spirit, I offer these readings, excerpted here with a link to the complete piece:

"Winter Solstice"

Ray McNeice

Late December grinds on down.

The sky stops, slate on slate,

scatters a cold light of snow

across a field of brittle weeds.

Interview with Ross Gay and reflections from Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer on The Growing Edge newsletter and podcast.

"Thank You"
Ross Gay

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. 

"On the Winter Solstice"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Let’s reach toward each other

with gazes gentle

as midwinter sun—

with a seeing so generous

we can’t help but turn

toward the other

to let ourselves be seen.

"Winter Solstice"

Hilda Morely

It is from

the moon this cold travels

It is

the light of the moon that causes

this night reflecting distance in its own

light so coldly

(from one side of

the earth to the other)

A brief excerpt from a long and wonderful essay, "Burn Something Today"

Nina McLaughlin

"What now? Now it’s now it’s now it’s now and we are burning. Light the fire. We move through flames. We clutch hope in our palm like a tiny burning globe of snow. It’s painful, the flame of the snow of the hope that you will be okay and I will be okay and we will be okay, we will be here to see another season, to see, second by second, the light return to the world."

A beautiful gentle blessing from William Ayot on Philip Carr-Gomm's site, reproduced here in its entirety:

May the stars in their circling comfort and guide you.
May the great oak give you strength in troubled times.
May your hurts be healed and your soul be deepened
And in turning towards home, may you know you belong.

A Year of Poems: December

As a child perhaps you, like me, made snow angels: Lying on our backs, scooping snow away with arms and legs to leave the scalloped shapes. The trick was to get up, still within the angel's shape, then jump as far as you could to get away from it without leaving tracks. But then you realized you'd left tracks to the spot where you lay down in the cold white blanket. You marked the inviting whiteness the minute you entered it.

Several of the poems about December describe the tracks left by animals in snowfall, each poet choosing their own way in. Others describe the gritty gray of an urban setting or the unseasonable warmth of a California winter for someone raised in Vermont.

For this collection I resisted the easy choices: poems about Christmas or New Year's Eve. The winter solstice, as an astronomical fact independent of human calendars or belief systems, is worth its own consideration, as my 2022 winter solstice and 2023 winter solstice posts attest.

If these leave you cold and shivering you can always hop over to my collection of poems about soup for a warm-up.

"Winter Afternoon, Early December" by Tom Montag

The grey lid has been
lifted off the day.

Sun spills everywhere—
on snow, on house, on

me at the window.

"A December Day" by Sara Teasdale

Dawn turned on her purple pillow,
And late, late came the winter day;
Snow was curved to the boughs of the willow,
The sunless world was white and grey.

"December Thaw" by Milton Burgh

For three days the warm sun has been pulling
The silver wedges from the ground,
Until now it is soft and free.

"December" by Sarah Freligh

On the fire escape, one
stupid petunia still blooms,

"Chicago and December" by W.S. Di Piero

Vague fatigued promise hangs
in the low darkened sky
when bunched scrawny starlings
rattle up from trees,
switchback and snag
like tossed rags dressing
the bare wintering branches,
black-on-black shining,

"December in Los Angeles" by Timothy Steele

The tulip bulbs rest darkly in the fridge
To get the winter they can't get outside;
The drought and warm winds alter and abridge
The season till it almost seems denied.

"December" by Christopher Cranch

Like agate stones upon earth’s frozen breast,
       The little pools of ice lie round and still;
While sullen clouds shut downward east and west
       In marble ridges stretched from hill to hill.

"Deciphering the Alphabet" by Francine Sterle

Winter advances
leaving its white tracks
bounding over the hills
I climb each December
to get to the river
where velvety shrews,
voles and squirrels
crisscross in the snow,

"December Moon" by May Sarton

How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.

"December Notes" by Nancy McCleery

The backyard is one white sheet
Where we read in the bird tracks

The songs we hear. Delicate
Sparrow, heavier cardinal,

"Pupil" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I invite in December’s chill and the vast blue sky

and the dark before the moon and the moon.

I invite in the braille of rabbit tracks

and I invite the rabbits that made them.

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April
• A Year of Poems: May
• A Year of Poems: June
• A Year of Poems: July
• A Year of Poems: August
• A Year of Poems: September
• A Year of Poems: October
• A Year of Poems: November

Thanks + Giving

I visit grateful.org as part of my morning poetry + coffee routine, so I don't wait for the fourth Thursday in November to think about gratitude. That said, I am extra thankful for the four-day weekend. 

With the history I've learned in recent years that they didn't teach me in school I think more about Indigenous people than about Pilgrims. Friday is Native American Heritage Day now, making Thursday Native American Heritage Day Eve. I share Indigenous writers year round on social media and make an extra point of doing so around this time of year.

The quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh below and the graphic I borrowed from Rebecca Solnit's post on BlueSky point to something else we may forget when we give thanks: How is whatever we're thankful for possible? Whose hands and which resources were used to create what we appreciate? Have we thanked them directly? What's going to happen to the waste created in all these processes? (Go watch Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy on Netflix if you're wondering about that.)

"This food is the gift of the whole universe: the earth, the sky and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we transform our own unskilled states of mind and learn to eat with moderation. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the path of understanding and love."
—Thich Nhat Hanh

Yes, yes, it's still an occasion for food celebrations. With my mom and her delicious pies long gone there's no big clan gathering for this meal. Each of my siblings has their own practices and nuclear families to think about and we live far away from each other. Now the "gathering" consists of sharing photos of turkey prep and pie decor.

A few years ago when we still had four kids in their teens/20s who would be with us for Thanksgiving I changed my approach from “must produce amazing spread all at once” to “Favorites Four-Day Weekend.” I asked everyone their favorite foods, especially ones you might associate with Thanksgiving traditions but that wasn’t a requirement. I committed to making at least one favorite for everyone over the course of the weekend and laid in lots of cheese, crackers, and other noshes. 

Each day I cooked what I felt like cooking from that list, never attempting to have a full meal available at an appointed time. We might have pie in the morning and dressing for lunch along with whatever else people felt like snacking on. Meals weren’t scheduled; people ate when they were hungry.

It was fabulous.

I love to cook but the timing and variety are killers for one person to produce. My mom had a systematic approach that extended to planning which serving dish and utensil would be used for each mandatory food item. I’ve done it occasionally, I’m capable of it, but that’s not fun for me any more.

Now those kids are far-flung adults and my husband has a very restrictive diet for health reasons. On these long weekends I cook what I feel like cooking over the four days to continue the tradition and have video calls with the kids, whom we visit at other times of year when it isn’t such a travel nightmare.

Also fabulous.

I'm breaking the words "thanks" and "giving" apart and sharing some poems on the topics. I like the older-sounding "giving thanks" as a phrase so I'll start with giving. As always, I'm excerpting the poems and not necessarily providing the opening lines. But first:

Giving Ideas

• American Indian College Fund
• Potlatch Fund
• Laurel Rubin Farm Worker Justice Project, Latino Community Fund
• Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
• Refugee Women's Alliance
• Cesar Chavez Foundation

Giving

"When Giving Is All We Have"
Alberto Rios

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

"A Prayer Among Friends"
John Daniel

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive
with one another, we walk here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn't ours for long.
May we spend generously
the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy
our pleasures. 

"On Giving"
Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give little of the much which they have—and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

Thanks

I remember one Thanksgiving when my quiet dad, sitting down for our very secular feast, pulled a "Dear Abby" clipping out of his pocket and shared this reading as grace. This was so out of character that we all sat quiet for a few moments after he stopped reading. It's by Pauline Phillips, AKA Abigail Van Buren, and is posted every year by her daughter Jeanne Phillips who now writes the Dear Abby columns.

Oh, Heavenly Father,
We thank Thee for food and remember the hungry.
We thank Thee for health and remember the sick.
We thank Thee for friends and remember the friendless.
We thank Thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.
May these remembrances stir us to service.
That Thy gifts to us may be used for others.

Amen.

Then there's the gratitude that comes from awareness of the details.

"Thanksgiving"
Tim Nolan

Thanks for the Italian chestnuts—with their
tough shells—the smooth chocolaty
skin of them—thanks for the boiling water—

itself a miracle and a mystery—
thanks for the seasoned sauce pan
and the old wooden spoon—and all

the neglected instruments in the drawer—

Feeling grateful takes many forms in the body, as Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer describes.

"A Partial List of Gratefulnesses"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

There’s the giddy gratefulness that sparkles
like morning sun on the river and the peaceful
gratefulness that soothes like warm wind.
There’s the gratefulness that almost hurts
as it squeezes tight around the heart,
the gratefulness that arrives quiet as cat’s paws
in the night, and the gratefulness that thrums
and swirls in us as if we’re a sky full of starlings.

"To Say Nothing but Thank You"
Jeanne Lohman

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

"Thanks" 
W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

"Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude"
Ross Gay

thank you what in us rackets glad
what gladrackets us;

and thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart,
this gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw
to the sky, 

And finally, the ultimate gratitude for the world we're a part of and all who came before, everything that makes our lives possible.

"Remember"
Joy Harjo

"Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth."

"I’m going to eat some turkey. But not in honor of some mythic coming together of Natives and colonizers. Because it’s delicious. The fight will still be there after that turkey, and I’ll be ready."
—Adrienne Keene, citizen of Cherokee Nation, founder of Native Appropriations

"The path to reconciliation starts with honest acknowledgement of our past, with open eyes and open hearts for a better future." 
—Matika Wilbur, Swinomish and Tulalip, photographer

Related Reading

• Whose lands are you living on? Native Lands map
• Thanksgiving is an act, not a menu
• In Which I Give Thanks for Biking
• Giving Thanks for Bicycles
• "We Are Still Here": Indigenous-Focused Bicycle Programs

Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe

Invasive so-called Himalayan blackberries clamber over much of western Washington's terrain. Dubbed "Himalayan" by Luther Burbank as a marketing move even though they probably originated in Armenia, these blackberries aren't the thornless variety he had hoped to breed by a long shot. Not even close; when I pick them along the roads near my house I wear long sleeves, some hiking pants with a smooth finish, and a glove on one hand to push the vines back.

Like my gleaned apples, they're free for the taking so I end up thinking up things to do with them. 

• Fruit leather: I have a batch waiting in the freezer for me to decide whether I'm turning them into fruit leather along with plums I got from a Buy Nothing offer.
• Flavored vinegar: I soaked a big batch in white wine vinegar to make this for gift-giving. I used a sugar-free blackberry vinegar recipe, although other recipes involving sugar would be fine if you'd like to start with a sweeter base. I didn't take the longer-term route of extracting and then fermenting blackberry juice to turn it into vinegar. I hung onto the soaked blackberries and used a bunch of them in the chutney, which provided vinegary quality. Now pink, with much of their color along with flavor transferred into the vinegar, a few of them wait in the freezer for a future something or other.
• Blackberry chutney: If you've read my other recipe roundups about tomatoes, apples, pears, zucchini, and green tomatoes, you know I love me some chutney! So of course I had to riff on a few recipes I found. This turned out not to be as tangy as most of my other chutneys, more along the lines of a complex jam than anything. Well worth putting on a cracker with some cheese though

Blackberry Chutney Recipes

Where I started for inspiration, considering proportions of ingredients, whether or not it included apples (most did and that seemed like a good medium to carry the blackberry flavor), and the spices used:

• BBC Apple, Blackberry and Cinnamon Chutney
• Larder Love's Easy Blackberry (Bramble) Chutney
• Wellington Bakehouse Blackberry Relish: No apples
• Feast Glorious Feast Blackberry Chutney
• Foraged Farmacy Spiced Blackberry Chutney

I had a lot of blackberries even accounting for the ones waiting for fruit leather so this recipe uses large quantities. All the reference recipes use about a third of the quantities here. I scaled up and checked the spicing levels along the way.

Blackberry Apple Chutney

• Blackberries: 1,300 grams (mine were soaked in vinegar; refer to note with the vinegar amount)
• Apples: ~415 grams, approximately 3-4 apples depending on size, diced small
• Onion (red or yellow): 400 grams, diced small
• Brown sugar (white okay; brown sugar gives a caramel element): 450 grams
• Apple cider or any other vinegar with 5% acidity: At a guesstimate, 350 grams; taste and adjust after it's all cooked together. I used blackberries soaked in vinegar so the vinegar amount is based on proportions from the source recipes
• Garlic: 3 cloves, diced or crushed
• Ground cumin: 1/2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1/2 t.
• Fine salt: 1 t.
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cloves: 1/4 t.
• Optional: Zest of 1-2 oranges

Yield: 4 half-pints and 8 quarter-pints

Prepare jars for canning following best practices such as those on the National Center for Home Food Preservation or Food in Jars.

Dice the onions and start them cooking at a gentle heat. After five minutes add the apples, blackberries, and spices and cook until the fruit is soft. Depending on the apples this will run around 15-20 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar. Stir the sugar in and allow it to dissolve. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring often. At about 10 minutes taste and adjust sweet/sour balance by adding a bit more vinegar or sugar to your taste. Cook until you can drag a wooden spoon through the base of the chutney and leave a clear trail in the pan before the thickening liquid fills the line back in. 

Ladle into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 15 minutes. For best flavors, wait at least two weeks for the chutney to mature before using.