Reason to celebrate

[urbpan]

Starting tomorrow (more or less) each day will be longer. For six months the sun will return to us gradually. Eventually we will even come home from work in the daylight, and not feel like going to bed the moment we finish dinner. Those of us who walk dogs every night won't have to do it in the dark. Joy and generosity will come naturally--they won't feel like forced feelings amidst the scarcity of warmth and the tensions of shopping and driving. And it all starts tomorrow.

Happy Solstice.

Comments

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

thank you, i needed a bit of cheer today. the days have been dim and dreary. of course, a lot of that is due to living in seattle.

[zipotle.livejournal.com]

I was absolutely enraged and having a HORRIBLE DAY until I read this. This makes me happy. This stupid lump of upsetness in my chest is going away.

Hopefully I didn't piss Carl off too much with my bitchiness and we can smoosh around some for the rest of the night...

[anais2.livejournal.com]

Happy Solstice to you, too! Hope springs eternal...

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Yay! I need more sun!

[turil.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

While I'm all for another celebration in actual mid-winter, I really need one now too. Since it always takes me a while to get into the cold weather thing (which in New England starts in September...).

I need to think of something interesting to do with the kids today. I wish I could find my Winter Solstice kids book...

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

we made a stone henge in the back yard. no, it won't work the same way, but we'll get a kick out of tracking the shadows and all for the next year, and it took quite a while to do, so it's a great time-killer :D

[turil.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that's a good one.

I ended up writing a story about a little girl who gets sad and lonely in the winter so one year she invites all her friends and family over for a Winter Solstice party. While everyone is there she asks them to build a tall tower out of stacked stones. When the last stone is placed she asks her parents to lift her up so she can put a piece of paper on the top stone. On the paper she had written "I wish everyone would be happy and warm all winter long." A gust of wind comes along and carries the wish up into the sky. Everyone thanks her and goes home happy. The days get longer and sunnier, and soon enough it is spring and they all get together again and have a "wake up the Earth" party.

After I told the kids the story (which they listened to with an unusual amount of attentiveness), we carefully stacked some rocks up into a small tower in the classroom and wrote (with some teacher help) our wishes on papers. They put the wishes on top of the rocks and I told them the wind would come and take them away. (OK, so I actually took the wishes away, but they are only 4, and still have lots of great imagination!)

Maybe next year we can do a stone henge...