Solstice feast: Roast beast with Yorkshire pudding, served au jus, with horseradish sauce, green beans (me) and Brussels sprouts (Jackie). Her desert was more Yorkshire pudding with honey, while I ate some of my ginger sparkle cookies left from Zamenhof Day.
Tag: solstice
Conservatory versus seasonal depression
For several weeks before and after the winter solstice, I’m quite prone to seasonal depression. In recent years, I’ve come up with a list of things I can do to ward off depression, two of which we practiced today.
First, we went to the University of Illinois Conservatory. It’s a rather handsome greenhouse where the plant biologists keep interesting plants, and make the space available to the public to come and see the plants, and hang out in the warm and humid and sunny.
Sadly, today it wasn’t sunny.
But that’s okay. It was still warm and somewhat humid, with lots of exotic plants.
After the Conservatory, we went to the iHotel, where we had drinks by the fireplace, then went into Houlihan’s for lunch, then sat in front of the fireplace some more.
It was very nice. I’m sure it staved off winter depression for a day or two.
2022-12-21 12:46
The pandemic is bad, but one bonus of avoiding public places is that I hear almost no Christmas music—which means that I’m not already tired of it before I’m ready to listen to some.
Now listening to Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts Christmas album.
2021-12-13 15:05
So far our Solstice display includes a militaristic Santa nutcracker, a few pine fronds to represent the tree, and a Christmas card with green giraffes.
2019-12-19 07:31
Walking outside yesterday I realized I was not SAD, even though the solstice was just three days away. In fact, I was very nearly gleeful. And the feeling has persisted. It’s like it’s late February and spring is coming!
2019-07-24 08:04
Me: It’s not even 8:00 PM yet, and it’s already nearly dark outside. I guess it is a full month since the solstice.
Jackie: Don’t go getting depressed though!
Me: No, that’s for later. Now I just get anxious that in a few months I’ll get depressed.
What about solstice stamps?
I started this post basically as a shout-out to the post office for doing a pretty good job of covering the range of holiday stamp needs. If you want to honor a major religious or ethnic northern-hemisphere-winter celebration with your stamp choice, the U.S. post office has you pretty well covered.
Jews and African-Americans will find Hanukkah and Kwanzaa stamps.
Christians who want to focus on the religious aspects of the holiday have two choices—manger scene with star, or the slightly more subtle lamb. (Is it the Lamb of God? Is it a reference to flocks watched over by shepherds at night? It’s a stretch, but you could even choose to pretend it’s a secular reference to wool production and the making of cozy sweaters—an option I mention because it’s a real possibility in this household.)
If your winter-holiday celebration has its roots in the Christian tradition, but is a bit less religious-focused, you have several choices. There’s a kid in a snow-suit making a snow-angel, a one-horse-open-sleigh reference, a Santa Claus, and some holiday decorations with Christmas cookies.
There’s even a stamp for Diwali (and the post office always has a stamp for Eid, although I guess this year, since Ramadan was back in the summer, they didn’t see fit to include it with the winter holiday stamps).
But just as I was getting ready to sing the praises of the U.S. Post Office for hitting just about every note, I realized that they’d left me out. There’s no stamp for me to put on my solstice cards. Those bastards!
I shall have to write a strong letter of protest.
Winter solstice night hike
Last night the Urbana Park District hosted a winter solstice night hike at Meadowbrook Park, and Jackie and I had a great time walking with Savannah, the park district guide, and the nearly a dozen people who attended.
The winter solstice is always a hard day for me. The longest night should be the day things finally start to get better, but I have trouble finding solace in that truth. Making a bit of a ceremony of the solstice helps.
In years past—pretty much without even thinking about it—I have always fought against the gathering dark. My reaction to this tweet by Jonathan Mead is a good example.
The more you resist the seasons the more you’ll pay later. Sink into the darkness. There’s no better time than now to fully recharge.
I was having none of it:
“Good advice,” I say, vowing never to give in. I’ll gladly pay more later, when the light has returned. A lot more.
That particular reaction—so automatic, and so strong—prompted some thinking over the past year. Maybe there was something to the idea. Could it be that there’s a way to concede to the dark and cold without sinking into depression?
This winter I will experiment with that idea. I mean, it’s going to be cold and dark whether I rail against it or not. Maybe a bit of acceptance could help?
Savannah read a short text that advocated along these lines—something about “being where you are” on the winter solstice. [Updated 28 December 2016: I had emailed Savannah a link to this post, and she replied with the link to the text she had read from: Winter Solstice Traditions: Rituals for a Simple Celebration]
I’ll post more on this as winter progresses.
The night did not fully cooperate. The sky was overcast, which meant that we couldn’t see much in the way of planets or constellations. We didn’t hear any owls, despite Savannah’s best efforts to call to them, nor did we hear any coyotes. It wasn’t even as dark as it might have been—the low clouds caught and reflected the light pollution from Urbana and campus.
None of which meant the walk fell short of my hopes. Savannah talked about the history of Meadowbrook Park, and showed us several of their current projects—restoring native plants along Douglas Creek (Jackie helped with that one) and opening up some space along the Hickman Wildflower Walk. She talked about the Barred Owls in the woods to the west and the Great Horned Owls in the woods to the east. She talked about the few local species that hibernate, and compared them to the local species that instead engaged in winter sleeping. She took us to the Freyfogle Prairie Overlook and told us it was the highest point in the park—an amusing notion in a place so flat.
It was wonderful.
It was dark enough that I didn’t want to try to take pictures, so the pictures on this post are from earlier visits to Meadowbrook Park. The rabbit in the picture at the top is one of my favorite sculptures. This picture at the bottom, taken on one of our very long walks leading up to our big Kal-Haven trail hike, is from a spot quite close to the Freyfogle Prairie Overlook.
Rejoice: The sun returns!
The solstice snuck up on me this year. The calendar shows it as being today, which it is if you live east of the United States. But it was actually a few minutes before midnight on the east coast and more than an hour before midnight here.
Happily, Geoff Landis (one of my Clarion instructors) posted a “happy solstice” message on Facebook (with a link to an astronomy site with the details) a few hours before the event, so I was able to appreciate it prospectively.
The longest night of the year has come and gone. I’m glad that’s over.
Why, in just six weeks, it’ll be Groundhog’s Day! And once that happens, it’ll be time start looking for our early spring!
My favorite holiday: Groundhog’s Day
I’m a latecomer to Groundhog’s Day fandom. I blame my second-grade teacher. She told us about the holiday, but who somehow failed to get through to me that it’s a joke.
That unfortunate early experience aside, the cross-quarter date is important to me. Just like Halloween marks the time when I tend to start worrying about the approaching dark days of winter, Groundhog’s Day is when I start to feel like the worst is past.
That wasn’t always true. I used to think that February was the worst part of winter. It always felt bitterly unfair that I’d (somehow) make it through January, only to have to confront another whole month of winter—with no guarantee of relief in March either. (We often get mild weather starting in late March, but it’s also entirely possible to get a whole winter’s worth of snow in the first few weeks of spring.)
But the sun follows a more rigid schedule. The days will get longer—and at an increasingly rapid pace over the next few weeks. And, despite the idiosyncrasies of the weather in any particular year, the longer days will lead to warmer days. It would take a volcano to make it otherwise.
So, I’m a fan of Groundhog’s Day and its promise of spring—whether early or on its regular schedule.