Merry Christmas, and a blessed Christmastide to you! 

In times ago and for some today, Christmas was celebrated as a festival of twelve days and thirteen Holy Nights.  Christmas Eve is actually the first of the Holy Nights, with the first day of Christmastide being Christmas and then the Holy Nights extend until Twelfth Night on the eve of January fifth (anyone remember Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare?)  January 6 is of course Epiphany.

These beautiful and inward Holy Nights is one of my most personally fulfilling times of the whole year.  It is a very inward time, a time to dream and a time to plan.  I am using Raising Little Shoots’ wonderful Midwinter Resource for adults, and it is fantastic! You can find it here: https://raisinglittleshoots.com/the-year-of-light-a-gentle-winter-journey-with-god-from-midwinter-to-candlemas/

In general, I do a lot of reflecting and thinking about what I want to see in my family life during the next year and what I want to see in myself.   I try very hard to schedule nothing during this time, and so even though I have to work a few days during Christmastide, I like to have as much time as possible to just be.   With all of our children being ages sixteen to twenty four, this year has been a time of puzzles, reading, and being on the farm. The flu has hit my poor husband, but the rest of us are healthy and for that I am grateful. It’s a good time to rest!

Many Waldorf families mark this time by setting up a path of stars for the Three Kings to travel on to reach the infant Jesus.  Some families make an Advent-type calendar to mark these days.  Some families make a Weather Tree, and have fun guessing what the weather will be like each month of the new year based on the weather of each of the Twelve Days.

This is a great time to play card and board games with your family, to catch up with your family and friends, to grow more intimate with your spouse or partner as you plan and dream together. I love the ideas of couples planning their year ahead together with a big calendar!

One thing I love is to take stock of the past year and look ahead to the New Year.  Like most people, I am not very good at keeping resolutions.  So I normally choose a word of the year to help keep me focused and centered on my priority. I first heard of this practice from Sheila over at Sure As The World, many years ago. So many treasures over there!

This year, my word is ROOTED.  Each year I have done artistic representations of my word with sort of corresponding focus areas represented. One year I did concentric circles with the word of the year in the middle.  I have done trees with the word as the root and some of the focal areas as branches and I have done vision boards. Last year I did a vision board and transferred a line drawing of myself onto the vision board with all the different areas I wanted to think about around that.

This year, I am thinking particularly about my work outside of the home, and where I am headed. I am hopefully going to be able to get into teaching at the college level and streamline some of my clinical work, nd I am looking at PhD programs. I am not young anymore, but I don’t feel particularly daunted by it either. The second thing I am thinking about is my health, because as many of you know I faced a life -threatening challenge in 2023, so keeping physically healthy is a top priority! Lastly, my main goal is to keep making fun memories with the family. The older the kids have become, the more obsessed my husband and I are with them because they are so much fun and such cool people to hang out with! I will be dreaming and drawing and painting throughout Christmastide to see what comes to me in these areas.

For those of you just starting out thinking about Christmastide and the Holy Nights, maybe you would enjoy this introspective approach of using biography to understand yourself as you move into the New Year.  Here are areas of focus for each of the twelve days:

December 25th:  Think about your own birth:  the circumstances, your family, your own physical body as an infant and as a child.  Write down your impressions.  Pick three words that describe your physical body as an infant and child.  Were you frequently sick or robust?  Did you have any physical challenges?

December 26th:  Think about the Early Years, ages 0-7.  Did you feel loved and accepted and as if you belonged?  When you think back, what were you like then?  What composed your whole world?  Do you have an early impressions of nature and how that affected you?

December 27th:  Think about the years 7-14.  What were your habits, the things you did on a daily basis from what you did when you got up, what you did in the afternoons after school, what you did before you went to bed.  What did you do every week on certain days of the week?  How did that shape you?  Does it continue to impact you now?

December 28th:  Think about the years 14-21.  What were the things you loved, what was most important to you?  What did you dislike?  Are the things that were important then still important now or has that totally changed?

December 29th:  Think about the years 21-28 of your life.  What things do you see happening that were the complete hand of God, your destiny?  Relationships, people, births and deaths, things that changed your life and who you were forever?

December 30th:  Think about the years 28-35.   Can you draw yourself at this age and the things in your life at this point?  Did you have a significant experience at the age of 33 or so?

December 31st:  Think about the years  35 – 42 if you are there!  What was most important from this period to you? What do you imagine this to be like?

January 1st:  Think about the years 42-49 if you are there.  What do you have to bring outward into the world during this phase?  What is it you are passionate about?  What will you do with your passions this year?

January 2nd: Pick one of the seven year time periods that really speaks to you from your life.  Draw it.  Get together with a friend and draw those time periods together.  Explain your life during that time period to your friend.

January 3rd:  Think about yourself as a physical entity.  What do you need to do to nurture your physical body this year?  What would be helpful?  How could you make this happen?

January 4th: Think about yourself and the habits and rhythms you create for yourself. If you keep journals, look back through the past years.  What months are you tired?  What months do you feel most energized?  Are you an early or late riser?  What days of the week do you like best and feel most productive?  Are there any rhythms that you should be setting in place for you or your family members so that everyone is happier?  Is life simple or busy?  Do your rhythms support you, or deplete you?  What could you change to make this a simpler and more peaceful year?

January 5th:  Think about what you love.  Name those things.  Name passions you have in books, music, subjects, knowledge.  Are you nurturing those passions?  Are your interests changing?  Name one thing you would like to deepen your knowledge of this year.

January 6th:  How can you nurture your spiritual or your religious side? Do you have a religious community? Do you have any kind of community outside of the four walls of your home?  We were made to be in community with one another.  How will you nurture community this year?

Many blessings,
Carrie