Solstice

Winter’s here and the day’s are about to get longer. We’re beginning our slow march to Litha and the longest day.
Mike and I celebrated the Winter Solstice last night and it was wonderful. We burned the seedpods of some wild tobacco he grew and let the smoke take our troubles to the sky.
The smoke was white and clean looking, if you can say that of smoke, and had a wonderful sweet fragrance that was set off beautifully by the clear cool night.
It’s the first time we’ve honoured Yule outdoors. In the past our observance has been restricted to food, but we felt a need to mark it like this.
Not that we ignored the food. I roasted a turkey in beer and made a crustless banana pudding pie with a chocolate Schnapps sauce. The pie is good. The sauce is better.
Winter Solstice means more than Christmas to me because it goes back forever and doesn’t have a great lot of commercialization piled on it. Like the smoke from last night’s tobacco, it just seems cleaner.