Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Samhain turns toward Yule

We have arrived in the darkest month of December, letting the murky mysteries of Hallowtide recede, but only a little. The holy tide of darkening days deepens. Now is when we begin to anticipate, even actively seek, tidings of comfort and joy.

The longest night of the year has inspired some of the most fervent celebrations around the globe, for without the dark to sanctify the light, our little lives would be monotonous and wearisome.

Samhain, our old Celtic word for the Hallowe’en turn of the wheel, encompasses the whole dark season, taking in November, December and January. The ghosts of Hallowtide come forth with us to Yuletide. Remember that Charles Dickens’ beloved Christmas Carol is in fact a ghost story. And isn’t it only natural to remember those who have gone before at this time of year? We pull out our grandmother’s pie crust recipe, or string the lights on the tree, always our father’s job.

When the longest night of the year is here
Our friends and family gather near
To light a candle against the night
And warm our spirits in the wonder of light.

When I wrote The Longest Night verse and created my first greeting card I was still in my thirties. I didn’t yet understand that the spirits we invoked to gather around the light with us included the vast and beloved dead. As the years pass, I understand more clearly how the past and who we come from informs who we are and what the future will bring.

This newsletter offers a kind of ghost story, a most friendly encounter, and ends with some resources if you want to explore your own ancestors. If you want to reach out to the beloved living, read on for an offer of free shipping in my shop, and an invitation to the best kind of celebration, one I’ve been participating in more than three decades now.

In the Journal

Ancestor Journeywork at Samhain

This is a most private kind of research and I have kept it close for several years. But you might find a little glimmer of resonance here.

I have not come to the great grandmother oak tree for a long time, but I have been feeling lost, spinning, the world is too much… I sit by my hearth altar, next to a painting of a cottage in a forest, and go to visit an ancestor from so long ago she has no name. I think of her simply as the herb woman. It is a strange thing to describe and do. Here is an account of a recent journey, beginning as so many have with an imagined visit to the enormous old oak tree in the park near my home.

Turning and Returning at the Revels

Bringing back the light is at the heart of every Revels celebration, a yearly pageant of song, dance, and stories, replete with splendid costumery, enchanting puppetry, hilarious mummers, a children’s chorus, and moments of solemn or silly ritual. Every Revels show makes common cause between the rebirth of the Sun of Mother Earth and the birth of the Son of Father God. The narrative might feature the moon and stars or a birth in Bethlehem, for Revels offers a friendly blend of nature-based Paganism with the traditions of the Christian Nativity and other sacred traditions that have grown up around the winter solstice.

Celebration and Connection

This year California Revels is bringing the magic with six shows over four days at the winter solstice. We who love Revels will go and fill our wells with the old ways, the old songs and dances, and thereby enact an altogether joyous kind of ancestor veneration.

Six performances, December 20-23, at Douglas Morrison Theater, 22311 N. 3rd St., Hayward, CA. Accessible by BART and some parking available. Performances run 2 hours and 15 minutes. Tickets $40, or students $20.

I’ve written much about Revels, this year with some lovely videos that couldn’t be shared here because Substack is monetized. Come on by to find out more!

Sale in the Prose and Letters Shop

My Prose and Letters shop is full of many greeting cards celebrating Yule, Christmas and many other turns of the Wheel of the Year, and lots of calligraphy art prints and artist books as well.

Free standard shipping on all orders over $50, through December 19.

Contact me if you want expedited shipping.

Discounts on 10-packs of select Yule cards, quantities limited.

Everyday discount of 25% off 10 of any greeting card.

Prose and Letters storefront will be closed from December 20 through January 7, which is St. Distaff’s Day, when spinners traditionally took up their spindles after the Twelfth Day of Christmas concluded the festivities on the 6th.

Mistress of the Revels

Settling on a favorite Yule song to share with you is impossible, so I’ll expand on my Revels theme and show you the incomparable Annie Lennox playing the Mistress of the Revels, leading her party of musicians, guisers and fools through the forest and into a lucky town to encounter some very big magic indeed. This old tune for the merry gentlemen is endlessly variable; for years I heard it sung as a dirge in our community theater’s production of A Christmas Carol. I much prefer this jolly romp!

Prose and Letters is a free publication for the foreseeable future. Subscribe to receive news from my writing desk and drawing table at each of the eight turns of The Wheel of the Year. My posts and newsletters are archived at my home place on the web.

Thank you for reading!