Salubrious Solstice, Karmic Kwanzaa, and Welcome Back the Sun!

I like winter holidays, no matter what they are called. Christmas, Kwanzaa, even Santa Lucia Day, I like them all, though I’m not too fond of winter. Or, perhaps it’s because I’m not too fond of winter. It’s cold, grey, and miserable outside, so the only sensible thing to do is have a celebration to cheer us up.

Some of the traditions of the holidays are very, very old, coming from Solstice and Juul (Yule) celebrations, good old pagan holidays that probably started to keep people from losing their minds on the long, cold winter nights as much as to practice a little sympathetic magic, just to give the sun a nudge, to get it to come back so spring and the growing season would also return.

Others are new but have an old air about them, like Kwanzaa. Personally, I like it because it involves candles. I’m probably the only person in St. Teresa’s parish who faithfully lights a chanukkiah (a menorah just for Hanukkah) every night of the Jewish holiday of lights, and if I had a Kwanzaa candleholder, I’d light that nightly, too. Kwanzaa originated in the 1960s as a way to connect with African roots and has many traditional harvest celebration elements to it. Food and light: That’s what every good winter holiday needs.


We’re right in the middle of Roman Saturnalia, which was celebrated from December 17 to 23, and was a time of merriment, gift-giving, and making amends and new starts. Slaves weren’t punished, citizens were ridiculed, and there were parades, masked dances, and a King of Saturnalia--similar to the Lord of Misrule who turned up in the middle ages. They also ate a lot, special foods that might be generally hard to get.

I like that aspect of winter holidays, too. I always have enjoyed making old-fashioned foods for holiday feasts, maybe not Roman specialties, but things like mince pie and plum pudding and springerle cookies, and serve what were once special treats in the middle of winter, citrus fruits like kumquats, always found on our Christmas Eve table. As that fellow in “Fiddler on the Roof” once said, “Without our traditions, we’d be as shaky as a . . .” Well, you get my point.

Light a fire. Eat an orange or a cookie. Light a candle. Curse the darkness, if you need to. But celebrate the turning of the seasons, because the Solstice/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/New Year’s holiday also marks the sun’s return, and we can start counting the days until it’s time to sort seeds, then plant them in the Enright CSA gardens. Happy Solstice!