Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Making Light
Gods, there are a lot of Yule trees up already.
Driving around last week on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I was struck by how many Yule trees I saw in the windows of the houses I passed: far more than there would usually be this early in the season that Americans know collectively as “the holidays.”
No, I don't think that it's just Christmas creep. (If you think that the “Christmas Creep” sounds like some nasty little wight that invades people's homes earlier and earlier every year, probably wearing a little red hat, you may well be right.) Yes, more people are spending more time at home with more time on their hands than usual. But I think that there's something deeper going on.
It's a dark time in a dark year: a pandemic, a nasty election, a summer of disquiet and reckoning with collective sins past and present. In such times, there's really only one thing that you can do: make some light.
Every year in December, together we work a massive act of collective sympathetic magic. The light goes away; we make light in the darkness; the light comes back. In some ways, all those other years seem like rehearsal for what we need to do right now.
Right now, we need that magic, and we need the light. Usually I wait until the days before the Sunstead to bring out the Yule boxes. This year, though, I may reconsider.
Gods know, we need it.
Photo: Wren Swart
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The people who lived in this house before me left their outdoor Christmas lights behind. I've never touched them in the 3 previous years, but this year I'm actually looking at them. This year I might actually pull them out, because it's just been that kind of year.