When I was growing up, Christmas was often a stressful and traumatic time. Life in my family wasn't peaceful in general, so adding stress, expectations, and a fair amount of alcohol didn't improve matters. I was baptized and partially raised in the Catholic Church, so Christmas was very definitely a religious holiday with a bunch of other fun stuff tacked on to it.
I stopped celebrating Christmas when I was 15 years old because I had decided to commit myself to living a Pagan life, and it seemed the height of hypocrisy to make a fuss over the birth of Jesus. My friends and I who formed our teenage coven celebrated Winter Solstice together, of course, but without a home to decorate or the ability to mark the shortest day rather than Jesus' birthday it still kind of felt like Christmas and I didn't like it.
When, after lots of adventures I finally got my first real home in Ballard, I was absolutely resolved that I would decorate for Solstice and have a real celebration. My close friend Pandora and I conceived of a multi-course celebratory dinner, and that was the start of what became the Winter Solstice Banquet.
The Banquet is a ritual meal, rather than a ritual per se. If the Solstice is a religious holiday for you, then the Banquet is a religious event, but if it isn't, it's still a really nice evening with good food, good friends, and heart-felt reflection on the year that is ending. Each of the courses of the meal has a question that each guest answers during that course. The meal doesn't progress until everyone has had a chance to speak. For that reason, it's best to limit guests to about eight. Otherwise, you are likely to spend an uncomfortable amount of time sitting in front of empty plates.
I held the Banquet in my home in Ballard until I was forced out and moved to my condo in Greenwood. My place here doesn't have a dining area, so I thought that the Banquet was lost to me forever.
From 2007 until 2017 there was no Banquet and I grew more bitter and despondent during Christmas with each passing year. I would usually spend Christmas with Doug and his mother in Victoria, and although entirely pleasant, I had grown so resentful of the day that it was a struggle to keep my feelings under wraps.
Then, in 2016, I drew the Tower card (It's a Tarot reference - go look it up). I came home from US Thanksgiving with my family to a home in the process of being destroyed by flooding from my upstairs neighbor. When all was said and done, I came back from two months of living in a hotel to a living room with no furniture. For a while, I looked for replacement items, but nothing felt right. I started using folding camping furniture for convenience. That solution also allowed me to put the seating away when I wanted to set up my sewing studio.
Then, in 2018, my beautiful man asked me why I didn't just set up a folding table and have the Banquet again? Uhhh. Ummm. YEAH!!!!
And so on Solstice 2018, the Winter Solstice Banquet was restored.
Here is the order of service in case you want to do this too:
Winter Solstice Banquet
Appetizers
The Shortest Day
The youngest person present reads The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper while all join hands. At the conclusion, toast to "Welcome Yule."
Salad
Question: What was the hardest challenge this year?
Soup
Question: How have you changed?
Seafood
Question: What have you done for others?
Vegetables
Question: What was the highlight this year?
Main
Question: What do you hope for in the new year?
Salutation
Host reads Salutation by Fra Giovanni Giocondo
Dessert
Before posting the poetry texts and the menu we developed last year, I will just add that anyone is welcome to use this as a template to create your own Banquet tradition. Just please tell everyone you know how my genius has enriched your life. Thenk you.
The Shortest Day
Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!
Salutation
Fra Giovanni Giocondo
excerpted from A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contessina Allagia degli Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve 1513 A.D.
I am your friend and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not
got, but there is much, very much, that, while I
cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find
rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in
this present little instant. Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it,
yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and
glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see
we have only to look. I beseech you to look!
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its
gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly,
or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you
will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of
love, by wisdom, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that
brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a
sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand
is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an
overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not
content with them as joys. They, too, conceal
diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of
beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find
earth but cloaks your heaven.
Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage
you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims
together, wending through unknown country, home.
And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the
world sends greetings, but with profound esteem
and with the prayer that for you now and forever,
the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
