Taking Back Tradition: My Regular Queer Pagan Holiday Post
Winter Solstice 2023
In 1977 I lived in a collective house with Jewish lesbians. Banning the Xmas tree from the living room was fine with me. I wanted to ban the holiday entirely. It took years to wean myself of all the expectations and burdens that the holiday brings. Finding the perfect gift for everyone, sending cards to dozens (I sent anti-Xmas cards), forced shopping amidst anxious crowds and booming Xmas music in the stores. To avoid the ubiquitous music I stopped shopping after October. It helped to join the Church of Stop Shopping.*
I was a regular bah humbugger.
I already knew that the solstice holiday had been stolen from pagans by christians. But it took years for me to embrace the decorated tree again. Now I finally have, to the relief of my partner.
The solstice tree is an old pagan tradition — bringing a tree indoors and hanging things on it. Before the advent of electric lights, my Swedish ancestors actually put burning candles on the tree. I wonder how many house fires resulted. Asking for a fire marshal friend.
Last year my wife Holly and I discovered that it made us happy to start getting into the solstice spirit early by buying our solstice tree when the tree farm opens for business the day after Thanksgiving. We did it again this year. Two years in a row makes it a ritual!
Now our sweet smelling fir tree is decorated to the hilt. As Holly danced around the tree hanging the ornaments and I watched from my recliner, we fondly remembered where we acquired each of them and what they represent. I still have the Santa and elf ornaments knitted by my Swedish grandmother. She decorated her tree with Scandinavian straw reindeer, wooden and homemade candy cane ornaments.
Here in the MoHo household we are all about reimagining cultural institutions. If we can take back the tree, why can’t we reclaim other christian traditions?
This year we decided to recycle Advent.
Neither my childhood Presbyterian church nor Holly’s evangelical sect practiced Advent. But I have a vague memory of seeing an Advent calendar in the home of a Catholic girlfriend. The idea of getting to open a little door with a gift inside for the whole month of December is enticing for a kid. Kind of like Hanukkah only longer and presumably better. Did the christians steal from the Jews too? Asking for some friends.
The word advent is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning coming, which is a translation from Greek. We felt we needed another word for our pre-solstice holiday and we tried to come up with one. None of the synonyms work. Arrival, onset, appearance, approach, entrance. Holly likes the word Looming, but that sounds ominous to me. We both like Coming but it’s too confusing. So we decided to stick with advent for now, a perfectly nonreligious word which can be applied to any holiday, really.
In the christian tradition, Advent is a season. The traditional liturgical color for Advent is violet — so very gay! The Unitarian Universalist Association promotes four words for the four Advent Sundays of the month of December. A candle is lit each week to symbolize hope, peace, joy and love. We can get behind that! I do like the Unitarians. They take the prospect of peace seriously and show up at every peace march.
Our takeover of Advent wasn’t a planned theft. It was rather inadvertent. We each secretly bought a wine advent calendar for the house. When they were both delivered on the same day, we discovered we had each bought the exact same thing!
The wine advent calendar is a cardboard box about 18 by 14 inches and about 7 inches deep, enough for little wine bottles laid on their sides. It has 24 doors, each with a number. You open one door a day and pull out a bottle. We celebrate each evening however we want, by reading a poem or just having a conversation. But there must be a toast. Our favorite: Cheers Queers!
Then, because we observe solstice and not Xmas we had to count back from December 21 instead of December 25. Because of poor math skills, we started on November 24 — days early. Whatever. Once you start, you have to keep going. I think that’s what the liturgy says.
The wine comes in adorable small bottles, enough for one glass, so we are glad we got two calendars. Of course, this means we are committed to drinking a glass of wine every night until solstice or until the wine runs out and every door on the calendar is opened. We can do that!
Advent is all about anticipation of the great event — in this case solstice, or the longest night of the year, marking “astronomical winter” in the northern hemisphere, after which the light begins to return. It makes us think of the Carly Simon song, Anticipation. We are Boomers, after all.
Now we are pondering how to use the 48 cute wine bottles. Perhaps next year we shall gift all our friends with MoHo’s Special Herbal Elixir. What is that? We don’t yet know, but Holly has been experimenting with something called fire cider!
Now I’m embracing the solstice holiday and all our reclaimed pagan rituals that go with it. I’m finally enjoying the holiday season that I once eschewed.
Bah humbug no more!
Happy solstice to all and to all a good long night!
Love, Molly (and Holly)
*https://revbilly.com. The Church of Stop Shopping calls consumerism “the biggest and baddest fundamentalist religion in the U.S.” Now, they’ve got some great music! https://revbilly.com/music/
