Solstice Rituals
By Clover Brown
I was born right around the time of the Summer Solstice. I’m a Summer Solstice baby through and through- passionate and alive during those long, hot days. I love fire rituals and summer nights, lazy summer sunsets and humid morning walks and really anything and everything about the summer months.
But something about Winter Solstice is just oh so magical. Winter Solstice we turn toward each other to weather through the harshness of winter, the cold & dark together. It’s true that I slow down quite a bit in the winter, but my creative eye is always looking, looking, looking for the ways in which nature participates always in creativity- even when she seems to rest.
Perhaps it is this reason (and that I have always lived in places in the Northern hemisphere with long, cold, dark winters) that I put such love and attention into the Winter Solstice. I’m always looking for new ways to get that magical feeling, to generate warmth and intimacy.
I have friends who, yearly on the morning of Winter Solstice, gather outside in a big group of loved ones and watch the sun peek up over the tree line. Raising steaming mugs of coffee and tea, they give the sun a riotous cheer, welcoming its light back for another turn of the year. What a beautiful ritual.
My sister, who is also an artist and a mama of twins, started a ritual for solstice many years ago when her kiddos were small. The whole family would light candles, turn out the lights and go device-free, media-free at sunset for days leading up to Winter Solstice. I love this ritual as acknowledgement of our frailty, the things that make us feel safe and warm, and the ways in which our busy, noisy modern lives can separate us from the rhythms of nature- if we don’t take the time to pay attention... or create rituals to remember. The night of Winter Solstice I might have a little gathering, sharing gratitudes and doing ritual magic.
Most likely you will find me pulling my Tarot cards for the year ahead (you can read about how to do this on my Instagram), doing yoga, and/ or taking a bath.
But because I am a visual artist, one of the ways I have created ritual around Solstice is making handmade gifts- little works of art- and lovingly giving them.
The gifts are very modest and much of the pleasure truly is in the making, and then the giving, as well as the ritual of giving itself. Part of that ritual for me includes appreciations or blessings of and for each person. Folks know by now that these times of year they’ll get a little treasure from me. Perhaps a tiny watercolor painting, a poem, a sachet that I embroidered. Maybe a custom tea blend and teacup, packaged tenderly with instructions.
Folks have received hand-dipped candles of all sorts (a perennial favorite), flower essences I made, or hand-crafted ornaments, to name a few.
Because Winter Solstice falls so near to our America cultural observance of Christmas, I don’t have any desire to create rituals for myself that involve more urgency, shopping, stress, waste or deadlines. Christmas means a lot of things to a lot of people- there are a lot of very beautiful traditions during the winter months that bring people and communities together. In creating Solstice rituals for myself and my circles, my intention is to make givingness light, playful, relational and very, very simple.
I also love simplicity in this post-pandemic world. What about a ritual for choosing a poem and sending it out in a hand-written note as your Solstice gift each midwinter? What about baking bread and then inviting friends to share it?
How simple can you get, how intimate a space can you create?
Clover Brown is Adosa’s On-Demand Guest Teacher, presenting on Solstice Equinox Rituals. You can find all 7 of her classes in the On-Demand Membership
