Winter solstice traditions + YAYS and NAYS of 2024

celebratory ideas for people who aren't in a major religion

Hello friends,

I’m going on winter break until January, so I hope you have a restful, peaceful holiday. I hope you do things you actually want to do, and not only things you were corralled into doing. I hope you are gentle with yourself, and others are gentle with you. I hope you get to be with the people you love. For anyone who hasn’t subscribed, here’s a button for you -

In the New Year, I’m going to be switching to a digest format, where I’ll share life writing on themes of baby loss, starting again, growing up in your 30s, grief, and suchlike, plus track my reading and associated goals. There will also be occasional “series”, like the one over autumn, to encourage anyone who wants to, to get writing. I’m wondering which to make “paid”, and I think actually it’s the more personal stuff that should be… but not sure quite how to separate everything, since it makes sense to me to do a digest. I’m going to release the autumn writing course for free subscribers next year, too, as I really want to encourage everyone to write, so look out for that. Lastly, I have another BIG project in mind next year, which I’ll be considering and defining more for myself over these last few weeks of the year. So I hope you’ll follow along, this little writer, to make writing and books with me, do some reading—and of course, to see how my fourth novel, which you have been by my side while writing!, sells to publishers next year. CROSS YOUR FINGERS FOR ME!

Before I sign off in 2024, I want to share a few yays and nays, and then several solstice traditions you can partake in if you want to commemorate this season in a neutral, irreligious, Switzerland kind of way.

Love, Abby xo

p.s. I love the photo below, taken maybe 8 years ago, at my grandparents, in Grimsby.

YAYS AND NAYS OF 2024

The Yays

My sweetpeas, always

Fave new releases: Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors & All Fours by Miranda July & Mongrel by Hanako Footman

Fave old releases, new read: Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

Fave non-fic: The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Fave book gift: my friend Coralie giving me a signed copy of the US edition of Cleopatra and Frankenstein… so many things to love here: personalised, US edition, paperback (only book geeks will understand that I’m drooling right now, but these are my book preferences if anyone is interested—and yes, definitely prefer paperbacks to hardbacks, for reading purposes and prettiness)

My podcast, Writing Coercive Control

Arts Council England funding me to write my 4th book

Writing, obvs

Football and the people who play it in Hackney

Local church charities and their art and craft events

Strangers who become friends

Old friends who stay friends

Solo travle in Mexico and Zapotec massage

Hostels

Shankey’s Indo-Irish restaurant

Moving to London and taking a chance

My mama, always

and… THERAPY! A special prize to my amazing therapist.

The Nays

The US election

Bros

Rosewater by Liv Little & Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel - had to DNF! I hate that, and I’m searching for brilliant sapphic lit, but have to confess both these books just wasn’t for me. Maybe they were for you? It just happens sometimes!

Getting so overwhelmed the grief descends hard

Conversations with strangers I don’t have the right chemistry with - just exhausting, re: emotional energy, even if the strangers are perfectly nice people

Watching slightly older men date brilliant but inexperienced younger women

Every time the experience gap engenders loneliness

What were your yays and nays of 2024? If you’ve been reading my Substack, did I miss any?

SOLSTICE TRADITIONS

A few years ago, I made it a New Year’s Resolution of mine to explore the Northern European traditions that were there before Christianity, so I could have some spiritual culture to claim a long relationship with, despite everything having been over-lain by Christianity and, in my case Irish Catholicism. You have to go quite far back in Ireland to find this, as Catholicism came to Ireland pretty early. It’s weird that, although I’ve read a lot about it, the vision that is recalled when I try to access that history in my mind is of a man called Patrick drunkenly wandering around a misty moor, annoying passersby, who are busy on their way to market, by muttering ramblingly to them with alcohol breath about god. But there it is. That’s what’s in there, and this post is about solstice traditions, so you’re not getting anything more accurate about the history of Irish Catholisicm in Ireland today.

The Goat

I’m starting with my favourite Scandi folk tradition from times of yore. So, I’m just going to do this casually because it’s late and the warehouse beneath me is having a really loud and annoying party but: someone in the village, or maybe more than one someone, used to make a straw goat. The game was, that you would go over to your neighbour’s, maybe for a meal, or some mulled wine. You’d hang out, have a nice time, leave… and somewhere, somehow you would have snuck a straw goat in and hidden it in the house!! If that weren’t fun enough, there’s a second part to the game—if someone has hidden the goat in your house, you have to go over to the neighbour’s that hid it, or another neighbour’s, hang out, have dinner, whatever, but also sneak it in and hide it without them knowing either!!! It’s called the Yule (or Jul) Goat, pronounced, “YOU-luh Goat”.

The Handsome Man Bearing Charcoal

So, solstice is actually a 12 day festival starting with solstice and ending January 2nd. Lots of Neolithic stone circles are set up to appreciate the winter solstice, and great festivals were held at them at that time—Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla(c. 1230), says the pre-Christian holiday Yule was originally celebrated at midwinter but it got moved by a King; I don’t believe that, because of the stone circles and when they line up. In the Roman calendar, with solstice on the 25th, the festival ended on the 6th January. The Scots called these days, the period between solstice and New Year, the Daft Days. On New Year’s Day (January 1st), there’s a Scottish tradition (in olden times practised down to North Yorkshire), called Hogmanay, derived from ancient Norse and Gaelic practices—we think. It’s very unclear. Isn't that crazy? I feel like we’d know for sure. And the word in fact seems to be from the French Normans. Who were also Norse. But anyway. First-footing is a really important Hogmanay tradition, meaning the first person over the doorstep in the New Year, starting from midnight. You’ll have good luck if a guest enters bearing: coal, salt, shortbread, whiskey, and black bun (a rich fruit cake). So I guess you could cheat by having a basket next to your front door that someone in your house takes in and out, but wouldn’t it be fun to make a deal with your neighbour? Apparently a tall, dark, handsome man brings the best luck, but to be honest, I’ve found them nothing but trouble.

Feasting

I mean, we all do this. But the reason is because people didn’t have enough food to keep the animals alive so they would slaughter them while they were still fat, eat a lot, and then salt the rest or bury it in cold ground. They would say incantations and prayers over them to thank the year that’s gone and wish that the year ahead be fruitful.

Greeneery in the home

Greenery, often in the form of garlands and wreaths, were brought into the home as a reminder of eternal life and in the hope that spring and life would return. This was done across Europe; the scilicet, for instance, was a large branch of green laurel in Portugal. Holly, Ivy, Yew, and Mistletoe are also all used for their own symbolic reasons (and presumably because they’re available in winter). Many people, including my brilliant mum, still bring greenery into the home at Christmas, but, of course, we also now have the Christmas tree. A nice thing about this, I think, is that if you don’t want to celebrate Christmas or a Christian holiday, then you can still have a tree and decorate it. My mum always makes the house so green, almost forest-like. The year my daughter was born, and when we lost her, she had two trees, and she decorated the one in the hall for my girl.

Minni

Toasts drunk to departed kinsfolk. I think it’s a nice way to include them in the celebrations.

The Yule log

You should know this one, but perhaps not, because I didn’t until my research the other year. The Yule log is actually not a cake, it’s a real, massive great big log, and you chuck it on the fire over the solstice period to sort of bring the sun into the room and kind of act as a prayer for the sun to return in the spring.

Mother’s Night and Disablot

Our contemporary society doesn’t take fertility—or women’s and maternal health—as seriously and importantly as we should. The old folk knew how precious, sacred, and very hard to come by, at times, fertility, a healthy living baby, and a healthy living mother was and is. Mother’s Night was celebrated by Anglo-Saxon English people (who emigrated here from the area around modern-day Jutland down to Belgium) is attested to by Bede, who said it happened on December 25th. The disir were/are female fertility spirits and the blot is a sacrificial holiday. There’s still an annual fair called the Disting in Uppsala, Sweden. The Northwestern European deities Matres and Matronae are related to these festivities, we think. I’ve read somewhere (and it says on Wikipedia, without citing a source) that it took place on Christmas Eve. Bede says the day after, but I wonder if we could bring it back on the 24th, or celebrate on the 25th, if you’re really over Christmas and really into mothers (I am. After babies, they’re the best).

The Wild Hunt

There’s an alternative to looking out for reindeer and Santa, and this may even be a little bit more exciting for children. During Yule, Odin, the dad of the Norse gods, rides across the sky, along with Gudrun Horsetail, a big, scary woman who rides at the front, or perhaps Wodan(Odin)’s wife Holda, leading hunters that are maybe the souls of the dead, Valkyries, elves, or fairies, and ride on horses or scary dogs. Be careful! If you see it, your soul could be pulled into the hunt. This tradition goes way back all over Europe, with different names. But maybe don’t be so scared. I like to believe in Jacob Grimm’s interpretation of the hunt’s visits to people, stops on their ride, “bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people”, and that the dark interpretation of it belongs to a disapproving Christianity. But, er, who knows. Keep an eye! Or an ear. Folklore has it, that few people see the Hunt. But if you hear one dog barking louder, and one fainter, Odin is above in the skys.

Pranking, Wassailing and Carols

Going door to door around your village or ‘hood, singing, enacting plays, or playing pranks on people is an ancient tradition across Northern Europe, with traditions differing depending on place. Caroling is still common; pranking was big in Scandi countries. Wassailing is an English tradition, from ancient customs, where people go door to door and sing and offer a drink to people, and then people give them gifts. There’s a similar tradition that some people think is the custom that begat the name of Hogmanay, whereby children go from door to door receiving sweets and gifts. It was practised in Scotland up until the 1960s. If you have social anxiety, you could orchard-wassail, and sing to the trees to thank them for a lovely bounty and stay in with them for next’s year’s apples.

Local customs

Something I think is super cute is that different locales and villages have their own customs, which is very tradition across the world, but we are so homogenous these days. A cute Scottish local custom is fireball swinging where, in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, at the sound of the Old Town House bell that marks the new year, the locals light huge balls of fire attached to chains and swing them about their heads, skipping down the street. Aren’t the Scots super super cute? I think so.

Happy Yule Festival, everyone. Enjoy the daft days.