Walking In A Witchy Wonderland

Yasmine Galenorn

When Stella asked me to guest blog here, I was thrilled—and Walking in a Witchy Wonderland seemed the perfect title. Then I panicked a little. After all, I celebrate the Winter Solstice, not Christmas—will my stories translate? And yet, some of our traditions are the same. Then I thought, what’s the problem? An underlying theme of both holidays is that of love. Love for friends, love for family—magical connections that cross all boundaries of faith, gender, ability or disability, and age.

Holidays are very important to me. When I was thirteen and my mother and stepfather stopped celebrating everything but Thanksgiving and even that was fraught with tension. From an abusive childhood, I left home at seventeen with my AA degree, but within two years promptly married an abusive husband who also hated celebrating holidays. After nine years and a nasty beating at the end, I said enough, kicked him to the curb, and declared I’d never compromise myself or what I wanted out of life for anyone again. And I’ve kept that promise.

When I remarried in 1993, it was to a kind, wonderful, and loving man who has been the comfort and anchor I’ve needed. He loves the holidays, he knows how important they are to me and encourages me to go all out. So over the years, I’ve slowly built up the holiday season to a lovely three month extravaganza starting with Samhain (our autumn celebration of the ancestors) and culminating with Yuletide.

Our Yule tree is the tree I’ve always wanted—Victorian and bedecked with sparkling ivory, gold, and burgundy ornaments (we have an artificial tree to keep the cats out of it—which usually works). Each year, we buy a special ornament to mark the passage of time. Our house is swathed in garlands and lights. I absolutely love lights and think of them as “faerie sparkles” because they remind me of magic shimmering in the night. And every year, we host an open house for our friends. The scents of cinnamon and bayberry fill the air, and our table overflows with offerings to comfort and delight our guests. We do this as a gift to our friends—a chance for them to spend some quiet time out of the bustle of shopping and rushing around. A day steeped in friendship, food and warmth, and the comfort of leisurely conversation.

Late at night on the eve of the Solstice, we open our gifts, and once again “turn the wheel” to welcome the sun back from the icy realm of winter. We celebrate the longest night of the year, the time when the Holly King and the Lord of the Oak meet in battle, and play out an age old drama as the sun returns triumphant from the depths of darkness with the promise that, yes, spring and summer will come again. And on night of the summer Solstice, the Holly King will rise again and win. The waning of the year, the waxing of the year—eternal cycles of life with no beginning and no end.

And yes, we also give gifts. I admit it, I love prezzies—both giving and receiving them (probably because of all those years of going without), but really, the most important part of the holiday is that we’ve created meaningful traditions and memories as the years go by.

The first year we were married, Samwise and I were so poor we could barely afford to buy our first tree. Friends gave us hand-me down ornaments. We made all of our gifts—cookies and popcorn balls—and that was enough for me. I was just thrilled to be happy and with the man I loved.

I’d managed to save enough to buy him a new T-shirt, but when I opened his gift to me, I found a box filled with chocolate kisses—hundreds of them! And snuggled deep beneath that chocolate heaven, I found a gift box containing my favorite perfume and lotion—Opium. Now, Opium’s an expensive perfume. Stunned, I asked him how he managed to buy it. We had no extra money and I managed the budget.

My real gift came when he explained what he’d done to earn the money. Samwise had gone out collecting soda cans for months and recycled them. He’d managed to collect enough cans to buy me the perfume. That was my real gift, the realization that he loved me enough to go through all that work to make me happy. Over the years, I’ve received more expensive gifts, but even though every gift he buys me is special, I’ll never, ever forget that box of Opium. The fragrance in those little bottles of perfume and lotion is long gone, but the memory of the effort he put into buying them will never, ever fade.

If you want to see our Yuletide decorations, please feel free to visit my photo gallery: http://www.galenorn.com/greenwood/hearth/#Yuletide And thank you for letting me share one of my special holiday memories with you. Now, I know that I can’t be the only one who received a gift from the heart like that. So tell me, what present has someone given you that managed to create a memory you’ll never forget?

Yasmine Galenorn