Winter Solstice is probably our primodial celebration. Long before any of the organized religions that we have today, people were doing things to celebrate/encourage the return of the sun. We now understand intellectually why this happens, so we don’t feel the need to request the sun to return. But it still can be a very spiritual experience for us.

Our Spirtual Center has a number of groups that meet in people’s homes each month on the 3rd Friday to discuss the themes of the month. Our group met in my house, and since it was the evening before the Winter Solstice, we encorporated some Winter Solstice elements into our meeting. The photo above shows my version of the Yule Log, which is the celebration of the “rebirth of the sun” or the defeat of the light over the darkness. Following the ancient tradition, we burnt a piece of oak, and each person threw into the fire some seasonal greens, particuarly holly, which traditionally represents endurance because it is a bright green leaf with red berries that blooms when most of the world is lacking vibrant color. That is supposed to bring good fortune for the coming year.

This morning at the Farmers Market, which is one of my weekly traditions, and one of the things that most connects me to the earth since I don’t grow things or raise animals, but they do (and I buy from them, so they can make a living from it). I met with one of my best friends. She introduced me to an ancient Germanic/Eastern European tradition called Rauhnaechte.

It is unclear what the original meaning of the word is…maybe smoke night or wild night. What we know now is it refers to the fact that the lunar calendar of 12 full cycles lasts 354 days, but the Earth’s full revolution around the sun takes 365 days. In the Germanic tradition, they considered the extra 11 days/12 nights as “ghost days” or “wild days” (from the Norse tales that Oden rounded up the ghosts and unbound spirits that night and brought them to the underworld where they belonged). This is probably where our 12 Nights of Christmas came from…althought there is no definite evidence, since it all evolved from long ago and probably from communities with no written records.

Regardless, the technique my friend introduced me to is a Rauchnaechte process where you write down 13 intentions you want to manifest in the coming year. And then, you burn one each night–without reading it– from the Winter Solstice and then for the next 11 nights. The idea is that you turn those intentions over to the Universe or whatever higher power in which you believe. But the one left is the one that should attend to for the coming year.

I know this is coming late, at least for those of us on the East Coast. But I wrote out my 13 intentions. And I will burn each one in my Yule fireplace, as I did with the first one tonight. And I can’t wait to find out what the Universe says which of my primary intentional wishes is the one I need to focus on.

But regardless of this process, I encourage us all to spend time tonight and tomorrow to acknowledge the role of the darkness, which tends to drive us to look within, as well as to look to the light, which is what we might create when we are at our best.