Month: December 2019

Holidays and festivals are rich with meaning and purpose, lending themselves easily as a time and space of tradition and ritual. In honor of this holiday season and the diversity of families we have at Rose Rock, we will take the next several weeks to feature some of their traditions and rituals. These may be traditions of long ago, cherished and kept since childhood, or they may be freshly created for our own children. They may be centered in one festival or holiday, or they may be simple rituals that uplift our daily lives during this time of year. All of them are special ways we create our family cultures. We invite you to relish in them as we do and be inspired to begin your own.

One of my children’s favorite traditions during the holidays is going out on our land as a family to find the perfect Christmas tree. Red cedar trees grow quickly, and may be considered invasive in our region, so they make a perfect choice for a locally harvested tree.

For our five year old, it’s never too early to start looking for the best tree- she will casually remark on this tree or that even in the middle of summer! Our hunt begins in earnest, though, around the middle of December. This year we found one approximately 7′ tall that, once pruned of some ragged lower branches, made the perfect fit in our home.  After it was placed in the spot of honor, I caught one of our little ones quietly singing “Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches.”     

This sweet moment reminded me that perhaps we should be more like the child who sees a potential Christmas tree in every scraggly evergreen,  and look for the good in one another, not only during the holiday season, but all year round. 

From our family to yours, happy holidays!

By Elizabeth Cupp, wife to Trevor Cupp, mom to Penelope and Heidi

Holidays and festivals are rich with meaning and purpose, lending themselves easily as a time and space of tradition and ritual. In honor of this holiday season and the diversity of families we have at Rose Rock, we will take the next several weeks to feature some of their traditions and rituals. These may be traditions of long ago, cherished and kept since childhood, or they may be freshly created for our own children. They may be centered in one festival or holiday, or they may be simple rituals that uplift our daily lives during this time of year. All of them are special ways we create our family cultures. We invite you to relish in them as we do and be inspired to begin your own.

Winter Solstice marks the shortest period of daylight in the year but with each day there is more and more light. This is not a holiday that my family celebrated growing up, but it is one that Rob wanted to bring into our family and I loved the idea of having something that is intimate to just our household, separate from the hustle and bustle that is the rest of the holiday season. So far we haven’t filled this day with plans and anticipation, we simply make sure to acknowledge it. We make an effort to have a quiet evening at home, with a simply cooked meal. The main goal is to turn off all the other things that can pull at us on any given evening and to focus on one another as a family.

We have added small rituals along the way, really just inviting one another to contribute ideas to what might make the night special for us as a family. Some have stuck and others haven’t. In the past we’ve baked something sweet like cookies, pies, or cakes. Sometimes we take a nighttime walk through the neighborhood to look at holiday lights. One year we all got new pajamas to wear and we wore them while watching the sunset on the back porch. The past two years we have exchanged books and chocolates. 

The most long-standing ritual is to choose a live plant on this evening and dub it the “solstice tree.” In the past this has been a number of plant types depending on what we can find. Of course we’ve purchased small conifers before, but one time we brought in a patch of moss from our yard. We’ve also used collard tree starters for the vegetable garden. This year we purchased a fig tree. We keep this plant alive indoors all winter as a reminder of life, that the earth will warm again to bountiful times in the spring. When it is warm enough, we plant our solstice tree outside in the garden. 

Written by Shayna Pond, wife to Rob Vollmar and mother to Eleanor and, their new baby, Liliana.

Holidays and festivals are rich with meaning and purpose, lending themselves easily as a time and space of tradition and ritual. In honor of this holiday season and the diversity of families we have at Rose Rock, we will take the next several weeks to feature some of their traditions and rituals. These may be traditions of long ago, cherished and kept since childhood, or they may be freshly created for our own children. They may be centered in one festival or holiday, or they may be simple rituals that uplift our daily lives during this time of year. All of them are special ways we create our family cultures. We invite you to relish in them as we do and be inspired to begin your own.

Jesse and I both come from spiritually non-denominational backgrounds with a beautiful hodgepodge of traditions. We have Christmas trees, light candles, hang stocking on our hearth, enjoy merriment and feasting galore, and exchange gifts. My mother was Jewish with Romani flair and her adopted mother was Orthodox. From my youth, I recall receiving small, colorful advent calendars. I delightfully discovered, behind each cardboard door, tiny chocolate treasures. 

Over the years, my spirituality and ritual practices have evolved and changed to suite my ever-growing thirst for knowledge and understanding. I have found myself drawn to my Norwegian ancestry, and yearning to incorporate those deeply honored Germanic traditions like Yule, Sunwait and Väntljusstaken, as well as the runes. 

Jesse and I celebrate Winter Solstice and Yule on December 21, and we celebrate Christmas with both sides of our families on December 24 and 25. When we had Scarlette, I wanted to share the thrill of advent with her, but also wanted to tie it into our personal celebratory rituals. Behold, the birth of the runic advent. 24 runes of the Elder Futhark and 24 days leading up to Christmas. 

I gathered 24 canvas pouches, painted a rune (in glitter puff paint) on the outside of each one, filled it with delicious varieties of German and Norwegian chocolates (Aldi is amazing) and tied them with ribbon to a string hung on our living room wall. On December 1, we open the first pouch and learn all about the rune Fehu, the first rune of the runic alphabet. Each rune has poems, Galdr (songs), and interesting nuggets to discuss. We do this while we enjoy our chocolate. 

Scarlette looks forward to opening “the bow one,” which is Dagaz, on December 23rd. The rune looks similar to a bow and she is fascinated by it. I also find this wonderfully synchronistic considering Dagaz is the rune representing Day or Dawn and we are celebrating the return of the sun/Son with this ritual.    

Written by Bridgette Slone, wife to Jesse Slone, step-mom to Madison, and mom to Scarlette.

Holidays and festivals are rich with meaning and purpose, lending themselves easily as a time and space of tradition and ritual. In honor of this holiday season and the diversity of families we have at Rose Rock, we will take the next several weeks to feature some of their traditions and rituals. These may be traditions of long ago, cherished and kept since childhood, or they may be freshly created for our own children. They may be centered in one festival or holiday, or they may be simple rituals that uplift our daily lives during this time of year. All of them are special ways we create our family cultures. We invite you to relish in them as we do and be inspired to begin your own.

In the Catholic church (and related denominations), Advent is a reverent four week preparation for the coming of the Christ child on Christmas Day. For adults, the time may be spent solemnly with inner work that prepares space for the Christ child in one’s heart. For children it is hard to consider it a solemn time, especially if you delight in anticipation itself as I do. As a child, I was delighted by it, and nurtured by several beautiful rituals that my family participated in each year through Advent and Christmas time.

One of my favorite traditions was our ritual surrounding the Advent wreath: four candles set around an evergreen-decorated wreath, each representing a theme such as hope or peace. Each Sunday, we gathered around the wreath before bedtime, to light the candle(s) and read a prayer or a story from the bible. We also sang Christmas carols, as we were often singing in my childhood home. I remember vividly the layers of anticipation- of coming together to sing; of when I would be old enough to light a candle, then for when it was my turn within the four weeks; of when we would read the story I loved best, and when we would finally make it through all the candles to Christmas Day. Other details of the ritual have faded, but the space of holiness it created has not.

Many years and spiritual twists and turns later, I reclaimed this tradition with my own children in the Advent Spiral. Similar to the evergreen spiral we walk at Rose Rock during our Festival of Light, this one sits on our table top. It is adorned weekly with elements of the four kingdoms, all awaiting the birth of the Sun/Son. Each morning we sing as we move our star candle towards the center, each evening we say a little verse and light candles to read by. We have two books we alternate reading each year- Mary’s Little Donkey, and the Light in the Lantern, both offering sweet stories of how the world prepared for the coming of the Christ child.

Our family is not heavy in religion or explicit spiritual practice, but the festivals are an anchor for our inner paths. In bringing the Advent season (and other traditions) to our children, my hope is to cultivate a reverence for life and Spirit that grows into a rich inner life of whatever shape that fits their own paths.

Written by Acacia Moore, wife to Erik Moore, mom to Everett, Kellan, and Quinn.