Winter Solstice 2023

2020: thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-winter-sols…

2021: thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solstice…

2022: thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solstice…

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com

TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Introduction and Welcome

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Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder of Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark,

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: and it's that time again.

Discussion on Winter Solstice

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Mark: We're going to talk about the winter solstice and all the different things we call it, and what the themes of the season are, and how we celebrate it, and all that good kind of stuff. So happy solstice to everyone.

Yucca: That's right. Happy solstice. it's, we're here already.

Mark: End of 2023 already. Hard to believe.

Yucca: Yeah. So, and the

Reflection on the Show's Journey

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Mark: Does that mean we're going into season five?

Yucca: we're going into season five. That's right.

Mark: Whoa.

Yucca: Yeah. On the one hand, it feels like forever. It feels like it's been a decade. On the other hand, I can't believe it.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: start doing this last year?

Mark: Yeah. Something like. Yeah.

Understanding the Solstice and its Significance

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Yucca: Yeah, well, let's talk about the solstice, and we'll link to some of our previous episodes of the solstice as well, because since this will be, we're going into Season 5, right?

We've done this particular one, you know, several years before, and that's one of the lovely things about the Wheel of the Year, ? It keeps turning, and we keep coming back to it,

Mark: Right.

Yucca: again, and again, and again, but every year it's a little different.

Mark: Mm hmm. It's a spiral rather than a circle.

Yucca: Yeah, it's like those, you can look up animations of the solar system, but from the perspective, instead of having the sun stationary, having the sun moving through the galaxy, because it is moving just depends on what you're using as your frame of reference, but the planets all going along for the ride as well we're Orbiting the sun and moving with the sun as it goes through the galaxy.

This reminds me of that spiral that we do.

Mark: Huh. Huh.

Exploring the Themes of the Holiday

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Yucca: So, but let's start with themes. So, Mark, what do you call this holiday?

Mark: Well, that is a bit of a moving target. For many, many years I've called it Yule. I called it Yule in my book.

Yucca: hmm.

The Transition from Yule to Midwinter

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Mark: But I'm moving off that into midwinter.

Yucca: Mm

The Cultural Significance of Yule

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Mark: Um, for a couple of reasons, one of which is that Yule is still a cultural reference. It's a, it's a Scandinavian word that references a winter solstice y kind of holiday that happened around this time of year in those cultures.

And I've been very careful not to be drawing from any cultures in my practice.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: midwinter, you know, it's the corollary to midsummer. At the summer solstice, and so that just seems like it feels pretty appropriate to me.

Yucca: Nice. Okay.

Mark: How about you?

The Personal Connection to Solstice

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Yucca: uSually solstice, just the winter solstice or solstice sometimes first winter. I don't use midwinter because it's not midwinter for us.

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: The, it certainly isn't the start of winter the way it's shown on like the calendar in terms of the astronomical seasons, but it's been winter for a month at this point, ?

But we will not be into midwinter until, midwinter is more, you know, January, you know, end of January for us where we'll really be in the middle of winter. So, yeah, usually solstice, I've never really connected with the name Yule. I think it's pretty. It's on cards that people send. But it, just I've never had that connection with it.

The Separation of Solstice and Christmas

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Yucca: I don't know, it, it, also you'll me, it still has more of a Christmas association. Like, it's still very Christmas. And even though Christmas is happening around the same time, for me, the solstice and Christmas are two very separate things.

Mark: Yeah, I guess in my case, because I've really just, I've abandoned Christmas. So I have a lot of people around me, of course, who are celebrating it at work and so forth.

The Celebration of Solstice

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Mark: But I, I just adopted solstice celebration and that's what I do now. So I have a tree for that rather than for Christmas, for example. We were just putting lights on it and discovering that the new lights, there aren't quite enough of them. So now we desperately have to find some more and get them delivered immediately. So that'll be fun. They're, they're LEDs. that have a phone app where you can adjust the lights and the patterns and Nemea really, really is excited about this.

Yucca: Okay, nice.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Lovely.

Mark: yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen it at night yet, but it'll be pretty, I'm sure. So, yeah, I'm moving away from Yule. Yule seemed like kind of a harmless name to use. When I was writing my book, as opposed to, like, the Celtic names and stuff like that, that feels appropriative to me, and not really relevant to who I am and where I live and all that kind of stuff.

Yucca: But in retrospect, it's seeming a little appropriate to you right now. Well,

Mark: believe you can appropriate from a dead culture. So I'm not so worried about appropriating Scandinavian stuff from a Norse Worshipping tradition that didn't exist for a thousand years or so after Christianization. But,

Yucca: still a lot, depending on where, like in Iceland, and there's still there's still some that is around today,

Mark: oh, absolutely.

Yucca: not necessarily in the same maybe strength that it was or, or prominence, but there's still aspects of that around.

Mark: Well, and there's a resurgence.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: I mean, I think that if we had looked at things in 1950, we probably would have seen a few folk practices, but not really anything that was as organized as, you know, a religious practice, for example. But I, I don't know enough about it to say for certain one way or another.

In any case it's safer to simply abandon that name and move with one that's more more generic and English.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: But, you know, when I first came into paganism, everybody called it Yule, and that was okay, and

Yucca: That was just what you were around, yeah?

Mark: Yeah, um, so whatever you call the winter solstice, and you may call it midsummer if you live in Argentina or, or Brazil, um, whatever you call it we're here to talk about celebrating it, and why don't we talk some about some of the themes that come up at this time of year.

There's so much with it. Iconography to this season, you know, with the trees and the Santa Claus and the reindeer and the on and on and on and on.

Yucca: You know, I wish that everybody could see the backgrounds that we both came in with today, because there's a huge difference. So, Mark, you've got this scene with this, the pie. I don't know what trees those are back there, but you're Your conifers with the snow on it, and this little night scene, and this little house and it's these dark, you know, blues and grays.

And then my background, and this was not planned, is the sun. And it's an up close of the bright bright sun with all the convection cells and

Mark: and prominences bursting off the limb.

Yucca: of it.

The Symbolism of Light and Dark

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Yucca: Yeah and I think that that reflects a big theme for this time of year is the the relationship between the light and the dark and the sun and the night and all of that.

Mark: Ooh, nice, nice segue. That was great. Yeah. Yes the whole question of how we relate to darkness. is very much up at this time of year, because there sure is a lot of it in the Northern Hemisphere. And boy, the days are short now, …