Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Saturnalia Saturnalia begins today. Time for feasting and merriment. No time for work, it's all play for the next many days. Too much wine. Not enough sleep. All frenetic fun. Much like with Mardi Gras, this holiday is not particularly my thing. But I do relish a breakdown of order... and Saturnalia is time to… Continue reading The Daily: 17 December 2025
Las Posadas begins today. In this Latin American Christmas novena, the community acts out the Holy Family's search for a place to sleep upon coming to Bethlehem for the Roman tax census. Starting nine days before Christmas Eve, a Mary and Joseph, with an entourage of angels and shepherds and others, walk door-to-door begging for… Continue reading The Daily: 16 December 2025
Lucy Light Shortest day, longest night —traditional English proverb Before Pope Gregory tweaked the Julian calendar and caused a great deal of confusion, 13 December was celebrated as the winter solstice in Scandinavia. The poem by the late 16th century English writer, John Donne, “A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day” shows… Continue reading The Daily: 13 December 2025
Our Lady of Guadalupe The holy image 12 December is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico and Mexican people wherever they live. Our Lady is Mary, but she is also a pastiche of many native deities, and she came to humans through, not a rich and powerful white man,… Continue reading The Daily: 12 December 2025
Today is the Republican Roman festival of Lux Mundi. Saturday is the feast day of Santa Lucia. This is a time to celebrate light. Lux Mundi translates into "the light of the world". This day honored Libertas, the bringer of light. Libertas was the personification of freedom, metaphorical light rather than actual light, and she… Continue reading The Daily: 10 December 2025
It is Krampusnacht. Tonight, the long-tongued goat-man goes running through the streets, sometimes tagging along with the kindly old St Nicholas, sometimes striking out on his own, always seeking the naughty kids. He carries iron chains, a birch bough and a sack. Sometimes a good lashing is all it takes to straighten out the nastiness.… Continue reading The Daily: 5 December 2025
Thanksgiving is not a harvest feast. Puritans were not notably inclined toward feasting. Leadership especially wasn’t, and the accounts we have of their lives is heavily skewed toward the elite men who had the leisure to write things down. Whatever the average New England settler might have thought about celebrating the land’s bounty with merry… Continue reading The Daily: 26 November 2025
Didn't I say last week that there would be ice on my walkway by this week? Well, yep, that happened. We had a doozy of a storm from Saturday night right through to Tuesday morning. Windy and cold and dark with about 2" of precipitation altogether. Mostly icy rain until Sunday afternoon, then mostly snow… Continue reading The Daily: 19 November 2025
Remembering is an act of resistance. Gaslighting is ineffective against a firm memory. The lies unravel when someone is keeping a close record. Want to be a true subversive? Then get the facts straight and tell the story. Footnotes help, but be wary of the oft-quoted sources. You can see who they're working for... I'm… Continue reading The Daily: 12 November 2025
The Hunter's Moon rises full today at 4:17pm. The time of rising and setting varies by latitude. Those further north will see moonrise a little bit later, further south a bit earlier, but still somewhere around 4-5pm local time. However, the Moon will turn full at the same moment all around the globe, but at… Continue reading The Daily: 5 November 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 