Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
February First Fruits & Quirinalia To highlight just how different the seasonal cycle is depending on latitude, mid-February, the last ides of the ritual year in Rome, was a festival of the first-fruit offerings. While here in Vermont we are barely thinking about the growing season, never mind able to see actual earth, during the… Continue reading The Daily: 16 February 2026
Like many people, I find the American version of Valentine’s Day and the saccharine and monochromatic view of love it promotes to be repulsive. In my younger days I assumed the whole farce was invented by the greeting card and gifting industry, along with the rise of all manner of fake holidays intended to get… Continue reading The Daily: 14 February 2026
I’ve been rereading some of my books on Buddhism lately, some popular culture, a bit of fringe, and one book of the actual sutras. And I’ve been thinking… (I know, bad…) I still just can’t quite get on board with no-form. It feels nihilist. It also denies our basic experience of living, which may, in… Continue reading The Daily: 12 February 2026
Yesterday morning, the sun shone on Gobblers Knob in Punxatawney, Pennsylvania, so the groundhog, Punxatawney Phil, saw his shadow and went back to bed, thereby forecasting six more weeks of winter. Of course, today, February 3rd, being the exact cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox means that there are, indeed, six… Continue reading The Daily: 3 February 2026
Tonight is St Brigid's Eve. Tomorrow is the feast day of St Brigid, arguably the central idea of deity for most of the ancient Celts and one of the most widely venerated Christian saints. St Brigid is patron of Ireland, alongside Patrick. She is also patron of babies, children whose parents are not married, dairy… Continue reading The Daily: 31 January 2026
If you live in the US, then today is the day to stand up. Today, we strike back where it hurts them the most — on the balance books. Today is a general strike, a National Shutdown. No shopping. No entertainment. No travel. No spending money. If you are able to stay home from work… Continue reading The Daily: 30 January 2026
Plough Monday, an ancient rustic holiday that became attached to the Christmas holiday tradition, is on the first Monday following Epiphany (January 6). It is the traditional beginning of the agricultural year.
It is Epiphany, 6 January, the close of the Christmas season and the beginning of mundane time, a shift to Imbolg and the hope of spring — after we, hopefully, survive the worst of the winter weather. This is the date the Catholic Church assigned to the arrival of the Magi and also, later, the… Continue reading The Daily: 6 January 2026
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
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
By My Solitary Hearth 