Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
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
The Day of the Dead In Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom, he says that a “man” does not fear death. “Fear of death is our animal nature,” he claims. I don’t know that any part of that is accurate. To be sure, we have a very unhealthy relationship to death. We tell ourselves stories of our… Continue reading The Daily: 2 November 2025
All Hallows: An Entanglement Today is All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and spooky debauchery that entails. Tomorrow is All Saints Day, All Hallows, a reincarnation of the ancient Irish festival called Samhain, which means “end of summer”. Samhain is one of the few clear remnants from at least… Continue reading The Daily: 31 October 2025
The word pagan is not unlike the word witch. Both were pejorative labels for outsiders. Both would likely earn a body substantial abuse. And both have been reclaimed in late modern times, though it would be more accurate to say that these words have been redefined, almost completely. Witch means nothing of what it once… Continue reading The Daily: 29 October 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 