season 2, episode 10 - yule traditions
happy yuletide to you! this week, we're marking the occasion by asking fellow witches to share a favourite yuletide tradition in their households. we also get the bonus of an in-person yuletide date with my dear one grace boyd and some of our seasonal musings.
each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is "orishas, goddesses, and voodoo queens" by lilith dorsey.
take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!
seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council.
transcript
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place.
Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens by Lilith Dorsey.
Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.
Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]
Happy Yule! It is so nice to chat with you again this week. We are still in our holiday mode here at Snort and Cackle. And this week we've decided to share a fun little combo episode for you. It's not a traditional interview, but it's also not just my voice. You are going to hear from a host of voices this week and a host of experiences because I asked some of my favorite witches to share their favorite Yule traditions with us this week.
So I hope that you enjoy, and I will close out the episode with one of my own favorite Yule traditions. So happy Yule!
grace boyd: Okay. Yule tradition. I am a big fan of being outside this time of year. I like the cold, I love the cold and I love cold water. So whether it's a snow roll or some kind of acknowledgement of the fact that it's dark and it's chilly, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it.
Last year, this time I was on the east coast, so I wasn't here on the Prairies. Lot of active cold water so I went for a Yule swim. It was fricking freezing. Definitely lost feeling in my fingers and toes. [Ash laughs.] But I think being acknowledging of the cold this time of year is probably my favorite tradition. I can always be inside and get warm. There's always going to be candles and fire. But knowing that it's cold, being with it, this shortest day, biggest dark, sitting with the darkness, sitting with the chill. And then knowing that it will get warmer, I will get warmer. [Giggles.]
ash alberg: [Ash laughs.] I love that.
amanda crooke (nee midkiff): So winter solstice is my favorite holiday. I started celebrating winter solstice probably … I don't know, maybe like 2015 was the first year like I really did something for it. And each year I've done more. And I'd say a few things, ‘cause people in our group were talking about Christmas and how it overshadows it.
So I never loved Christmas even as a kid. Like I didn't like the gift giving. I didn't like the tree, like just a lot of things about Christmas, I didn't like. And I have a lot more peace about it now, but the thing that has helped me to like Christmas and to enjoy spending time with my family has been really intensely prioritizing celebrating solstice before Christmas, so that I have time with myself giving myself the ritual that I really do crave and the type of celebration that I desire and doing that before I spend time with my family of origin.
Celebrating solstice has actually helped me to have a much better relationship with Christmas and helped me to be able to enjoy celebrating Christmas with my family. I'll also say, so I have Sagittarius and Capricorn stelliums so nearly all, all of my planets in my birth chart are in Sagittarius or Capricorn except for one, and that is Mars in Scorpio.
So I'm like a winter baby through and through. So in Sagittarius it's like my sun, rising, and Mercury, and then Capricorn is moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn. And then if you work with Neptune and Uranus, like they're also in Capricorn. So I'm just, I'm a wintry mix. And solstice obviously falls like right in the middle of all those wonderful things.
So this time of year, I just come alive. Like I love it so much. So my birthday is December 1st and every year … again, I think 2015 was the first year I did this, every year between my birthday and solstice, I set aside three … in the past, I did four days, but now I do, I set aside three days to go on a retreat for myself.
And I started doing this just because my life was overwhelming. And I was like … that's a whole other story. Anyway. I used to need the escape more and now I don't need the escape, but I still use this time. So I rent a cabin in the woods and I'm here right now.
And it's just, it's a cabin. There's two sets of bunk beds. There’s a few small windows, a large bay window, a table, a shelf, and a woodstove. And that's it, no electricity. There's bathrooms and a spigot that I can walk to. And then there's hiking trails nearby. So I come up here alone, make the cabin cozy. I bring very little food. Like I just bring food that I don't have to cook.
So I bring like a loaf of bread, butter, cheese, croissants, cookies [laughs] and some apples and carrots, basically. That's what I have with me. And a lot of bevs: coffees, chais, Earl Grays, herbs to burn, herbs to spray, tinctures to take. And I bring crystals, usually a crystal ball. My rattles. Oh, I didn't bring my drum!
Got my rattles and cards and journals and big sheets of butcher paper. And I use this to … this is my main inner work for the year. So I write about how the year went, I process the year. If there's any things I truly need to deal with that I haven't felt like I've had spiritual time to deal with, I deal with them.
And then, we know it's never [mumbles] deal with something really fast, but, I do the journaling, I do the feeling things through as much as I can process the whatever is on my mind. And then I dream weave. I think what, how do I want my life to look? How do I get there? Who am I being? How do I want to be? Who do I want to be being?
Set my intentions for the year. Think through the year, try and make the major decisions. Like all those things. The retreat is amazing. It's amazing to have that space. It's amazing. I always go for at least two nights so that in the middle day, I go the whole day without needing to know what time it is.
And I can hike and be without needing to know the time. Poke the fire, nap, journal, make a bev, eat. And I just do that for two days. So that is the biggest way I celebrate solstice. I also set up my business … So I like teach a lot of solstice stuff. So I teach solstice classes, I do solstice events, and then we have a family solstice day with like my chosen family, I'd say, where I live.
Where … usually for Locust Light, I have what I call like public circles that people pay to go to. And then we'll have a personal circle of like our local farm family. And this year now that people are starting to have kids, I need to like adjust it to make it kid friendly.
So this year we might actually have a meal and then have a circle light, where we sit around and like maybe speak our intentions. And I do this fun thing where we have a candle in the center and you speak your intentions and sprinkle powdered herbs over it, and it sparks and we all cheer you on. Usually the day, that solstice day, we … John and I will set aside the whole day as like a day of worship.
So we'll do asana in the morning and then we'll go to his parents' property and just harvest a few evergreen boughs and put them in our home. And I give our apartment like a huge clearing. So we'll literal -- we'll clean it. And then I'll go through with a rattle … no, no. On solstice I use a tambourine, which is fucking loud, and I do a sound clearing of our entire apartment.
And I cannot tell you how alive this makes our space sound or feel. Like it's like you go through, I go through every little crevice with a tambourine and it's just, it just opens our entire home. It's amazing.
And then we're ready for people to come. And then we only use candlelight and around solstice, like different times, whenever I only use candlelight, I just wish I did that every night, but that's not the case. But a few nights, there'll be a few nights where I'm like, okay, we're just using candles tonight.
So on solstice itself, we just use candles and then … so solstice is the 21st. So we have day of worship, everything leads to that. And then the 22nd is a day to collect ourselves because my father’s origin is Norwegian. And so in Norway, they celebrate from like solstice for … on for 12 more days.
And also Christmas Eve is the big holiday. And then there's … so Christmas Eve … Christmas is Jul. And then Christmas Eve is Julaften. And then there's Lilijulaften, which is the 23rd, which is little Christmas Eve. So a convenient thing about this, all this is to say that for my family of origin, it has been easy for us now that the family has grown to shift our family Christmas celebration.
So like we spend the 23rd and the 24th with my family and then come back and we'll spend the 25th with John's family. We have like our whole solstice stuff and then like a day to regroup and then, it's like the family marathon.
So that's my tradition. I guess I do a solstice retreat. I set intentions. I do a big sound clearing of our home. Do a lot of journaling, dream weaving for the year. And we have, at least one night of all candlelight and yeah, I just, I love it. It's truly my favorite holiday.
grace boyd: Oh, I think it's such a giggle. But there's this idea of witches and their ways of transportation and witch coming to your house or like a seasonal witch kind of thing …
ash alberg: Yes!
grace boyd: … but how do witches get around? In theory on brooms, so what do you do if you don't want your Yule witch or a seasonal witch to come to your house?
ash alberg: You'd light the fire in the chimney?
grace boyd: You hide the broom!
ash alberg: Oh, my god. [Cackles.] [Grace laughs.]
grace boyd: So it's, I think it's a Northern European tradition if I'm not mistaken? But to hide your broom in your house.
ash alberg: But that just assumes that the witches in your own house can’t travel!
[Both talking at the same time.]
This feels counterintuitive …
grace boyd: I know, I see the flaws in the system too. [Ash cackles.] I think it's hilarious. I just learned about this so I'm like still grasping it a little bit, but the Yule tradition or the solstice tradition of hiding the broom.
ash alberg: That’s hilarious.
grace boyd: So it's oh, a witch couldn't come to your house or travel to your house to travel somewhere else. Like and if everybody hides their broom, then what's the witch going to do?
Obviously she has her own broom [Ash laughs] so clearly you guys all have a flaw and a hole in your plan.
ash alberg: Unless you have a broken broom. There's got to be … now I want to go and like research what … because it's probably like some like hag goddess creature who would go around, trick her way in. ‘Cause I feel like there's also a lot of trickster energy at this time of year.
grace boyd: There’s so much trickster energy, right? And even like the hag as the beggar mentality and as the crone figure, I think this time of year is really strong.
ash alberg: Yes! Very Beauty and the Beast minus the like Stockholm syndrome.
grace boyd: Very Beauty and the Beast. We can kind of Disneyfy that a little. [Both laugh.] But yeah, very, yeah. I think this is always a very crony time of year.
ash alberg: Yeah. And it's interesting ‘cause there's quite a few, I think, especially like Northern and central European traditions. And so I don't know if elsewhere it's the same thing, but probably related to just how fucking cold it is and the deep snow, but where the crone is seen in some time, in some moments as this like monstrous creature, who's like very curled over and like really …
grace boyd: It’s cold more.
ash alberg: Yeeahh. Like really just, repulsive looking hag. And I use hag affectionately.
grace boyd: Oh, very affectionately.
ash alberg: Totally, like hag.
grace boyd: I embrace my inner hag. Yeah.
ash alberg: Yeah. And then alternatively is the ice queen.
grace boyd: Yes. Oh wow, divine being.
ash alberg: And so then you have this beautiful maiden, but ice cold.
grace boyd: like unattainable, ephemeral …
ash alberg: Like both are like really like I almost … I feel like the crone often ends up being actually a slightly kinder creature than the maiden version. The maiden version --
grace boyd: Oh, definitely. Oh, the maiden version is in her prime of power, but also I feel like ice queen has always had this almost painful arrogance or ego behind them.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
grace boyd: Like they're an ice queen for a reason and…
ash alberg: Yeah and if you piss them off and they will literally freeze you. Whereas the crone is like, the crone’s a little bit like, “Okay, if you're nice to me, then I'll be nice back to you.”
There's like this space for giving you a chance, whereas the ice queen is just like, “Nah, fuck off.”
grace boyd: Yeah, fuck off. Or it's like even … what was it … I think, oh, I think it was actually called Ice Queen or Bear Queen.
ash alberg: Yes. It's the same thing. There's like it, I think Russian history is the big bear …
grace boyd: The Bear Queen!
ash alberg: Yeah.
grace boyd: Oh, I forget the name of it. Oh, it's beautiful. But it's this, it's a story about an ice queen. Who tricks … not tricks, or curses a prince as a bear. So he can only be a bear during the day and all this stuff. And then at nighttime, when he sleeps, he's a prince again. And then once a year as a prince …
ash alberg: Yesss. This sounds like the Bear in the Nightingale books, which is based on those trad-- like it's based on that folklore. Ahhhh.
grace boyd: And I think so much of those folkloric stories of the maiden and like the good maiden who sees the kindness in this, and then not necessarily the evil maiden ‘cause I know everybody always paints like the evil ice queen is like this evil thing. She's not evil, she’s just really misunderstood.
ash alberg: Exactly.
grace boyd: Yeah, but that's where I'm always at with ice queen and those things. And I was like, you know what? It's, we've made her this way. Like we, as a group of individuals have created this like archetypal individual as ice queen.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Yes. And the Frozen franchise is literally built on the ice queen story.
Like I think the Hans Christian Andersen version of it, but…
grace boyd: It is yeah. Which is lovely.
ash alberg: It's the most beautiful … Like it's, yeah, there's hard things that go through it, but it is ultimately like being out of balance with nature and not listening to those elemental, like deep, old powers.
And then also just being isolated and being, like having your … being told that your emotions need to be repressed because they are too powerful.
grace boyd: Exactly. Oh, I'm going to bring Narnia into this a little bit.
ash alberg: Ooo, yes!
grace boyd: I know, I know.
ash alberg: Oh yeah, because those are totally --
grace boyd: There’s a love/hate … because there’s an ice queen! And I know that there's a love/hate with Narnia because oh, like all these Christian under vibes.
ash alberg: And over vibes. [Laughs.]
grace boyd: And over vibes. [Both laugh.] Wow! But I think the original kind of idea of the seasonal power of queen of snow and ice and cold, and then this idea of the sun, the things that warm and the seasonal change.
ash alberg: Yes!
grace boyd: And my, one of my favorite notions of the Narnia winter is always, it's always winter and never Christmas.
ash alberg: Yeah.
grace boyd: So it's like the celebration part of winter, the seasonal change, the tipping point never existed in the world of Narnia under the reign of … oh, I forget her name.
ash alberg: I don't remember it either, but she was, I remember seeing a play version of it a couple of times as a kid. And …
grace boyd: I did too, yeah.
ash alberg: Fucking terrifying, absolutely terrifying.
grace boyd: Absolutely terrifying. As she should be right?
ash alberg: Because that power …
grace boyd: Yeah. The power of cold, to freeze, to make something stone, to take away all the joys of what a season could be. Like I love the winter season, probably one of my favorites.
ash alberg: And this like … yeah, but this like sharp beauty that is also like very dangerous.
grace boyd: So dangerous. So dangerous. Yeah. And I think like the seasonal change of that danger is still ephemeral. It shows a season change. It shows a shift, it shows a dark to light, cold to warm and then warm is always going to go back cold.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. It is that cycling of things. And I think it's interesting where … I feel like, especially the solstice and specifically Yule is like such a big thing across the north, but it's because also like, when we think about thousands of years ago and hundreds of years ago, pre-Christianity, pre-industrialization, pre- like all of these different things when each year, it is the darkest point of the year and that the days have shortened and it is scary. And the fear is that it's going to stay dark.
And especially the further north we go, then the deeper the dark is and the shorter the light is. And so welcoming that light back in because it is also, we literally need it to live. And so having this ritual around appreciating the darkness and like, taking the time for reflection and hibernation and introspection, and also like doing everything that we can to welcome the light back as well.
grace boyd: I really, I had a moment when I was living up north and I didn't experience 24 hour darkness, except a couple of times when I changed community. But where I was, we had, I think two and a half hour days. [Ash whistles quietly.] Yeah, she was short, but that meant that I had hours and hours of daytime.
ash alberg: Yes! Yep.
grace boyd: Dark or twilight. And it was fascinating to be in this expansive darkness, but still so full of light and life. Everything still happened. So on the shortest day of the year, it was still full of life and full of regular happening.
Like the Northern lights coming out at like noon was pretty spectacular.
ash alberg: That's so cool! I think it is also one of those things where we learn to adapt to whatever it is. Like you, you build a different relationship with the dark when you are experiencing it for that long, which I think is really fascinating and depending on your mental health potentially at the time is a good thing or not to be engaging with.
But there is something … it's winter here on the Prairies. We do it so much better than others do because it's so fucking cold. We just, we know that it's going to be cold and you just dress accordingly and you go out and you do things because to not means that for six months of the year, you're doing nothing.
grace boyd: Yeah. Which is awful for a human being sometimes. Like I, I'm always appreciative of the people that can successfully hibernate. So I am an aggressive hibernator, where it's like, cool, we're going to nap solid for an hour. And then we're going to go out and we're going to do a million things and I'm going to nap solid for an hour, but I'm not a passive hibernator. I don't do that very well.
Yeah. [Whispers] And I just love the cold.
ash alberg: Yeah.
grace boyd: I love it.
ash alberg: There's something very reinvigorating about it. If you can figure out a way of building a healthy relationship with it.
grace boyd: With it. Yeah. I noticed yesterday, so I landed yesterday and I came from the east coast. So I came from the land of winter …
ash alberg: Which is just damp and like ice and sleet flinging you in the face.
grace boyd: Yeah. Or it's like great, another wind rain storm. Huzzah. Right?
ash alberg: Right. With the grass showing.
grace boyd: Yeah. Like for crying out loud, I have kale growing in my garden right now …
ash alberg: The fuck.
grace boyd: … and collard greens that are still growing. It's December people!
ash alberg: [Sighs heavily.]
grace boyd: Just take a break! So I landed here and I needed to go for a walk and it was like, I wanted to hear the squeaky snow. I wanted to see the sun setting. I wanted to feel my face tingle.
Like, I wanted to welcome that cold back and it was so refreshing to be able to be in the cold and celebrate that cold. Celebrate the dark. ‘Cause it’s so different everywhere. And I appreciate the dark on the east coast, but it's not the same without the cold.
ash alberg: Yeah. It's very different when it's, you're having these short days and it's, it's chilly, but it's not, it doesn't feel like hibernation mode in the same way. And maybe, if we, I was going to say maybe if we'd grown up there … I sorta did.
grace boyd: Yeah. I was like, you have a leg up on this. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Yeah. And like also climate change has really changed things, right?
grace boyd: Oh, definitely.
ash alberg: Like in the last few years, yeah, it’s --
grace boyd: It’s warmer. It's windier winds, it’s bigger rains.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. Like when we were kids, it would have been snow by now. And it's just not at this point, but when I think of, if we were somewhere more Southern then to not have snow at this point in time would be super normal.
And like, how the fuck do you do Yuletide without snow? Like that to me is just such a foreign concept. And one that like feels not right. But then I also think of what are the elements that you could bring in that would then, if that was your experience, would still make it feel like Yule even if you don't have those kind of major outside indicators.
grace boyd: Oh, interesting.
I think, oh, I'm always curious about places closer to the Equinox … or the equator, the Equinox, the equator [Ash laughs.] … that have less seasonal change. So you almost have mono-season at that point.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
grace boyd: You're almost unchanging.
ash alberg: It’s like wet or not wet. That's the differentiation between the seasons it seems.
grace boyd: Yeah. And I love living in a seasonal place, but I think the new … your internal clock and your intuition changes to that. I don't think it is immediate. Like I could not come from … as a person who solidly loves my four seasons, minus spring. Spring’s disgusting
ash alberg: Spring is gross. Spring is useless. If we could have two falls instead …
grace boyd: It would be so great. Two falls. Give me two falls.
ash alberg: Spring is just muck.
grace boyd: And I'm sorry to everybody who loves spring. It's just not for me.
ash alberg: No.
grace boyd: I'm never going to …
ash alberg: Skip ahead to the like post slush portion of spring.
grace boyd: It’ll be great.
ash alberg: Things are growing in cute, fine.
grace boyd: Oh, lovely. Yeah, but spring not for me. It's just, yeah. Double fall. Bring it on, bring it on. But to live seasonally, like we're so in tune. It's like we know, okay. It's going to be hot in August.
And then we know that by December, it's going to be cold. And then we're going to get this really big, cold snap, like midwinter in the darkest depths of winter, which I'm like, oh, great, light's getting like lighter. Everything's getting longer.
ash alberg: Yeah, that’s also like minus 40!
grace boyd: Yeah, just kidding. [Ash laughs.]But then there's also this promise of spring, whomp whomp.
ash alberg: Yes.
grace boyd: But spring leads to summer. So we have this four season kind of cycle to live in a mono or like a dual season, like area, I think that your intuition has to change where you have to be a little bit less aligned with dark/light, maybe a little bit more with what the animals are doing or what plants are doing at that time.
Like I've never had to really pay attention to, in dark, light, light season. Yeah. Just because I have the dark and the light. Not that I don't pay attention to the plants and the animals.
ash alberg: No, but it's also they’re, they are different. Like here it's literally that other than the evergreens, most things are dead.
They're not dead. They're hibernating and same with the critters, right? Like they're hibernating for the most part.
grace boyd: But all our jackrabbits all are white now. So I know that when the rabbits go from brown to white, oh, that's seasonal.
ash alberg: Yes.
grace boyd: That's good.
ash alberg: And then when the geese move, okay, it's, you know, the season's shifting.
grace boyd: Yeah. Here we go. And I think that tuning in your body clock and your self clock to more of those seasonal shifts, is that … yeah.
ash alberg: Yeah. It also makes the folklore really interesting when it's … ‘cause I feel like for us, in the north, the folklore is so heavily tuned into the seasons and specifically seasonal shift that it like, and I have no ancestral ties anywhere south where it would be not that, right?
So it's, it's yeah. It's just all, it's all cold or not cold. Where it's you've got, you have those like very distinct seasons and all of the, all of the solstices and equinoxes and the celebrations are very much attached to even just how heavily the celebrations are attached to harvest times or planting times.
And that is literally because there is a time that you plant because the snow has now gone and the ground isn't frozen and there's a time to harvest. And that is not because, oh, it's just grown enough. It's literally that okay, we gotta harvest because then we gotta process before that.
grace boyd: Before everything gets cold.
ash alberg: Exactly.
grace boyd: Yeah. There you go. Oh, interesting. Oh wow. Mmm, seasonal magic. And life cycles, right?
ash alberg: Yeah. And if you're living in a place where that's not the case then do you celebrate two harvests in a year because you can do two harvests? Is it that your harvest is at a different time, but still must happen by a certain point because the weather will still affect the harvest, just not in the same kind of way as like a cold snap? Like I … it's, yeah. It’s curious.
grace boyd: It's interesting. I'm a little off topic, but like on topic. On brand. Switching a little bit. Yeah. This is chunky peanut butter versus smooth peanut butter right now. [Ash laughs.] But my roommate and I were talking, we both have Ukrainian roots.
I have some Ukrainian Roma on my side. She is like full on Ukrainian. And there's this dark, like dark seasonal magic, not dark magic, but dark seasonal magic from the Ukrainian culture about reading wax in water from a candle.
ash alberg: Ooo!
grace boyd: Mhmm! And it's a way of reading usually about illness, and it is a reading so it's similar to tea leaves or fire gazing would be very similar practice. So you drip or you allow wax to fall into a bath of water, and then you read the shadows.
ash alberg: Oh, that's super fucking cool and creepy!
grace boyd: It’s pretty cool and pretty creepy! And it's U--, it's Ukrainian, it has heavy Ukrainian ties to these buddies who would gaze at bowls of water and candles and wax.
ash alberg: What an interesting scrying practice like.
grace boyd: Oh, yeah!
ash alberg: It makes me also wonder … is it like a thing that Polish -- it's not something that I've come across yet, but it's so interesting how there's some things that are just like generally Slavic and slight shifts in terms of usually literally just the words, but otherwise it's the exact same practice, but then there's other things that are like really specifically “this is Ukrainian,” “This is Polish,” or like what we now identify as being like those land areas.
Some is like very specifically Russian. And then there's the Ukrainian area that's has –
[Both talking at the same time.]
ash alberg: Yes.
grace boyd: I really need the integration and like growth of those things, but I'm not a big … I don't, so I don't have a scrying practice. That's not one of my things. It fascinates me. I think that you have to have a certain portal intuition to properly scry. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Yeahh and it's also one of those things where sometimes you don't want to, and you're not asking to. [Grace laughs.] Like the number of times that I'm just like, I'm like, I know you're there. I'm just not going to look in the mirror ‘cause I didn’t ask you to come.
grace boyd: Excuse me, do you mind?
ash alberg: I'm going to go this way instead.
grace boyd: Oh man. So I’ve … unfortunately, but fortunately I collect mirrors now, in my house.
ash alberg: Oh fuck no! God!
grace boyd: I know, I know, I know. They make it so much lighter and it’s so wonderful …
ash alberg: Now I have to … They do!
grace boyd: And it’s great. But I have three giant mirrors in my living room and the things I see in them … And I was like, I didn't sign up for this.
ash alberg: No!
grace boyd: It's, I never agreed to scry! [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Your ancestors are going to help you!
grace boyd: They’re coming for me.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly.
grace boyd: Oh my goodness. But this idea of this bowl of water as the vessel for … it's a scrying tool, you just hit the nail on the head here.
ash alberg: I'm like imagining it and the hairs on the back of my neck are going, “Ning a ning ning”
grace boyd: But you couldn't do that during warm season or light season, right? This is a dark season practice. This is the season of candles and of firelight and of closeness. This isn't something that you do in a daylight farm field.
ash alberg: No! I'm like thinking about in the middle of the heat, like on a summer night, like you still …
grace boyd: You're not going to do that.
ash alberg: No! And it's, whoever shows up during it is going to be like, not the same, same thing.
grace boyd: No! It's I think this kind of ties back to the crone or the, like the hag, like coming in, like having somebody come into the house from the cold, bringing this like magical force. And it is truly a magic and it's a body magic. It's a seasonal magic.
Yeah. And then lighting a candle and reading, like reading water at this time of year, I think is so important because liquid water just doesn't …
ash alberg: Yes. Also that's … Yeah. That's totally true.
grace boyd: So it's a practice of fire, of water.
ash alberg: Yeah. You're like bringing multiple elements into it. That's fucking cool.
grace boyd: And I think anything this time of year that has to do with fire is such an important practice for this time of year.
ash alberg: Yes. That’s true.
grace boyd: Anybody that lights a candle, anybody that has like a bonfire practice or like any fire gazers out there, whew, bring it. We need you.
ash alberg: Yeah. Candles. Candles are totally a thing.
grace boyd: It's a thing.
ash alberg: Yeah. This time of year, like there's … yeah, they're cozy, but like we use them for a reason.
grace boyd: Yeah, there’s a reason. My mother sent me a pack of candles last Christmas or last Yule.
ash alberg: Oh, mum.
grace boyd: This time. Oh, she knew me. She was like, these are for your, these are for your home. So I was alone last Christmas and I got to be in my house, like in my cozy clothes.
And then I lit candles for myself.
ash alberg: That's so sweet and like helps to ease off some of the being stuck by yourself during a time that is normally very family-filled.
grace boyd: I also like, got to spend some time with like my chosen family quite a bit, which was lovely.
ash alberg: Yeah.
grace boyd: Definitely got adopted.
ash alberg: Yeah, good.
grace boyd: Yeah, but still, yeah. Yeah. Fire. It's a connector. Candles.
ash alberg: So I think that one of my own favorite Yule traditions, it's hard to pick. Yule itself is technically not what my family has celebrated as I was growing up. That's more of my own thing as an adult, but Christmas time in general is definitely within my family and the main thing that we do each year that’s like the, I would say the biggest Alberg family tradition, and I love it a lot.
I've always loved Christmas and I've always loved our family traditions around Christmas. I'm totally one of those kids who like end of November came and I was already raring to go. And, by December, early December, the house is decorated, the food is starting. The baking is going. The Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas cassette tape is on the go, much to my dad's chagrin, for the whole month on repeat.
But Yule itself, I would say just gets almost looped in there. And I think this has maybe the interesting thing for me growing up in a not Christian-dominant household specifically, but certainly a Christian dominant society, growing up in Canada and especially as a white person with … my, my dad's side of the family comes from Eastern Europe, my mom's side of the family is staunchly Scottish with a sprinkling of English from the east coast of Canada.
Christmas is definitely the thing that we do and we've melded traditions from both together. And I think this is the interesting thing about Christmas in general is that it is a melding of lots of different traditions and in particular, pagan traditions.
So when the Christians were taking over the period of history, as they would conquer a different area, then the thing to do was always to … it's easier to attract flies with honey. And so after you've gone and pillaged an area, then you know, there's still the process of getting folks on board who have managed to survive.
And you'll notice that most Christian traditions align with different solstices. And there is a reason for that. It is because there were already solstice and equinox traditions and holidays and rituals that were being observed. And it was much easier to align those then with a new Christian holiday than to try and completely change old traditions and convince people that was the way that it was going to work.
Obviously it's been hundreds slash thousands of years. And so it's harder to pick things apart and see where one begins and one ends and what has not been born of both. And every family is going to have their own versions of those things anyway. But I think something that I love deeply, that is actually applicable to Yule and also is something that I grew up with as a small child, all the way through, was the Christmas tree.
And the Yule tree is a tradition that is rooted back in pagan times as well, including both of my ancestral lines. The Yule tree was totally a thing. And I have always loved a Christmas tree. And I can recall twice in my life not having one. Once was as a kid, and my parents took us to Mexico near Christmas time and we, aligned it with the not blackout dates, and we stayed in a small town where my aunt and uncle had a timeshare at the time in a condo. And it was absolutely wonderful.
And experiencing Christmas time in a place that doesn't have snow was wild to me, but also really lovely. And when we got home before Christmas, there was no tree and, my parents were like, why are we getting a tree? We always got real trees when I was a kid.
And as an adult now, I'm like, yeah, no, that makes sense. They'd already spent the money that they were going to spend on Christmas on this trip. Like that was the Christmas present that year, was going to Mexico.
And we're going to come back … I can't remember if we came back right before Christmas or if we … yeah, we must've because there was no baby Jesus on any of the mangers, which is, in Mexico, a tradition that on Christmas day, that baby Jesus appears in all of these mangers that are scattered around. And before that, then the mangers are out, but there's no baby Jesus.
So we must have arrived pre-Christmas, but it might've been Christmas Eve. Either way, it was right around Christmas time and getting a tree at that point would not have made sense because it would have lasted maybe a week before ending up in the compost chipper. And yeah, of course you're not going to go and spend money when you're raising a family on a budget and you've just done the experience of the holidays just in a different way that year.
So that was one year where I didn't have a tree. The other year was last year during COVID. And this year is also COVID but this year I managed to get a tree.
And that is because my mumsy, bless her, remembered how sad I was last year, because I refused to get an artificial tree. I don't like them. My mom has been using them for several years now, which is reasonable. My brother and I have moved out of the house and it's easier for her to do and my dad's in a wheelchair, so it's not like he's going to go to the back 40 and cut down a tree.
Okay, fine. We will deal with an artificial tree at my parents' house, but I want a real tree and this tree situation last year, I didn't realize just how much I associate the look of a tree and the smell of a balsam in my house as being synonymous with Christmas as I realized last year when I couldn't get a tree, because there were literally no trees to be found in the city by the first weekend of December.
And when a new shipment would potentially come in, they were gone immediately. There were no … you couldn't order them online. All of these places were offering them online, but then ultimately never even listed any stock availability because they would get them off the truck and they'd be gone immediately.
And it's because people weren't going away, they couldn't go away. And so they were compensating for not being able to have their usual holiday big trip by buying multiple Christmas trees and putting them up in their houses. And I unfortunately missed out.
And so I ended up making a tree using a string and my wall and then hanging some dried orange slices off of it. And that sort of made up for it a little bit, but it really did fuck with my concept of the holiday season, because I just associate all Yule season with having a tree in my house for the full month. And I didn't have that last year and it really screwed with me.
And my mom knew that and she keeps these things in her memory bank. And so then this year, first weekend of December, we were running some errands for something else and she was like, “Why don't we go get the tree now?” And we went and there were like maybe 20 left on the lot. And it, I got lucky because the next day another friend went to go tree hunting and found nothing.
And mum and I were running other errands later in the week. And there was nothing. And so yeah, so I got my tree and I feel very happy and very lucky. And so yeah, having a Yule tree is really important to me and really does define the holiday season for me in my home. And it's funny that a single thing can make all of the difference, but it truly did.
And so I deeply love having my balsam and I always love having a balsam and I make a point of collecting bows from my balsam tree after the holidays, before I put it out to the compost chipper. And then using those in my dye pot later in the year, and I get some really beautiful colors out of it. And yeah, it's just like a, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
So for me, the Yule tree slash Christmas tree is one of my favorite holiday traditions. And yeah. I'm curious to know what is a Yule tradition in your own household?
[Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.
Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.