Rekindling Ancient Holyday Magic
An invitation into the deeper holydays—where Magic hides in every symbol, song, and celebration, and simple gestures become gateways to ancient truths and winter blessings.
ATTENTION HERETICS: Our Heretic Happy Hour exploration about the Magic of Symbols is Wednesday, December 17 at 5:30pm Pacific / 8:30pm Eastern.
This season began gently this year—quiet as a held breath.
Before anyone said the word Christmas… before the lights went up or the world erupted into glitter and noise… something older slipped in at the edges…
A hush.
A shimmer.
A sense that the air was thickening with memory.
It wasn’t dramatic.
Simply silent… and undeniable.
For a moment, I could feel the season the way our ancestors must have felt it… with the body first.
Just a rustle. A hush. A sense of being touched by something with deep roots.
When the season arrived in its full pizzazzle—sparkling, celebratory, relentless—I lost the quiet thread. Yet I haven’t forgotten the whisper of Truth that rode in on that Arctic wind:
All our celebrations barely scratch the surface of this season…
Beneath the holydays we’ve inherited lives a much older rhythm—one that predates our traditions by thousands of years.
A rhythm held first in the body before it was ever captured in myth.
The long night.
The cold breath of the world.
The first faint returning of Light.
Humans felt this shift long before we had language for it. We built stories because we needed them—to explain why life receded and then rose again.
The earliest stories of this season weren’t about mangers or miracles.
They were about survival.
About the truth that descent is always followed by ascent—that something rises once the Dark has done Her work.
Those old stories held nothing back.
The king dies so the kingdom can live.
The child is born carrying a Light the world cannot contain.
The sacrifice is made so the people may survive another year.
Every ending was a beginning… every birth carried the seed of eventual offering… every offering made the community holy.
When I look at this season through that older lens, everything softens and expands. It stops being a celebration and becomes a remembrance.
It's not abstract. It’s instinct.
Bone-deep and blood-warm.
And to know it, we must remember how to feel.
Perhaps that’s the reason for all the glitz and glamour of this season—the undeniable human urge to avoid feeling the truth of the Dark… the reality of death and sacrifice that being alive on Planet Earth means for each of us.
But that is the real Magic of this season—that we live.
Each of us… in Darkness and in Light.
It’s the foundation beneath every myth we’ve ever told.
Every baby arrives as the child of Godde.
Every newborn is hope incarnate.
Every life holds the ancient pattern: descent, offering, rising.
We pretend these are stories about other people in other times.
But they’re about us. They all ways have been.
This season was meant for your remembering.
… that wonder isn’t childish, but ancient.
… that hope isn’t born in daylight, but Darkness.
… that sacredness comes not from perfection, but from our offerings.
… that the myths we inherited are clues to our own becoming.
This season doesn’t ask us to believe.
It begs us to See.
To let the old stories rise in the chest like breath. To let the world be what it has always been—alive, cyclical, whispering truths we keep forgetting.
Don’t let our cultural inheritance of forgetting rob you of your birthright as a Magical Human of Planet Earth…
Some years the Magic reaches for us.
And some years, we have to reach for the Magic.
When the outer world is too loud—we must seek out ways to re-enter the season.
I come back to the simplest doorways I know.
This is NOT another list of holyday to-dos…
It’s a simple invitation to reconnect with the Magic that lives beneath the surface… and a few ideas for how to get there.
When the Magic Feels Far Away…
1. The Ancient Magic of Edible Blessings
The most sacred space in my December isn’t the darkened living room twinkling with lights or the snow-filled forest fresh with footprints… It’s the kitchen.
When I bake cookies this time of year, something loosens in me.
Measuring becomes meditation. Mixing becomes a ritual. Intention moves from my heart into my hands into the dough.
People rave about my cookies, but it’s not just the recipes. It’s the Magic baked into them. The presence folded in.
Sometimes the most astonishing thing we can offer is a small, edible blessing received by someone who didn’t know they were hungry for Magic until it touched their tongue.
2. A Winter Wassailing Tradition
If you’ve never stood on someone’s doorstep, breath clouding the cold air, and sung into the warmth of their home—you’ve missed something ancient and powerful.
Caroling isn’t a cute tradition—it’s one of the oldest winter rites we still practice without realizing it.
Long before people went door to door singing “Silent Night,” our ancestors wandered through orchards with torches and song. They sang to the apple trees—to wake the land, to bless the coming harvest, to remind the sleeping world that it was not alone.
This was wassailing… humans offering voice and warmth to the Earth in her darkest hour.
When you stand at someone’s threshold and offer them a song, you are doing what humans have always done in midwinter—carrying light with your own body… using your voice as a lantern… reminding the sleeping and the lonely and the weary that they are part of the living world.
Some people will blink back tears.
Some will laugh in surprise.
Some will open their door as if you’ve brought them a memory they forgot they needed.
In a season crowded with spectacle and noise, caroling is one of the few things that still carries the old frequency. It bypasses the mind and lands in the heart before a single word is understood.
It’s an offering. A blessing. A way of keeping the Earth—and each other—company in the dark.
3. The Season Beyond Your Door
The moment cold touches my face, something shifts.
The season stops being an idea and becomes a Presence again.
Sometimes the only way back into the season is to step outside.
Not to be productive. Not to “get fresh air.” But because insulation insulates us from what’s real.
Our ancestors understood this connection. Winter was never something to decorate for… it was something to meet.
Walk a little.
Stand under a tree.
Let the sky be wider than your thoughts for five quiet minutes.
Because Nature doesn’t imitate the season—She is the season.
When everything human-made feels too loud, She’s the only one who can bring us Home.
You don’t have to understand it.
Your body already does.
4. A Quiet Devotion to the Long Night
There’s always a point in December when the season asks more of me than I can give.
Too many directions. Too much brightness. Too many expectations pulling at the same thin thread.
I reach the edge of myself faster than I want to admit.
Even then—I resist the Dark. Because I’m human, and we’re all a little afraid of what we can’t see (whether we acknowledge it or not). Darkness feels like surrender, and surrender feels like losing control. So I keep the lights on longer than I should.
But when I finally give in… when I turn everything off and let the night settle around me… I’m shocked at how profoundly it brings me back—to myself and the world.
In the Dark, nothing is required.
Our ancestors trusted this part of winter for a reason.
Stillness was never the enemy—it was the Medicine.
Wishing you and yours a blessèd holyday season. 💜🌲⭐️✨
Resources for Magical Holyday Celebrations:
Winter Solstice Yule Ritual
I’ve always imagined myself celebrating the Celtic Wheel of the Year with a sacred circle of women dancing ‘round the bonfire.
Energy Magic: Divine Feminine Darkness
Beneath the noise of everyday… out in the space between stars…
Brilliant Darkness: Embracing the Shadow
We all avoid the darkness. We fear it. It’s been hard-wired into us since the dawn of our species. Predators and terrible things come out of the darkness. Darkness and shadows are more than a metaphor, hiding every type of evil. We’re clear—the only thing that’s kept us alive is the glow of the fire … the light.
Love this! Not sure if I’m ready to start caroling for people again, but I think I will make it a priority to go sing to the trees this year.