Preparing for our First Winter Solstice Celebration

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. As you may know from my earlier post, I've decided to celebrate the 12 days of Yule starting from the winter solstice and running through New Years. We'll still be celebrating Christmas with an Italian dinner and a drive around the neighborhood, but tonight will be our more reflective and celebratory evening.  We're having some friends over to help us celebrate and welcome back longer days. 

Yesterday Sofia and I made a yule log of sorts (we don't have a working fire place by which to burn an actually yule log) by drilling holes into this piece of pine and sticking candles in them. I bought lovely, locally made, beeswax candles that are drip less and last 9 hours. After dinner is over we'll light candles and turn the tree lights on as way to symbolically welcome the sun back. I'll let the candles burn as long as I can stay up for! We also made oranges stuck with cloves to make the room smell wonderful.

Since I'm all about food you're probably wondering what's on our menu....

Starter- roast pumpkin soup with sage butter and crusty bread
Entree- roasted leg of lamb and rosemary potatoes (my friend is bring a surprise veggie dish to liven up the colors of the plate) and cinnamon and orange scented cranberry sauce
Dessert- Buche de noel or yule log cake

It will be a festive but short celebration as we have little ones who need to go to bed early. I hope that in the years to come we'll be able to have a more anticipated celebration with activities leading up to the day like an advent calendar and when they are much older possibly carving an actual yule log to burn! And finally though our last name means pagan in Italian, there won't be any pagan gods at this solstice celebration, just lots of good food, friends and marking the change in season, the tilt of the earth, welcoming winter, and the longer days to come. Oh yes and  a small present exchange!

I'll be sure to let you all know how it went! Happy Solstice everyone!