Hi Friend,

You know that Christmas is coming up. And New Year's.

You know that even if you don't celebrate Christmas.

Even if you have never celebrated and never intend to celebrate Christmas. Or New Year's. Even if you hate New Year's Parties and think the whole "out with the old, in with the new" thing is just so … trite.

Or if you love either. Or both.

You know because these are two holidays that are federally recognized holidays (in many countries including Mexico, the United States and Canada) - you have the day off if you are part of a workplace that does that kind of thing (friendly wave to all my fellow self-employed folks who get to look at each federal holiday and assess it for yourself... and to all the many other people who don't get nearly the time off that you might want/need/deserve....).

And it's obviously not just a federal holiday… these two days are a major source of commercial, social, entertainment/cultural, and even ecological focus. At this time of year, much of society revolves around them (though in very different ways).

These two holidays are both important for all sorts of reasons.

In this week's webinar, this coming Tuesday, I'm going to lead participants - hopefully including you! -through understanding these holidays as forms of origin stories, and the resulting implications.

It's part of my current series of free webinars on Origin Stories, where I've taken a different theme/holiday (last month it was Thanksgiving) and look at it through the lens of both the circular calendar and Origin Stories. And, yes, there's some information about our upcoming Origin Stories class. mostly the webinar is about these two holidays. Some of their function, history, theology and implications. They do tend to act as a pair (at least in America and a fair amount of Europe).

I'm hoping this webinar will be interesting regardless of your religious/spiritual orientation. Or how much you love/hate/are apathetic towards either one.

Because how we work with time - which includes our calendars - shapes how we think and engage with place. With ecologies. With one another.

Because national/federal holidays - how we interpret them/engage with them are places where the micro reaches into the macro. Where what's going on at the level of the household/family/individual touches the local community and vice versa and creates parts of our shared sense of reality.... meaning that both of these holidays actively shape who is "in" and who is "out" of the larger culture, shape ideas of belonging, and determine the stories we tell about who "we" are..... at multiple levels of the "we".

These are places where we all have some tiny part to play in interpreting what we've inherited (none of us chose that these would be such big cultural holidays…. That decision/process happened long before our lifetime).

One choice might include disengaging or calling out falsehoods.

I still remember the moment, one New Year's Sunrise, when I realized how deeply, deeply made up the whole Gregorian calendar thing is.

At least with the solstice, there's some actual celestial event happening.

That experience reinforced my commitment to earth time …. And circular time processes that can help get us there.

I have only given us an hour for this, so it's not going to be a huge lesson! we will turn these two holidays around a bit, and look at them from different angles, and try to get a better sense of what's actually going on here.

Instead of just, you know, doing the thing.

Whatever that thing is for you.

And - if you need to disengage right now - please give yourself permission to do so.

This has been a big year. A lot has happened. In people's personal lives. In American political-religious-economy. In global gatherings and climate things. Anyone else noticing the weird ways that 2020 keeps showing up in what's happening in 2025... and what that might mean for 2026?

Alrighty.

Hope to see you on Zoom on Tuesday… and in our upcoming circular time sessions!

Sara Jolena

ps - I'm co-creating a series of things IRL for winter solstice in the Hudson Valley! ping me if you want deets. Or just follow our social media for the stuff that's wide open to the public!