Druidry - Winter And The Wheel Of The Year

Saturday, 06 January 2024 Written by Nimue Brown

The change of calendar date can feel like a big, dramatic moment in the turning of the seasons, but in many ways it isn’t.

The light is returning, slowly, day by day. The days will get longer now, but you probably won’t feel the change in the next week or two. The wheel of the year is not a series of big events, but a day-by-day process.

This has a lot to offer in terms of everyday Druidry. The big eight festivals often dominate how we think about the seasons, but they don’t need to. The wheel of festivals is a twentieth century thing and while each festival has a long history, celebrating them all doesn’t.

Of course our Pagan ancestors all experienced the cycle of the seasons and were impacted by it. Taking a day-to-day approach is bound to connect us to them and whatever they did in some small but meaningful ways. Looking at the wheel day by day brings us closer to the wild world and the seasons as they occur around us.

How we experience the year depends on where we live, and taking that very personally is effective. Noticing how the changes of light impacts on you personally is good. I live in the shadow of a hill, so we have to get considerably further into the year for me to get more direct sunlight. The further from the equator you are, the more dramatic the shifts between solstices are. 

Paying attention to both the sunrise and the sunset is easier in winter, your odds of being awake for both are good. If you only get one, that’s also fine. Just making a point of noticing them day by day is a good way to connect with the journey of the sun. Take a moment when you notice the light fading, and take a moment in the morning when you realise it’s getting light. Find out how your body reacts to these things and how you feel about them. Do you wake before the dawn? Are your sleep patterns affected by the changing length of days? Do you welcome the long winter nights, or are you glad to see them shortening?

Anyone in the southern hemisphere is of course going the other way right now, and will be experiencing the shift to shortening days. The principle of just paying attention works no matter where you are, although the longer your days the less realistic it is to witness both the sunrise and the sunset. There’s a lot to be said for doing what you can most easily do day by day.

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