This was the first Yule I celebrated as a practicing Witch. While I had always participated in Christmas as a kid growing up, I’ve never really resonated with the Yule sabbat until now. I’m starting to see, however, that Christmas has become a very materialistic and commercialized holiday – much like Black Friday and Valentine’s. This is partly why I made the decision to make all of the decors that I wanted to put up by hand. The other reason being that it would be extra special and would have all of my energy in each decor item.
I also wanted to reflect on my growing exploration of Norse practices and traditions, while still keeping my Witchy core. I’m very happy with how my rune ornaments came out! I was going to do all of the runes, but decided to let it be something I can do every Yule from now. I crafted a Goddess and Horned God ornament as well – and one for my newly adopted cat.
To symbolize the sun returning, I wrapped gold sparkly ribbon around the branches and love how the light reflects off of it!
I also made a pentagram out of an upcycled bamboo stick and twine. This actually took the most work to do out of all of the ornaments, but it was well worth it.
For Yule dinner I had mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, a vegan sage and cranberry stuffed turk’y breast and mixed veggies. While I’m not sticking with a completely vegan diet right now, I’m cutting back on meat a bit because of a very sensitive stomach. I’m hoping to explore a gluten-free diet in 2020 to help fix this! I want to try and decrease my sugar intake as well, but I have the feeling that it will be a bit harder to do.
I plan on keeping my tree up until Imbolc most likely and will love to be reminded of the season and bask in its peaceful presence. Perhaps I could decorate it for each sabbat?
For gifts this year, I bought an unofficial Harry Potter cookbook for my best friend, a World of Warcraft cookbook for my girlfriend (I want my own copy as well!), special chocolates for my Dad and I also made a picture frame for him with two pictures of us. For myself, I got a 2020 Witchy Planner (not the Llewellyn version), a red calcite crystal and a book called The Way of Fire and Ice by Ryan Smith. I’m super excited about the book and hope the red calcite can help me with some energy boundary work as well. Perhaps I will do a book review post in the future. 🙂