It usually takes me some time to get the holiday decorations underway; yet when I do I especially love watching the birds feeding outside, seen through the lights circling the window. This year I spent some time researching the meaning of my winter solstice decorations and discovered many interesting correspondences.I use golden garlands twined around colored lights because this holiday is originally the birth of the solar king, who brings the growing light to a new year. In the Greek Myths the present year king must die to make way for the new, and the Moon-Queen offers him an apple, which is his passport to Paradise. And also present as a counter-charm to the apple is the holy egg of rebirth. Therefore I hang in the upper space of my solstice decorations the red apples of death in life, and place bird nests containing the eggs of life in death in the lower space.
Hanging in the center of my solstice decorations is a silver coated pine cone. I discovered that the pine is dedicated to Dionysus / Bacchus and its cone is a phallic symbol of the god's fecundity. I also found that in Europe druids burned great fires of pine at the Winter Solstice to draw back the sun. It also interests me that the Bach flower Remedies recommend pine to treat despondency and despair--which often seem to be associated with the winter and Christmas season.
In the left corner of my winter solstice decorations is my Genius Loci, or spirit of place. This is my beaded representation of the year king who grows and fruits and sacrifices himself for our well being, and knowingly serves the Moon Queen in life and death and life again. So from the home of the Journey Oracle, every blessing to you as the light grows into life, again.
