A CELEBRATION EVERY DAY: Wolf Moon & Sauerkraut

By Megan Snowe

It’s a few days into the new moon cycle, which for me has been one with some outer beauty and inner turmoil. Seems somehow appropriate for the title that Jessica Prentice gave to the moon that starts off our new year: the Wolf Moon.

The Wolf Moon is about the balance of longing and belonging. It’s about tearing down and building up. It’s about the things we’ve lost and the things we still might lose. It’s about the struggle we’re all making to survive, and to find ways of being human, and a natural part of this earth in a society that seems to offer a thousand ways to remove ourselves from it.

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A CELEBRATION EVERY DAY: “The Moon of Long Nights” (& My Mom’s Chicken Soup)

By Megan Snowe

When I began thinking about this first post for my N.O.T. monthly-ish series on the chapters of Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice, the first thing I thought was, “Jeez, ernski, way to pick an off time to start celebrating nature. Everything is cold and basically dormant. It gets dark at 4:30, and the freshest foods are knobby, dirt-encrusted potatoes.”

I thought that all I’d have to look at was darkness, and frankly, I’m not a night person. As we head toward the winter solstice, I just keep thinking, this is not my favorite time of year.

Well, lucky me, it turns out that Ms. Prentice has a different take.

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A CELEBRATION EVERY DAY

Time always passed... 13th or 14th century Runic Calendar found in Lapland.

It’s easy to think of the holidays as being few and far between. This perception, however, as we have seen here at These New Old Traditions, is basically false. Holidays are certainly special, but they are also plentiful. Days to mark and honor the passing year are constantly popping up—at least once a month—no matter what New Old Tradition a Reveler feels most aligned with.

Despite this abundance, These New Old Traditions is also aware that specific holidays are not the only opportunity we have to honor this special planet, and our special relationship to it. The question is: How in our crowded calendars and concrete landscapes can Revelers such as us remember to stay connected to our ordinary days?

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Lucky Thirteen

Frigga Spinning the Clouds from "Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas" by H. A. Guerber

It’s Friday the 13th and These New Old Traditions want to celebrate. Turns out that most superstitions stating that Friday the 13th is unlucky are pretty recent conventions, but there are some theories that trace the day’s bad rep back to the Pagan Norse goddess Frigg, an important and fabulous goddess of love (she’ll show up again when we start exploring mistletoe) who was demonized as a witch by over-ambitious Christians and banished.

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