Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is the longest night of the year. For us, and many others for hundreds of centuries, it is a celebration of light. Our tree is always strung with little, white lights that shine for this celebration of light. There has always been an abundance of lamps and candles in the home place, and all of these are set to blazing for the darkest night. We sit with our lights by the parlor stove with a bowl of popcorn, lightly drizzled with yummy butter - there is so much warmth and glowing light to send us over this hump. From here on out the days get longer, the nights shorter, and Pa reminds us that threshing time is indeed, just around the corner. 

The winter solstice is just what I remember all the winter nights to be. The solstice, blizzards, and winter nights in general bring a familiar rhythm. And when I go back to the farm it is just the same as always.  

Though I spent many nights like these throughout my youth doing my own thing, I don’t remember those as clearly. Mama always said the biggest thing that pushed families apart compared to years ago, was not the television like many thinks, but central heat. I can speak from experience that it was less than pleasant to spend time shut away in my room because it was 50 degrees up there. Any project I set myself to was tough to do in my bedroom because my hands were freezing!! Instead, we gather by the parlor stove fire after chores for our evening activities. It is always cozy, warm, and mesmerizing to watch the flames leap behind the glass in the stove door.

When my parents bought the farm there was no central heating. Just wood burners and an old oil burning heater in the kitchen. I spent my first handful or so years of life in a house almost entirely heated with wood. Mama put me to bed with heated bricks to warm me up. Then I woke up with frost on the ceiling. I love the page in Little Town on the Prairie where Laura and Mary had to wait for Pa to shovel the snow off their bed before they could get up. I felt like that sometimes, though it never actually snowed in my room there was often frost on the ceiling. Mama left the cupboard doors under the sinks open and ran small space heaters to keep the pipes from freezing. It is worth noting that indoor plumbing tucked away behind cupboard doors isn’t really commonplace in history until central heating was established. I remember getting to use a space heater when I was taking a bath. Getting out of the bathtub under any other circumstances still makes me wish I had that old heater.

All these cold winter nights began with Pa coming home from work and we’d pull our chairs to the table. Dinner was warm and delicious. There isn’t a whole lot that Mama makes that doesn’t taste delicious. Pa buttered his bread, filled up his plate and his tea cup. We’d all do the same. Sometimes there would be neighbors at the table and sometimes not. Either way, the conversation flowed about our days, our plans, and whatever else. The meal would be consumed, and tea cups refilled. 

Bundled in heavy duck cloth with thick quilted lining, we’d head out into the dark, snow-covered night for chores. Ice is busted from water tanks, hay divvied up into mangers. And the best part, letting the horses in. Pa would slide open the big door. “hello there - insert the silly unforgettable nickname here” Pa greeted each horse as they came in single file, and in almost always the same order. And they head to their stalls. The routine is methodical and comforting. Pa and I put halters on each horse, loving on them along the way. The best sound in the world is a barn full of horses munching on hay. When the barn light goes off, it seems to get louder, rhythmic, and meditative. I’d listen for a few minutes before heading inside. Warm light from the windows beckoned us in like a lighthouse on the coast. 

The tea kettle sings with Pa’s fiddle, and a fresh pot of tea was brewed. We settle in for the night by the fire. A frequent phrase I heard growing up was, "You don't have a TV?! How do you even live?" The answer to this is really simple. I do, and very fully at that. I don't waste very much time in front of a talking box that told me all about the world and what was popular and all that. I just went out and found out for myself. I explored it and where I couldn’t go, I read about it. And that is what my family is exceptional at - reading! We read to learn, we read for the pure enjoyment, and we read just because. 

Our winter evenings were spent around the parlor stove with its glass window in the door. There is always something mesmerizing about watching a fire burn. Mama's knitting needles clicking away (when she wasn’t reading herself and sometimes she does both at the same time! Wow!) while Pa and I usually absorbed ourselves with books. On special nights we had popcorn too. We munched and read, sometimes reading parts aloud that were funny or interesting. We love primary-source material. I think Pa has read the Case Steam Traction Engine Manual about 500 times. Mama is a fan of magazines from the turn of the century - twentieth century that is. My whole life, my family has enjoyed history.  Living history events, various interpretative events, old tools, machinery, methods, etc. We read to fuel that, and to advance our knowledge of things others have forgotten. We read to research, take apart, and put back together.

Several books our family finds common ground on is; the Little House Series, The Land Remembers, anything by Eric Slone, and so much more. These books are a carefully crafted blend of the enjoyable ease of a novel, yet still carry a tremendous amount of factual content. We read though them and comb through the details. Then we go out and dig deeper, reading on the things that intrigue us, what is fact, what is not. And we find more books.

By the time I started kindergarten, Mama had read me the Little House books five times. When I was little, I was Laura. Mama could rule serious disciplinary action by simply saying "Laura" in a certain tone of voice and I knew I had done wrong. In my old age, I know there are parts of Laura’s story that have been changed to sell books rather than retell her actual story. I comb the pages of the annotated version of Pioneer Girl, a book that is more footnotes than it is Laura’s original writing, and I love it. I hang on every word, infuriated by the need to change historical details to sell books. 

Still, I have always loved novels and adventures to far away places. I love to get lost in the fantasy of those places. Books that take the folk lore of a place and breathe life into it. The fair folk of the British isles are not just little fluttering, huggable fairies. They are not to be trifled with. The books set in a faraway land everyone rides horses into battle without reins! Others where sly girls outsmart villains. Oh the places you can go!

When it was time for bed, we would snuff the candles, stoke the fires, and climb the chilly stairs. We snuggled deep under our quilts with visions of sugar plums, ferocious fairy queens, steaming locomotives, and future gardens dancing in our heads.