There is a common belief that the good old days were nice and peaceful, since communities operated in response to the seasons and were therefore more grounded than the modern lifestyle where we rush around all our lives with no real structure beyond career advancement. This intrigued me for a while, since I can appreciate the role of seasons and celebrations to mark a year and to give a sense of life progressing, but yet remaining the same. I am quite fond of the image of time as a helix rather than a straight line.
Over the last couple of years I have realised that my life has seasons and regular celebrations. These are not the agricultural seasons, since apart from my gardening habit and a joy in different smells of spring and autumn, the seasons don’t make so much difference to me.
But the social seasons do.
So here is my year and its important celebrations. I find that these create a sense of stability in my life and I’m glad I share them with most of you:
The party season: September to mid-November. This is the season of trying to shoe-horn parties into the social calender, to steal a phrase from Hunydd. You know that events such as Robyn’s cocktail party, various feasts, and other social engagements will occur as people think of them and that your calendar has to be carefully watched for double bookings.
Christmas/New Year’s: Mid-November to February. This period is almost always booked out with social engagements, but you know that you will see people that you love. Turkey day, Laela and Scruffy’s b’day party, Yule, all of the Christmas and New Year’s parties, including the post- New Year’s breakfast are part of my ritual year and I’d miss them if they weren’t there anymore. So who’s doing Turkey day in 2008 so we can continue to know when this season starts?
Festival: February-May. The period of “it’s two sleeps to Festival”. Time to stress about camping and clothes and who’s bringing what and which classes you will attend and whether the armour is in shape. Then the post-Festival cool-down where your house is a mess for a month while everything slowly gets put away.
The Quiet Period: May-September. There are less formal social engagements, as we need to recover from Festival. Then it gets cold, so my couch and heater become the most appealing things in my life. There are some Kingdom feasts on if you want to travel but mostly it’s quiet and a break from the rest of the year.
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Learning to Fly 