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All Saints Day


Items needed:

Candles and a make-shift alter

The day after Halloween (or All Hallows Eve) is known in the ancient Christian calendar as All Saints Day. Traditionally, it’s November 1st and is about remembering the saints who have gone before us as the days fade into colder, darker hours and winter approaches.

Untraditionally, we suggest you celebrate this holiday sometime this month in a new, creative way.

Gather family and friends together- it can be around the kitchen table, somewhere special outside, or even a planned religious service.

Let there be an open time of sharing.
Ask, “Who has been a “saint” in your life? Someone who’s
been a “light” for you?” It could be someone who’s passed or still with us, someone you know intimately or an artist/writer who’s deeply inspired you from afar, they could be religious or not…

Honor them by naming them, remembering how they’ve lit up your life. Perhaps share a story. Then light a candle to represent them and set it in the area you’ve designated as an alter.

This activity works with a large room of people or even privately on your own. Celebrate how you see fit.

The Smell of Each Season

Betony and I have a strange tradition that we
haven’t yet shared here in the Almanac.

With the turn of each season we go and buy
scented candles.

For fall we will perhaps get an apple smell, pumpkin, or maybe cloves. Then for winter we almost always get one of those Christmas tree ones, and maybe a cinnamon/spice fragrance. Come spring we’ve found “cut grass” and various flowers while summer this year took us to “Margarita-vile”.

I know it seems superfluous and a bit silly, but we look forward to doing this each fall, winter, spring, and summer.

They say that the sense most connected with memory is that of smell. So it would make great sense that when the weather changes and we find ourselves in a new place in the year yet again, we would want to recall the past.

In doing so we bring to mind all the good we remember from the last year and let that color our coming days.

And by purchasing candles, sometimes revisiting the exact same smells, sometimes finding new perfumes to add change and variety,
we anchor our joy in taking on each new season.
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