By Fire Well and Tree

   Photo by Manuel Torres Garcia: https://www.pexels.com/photo/trees-covered-with-christmas-lights-at-night-10664540/ Since I started keeping track of time this way, I've been also trying to pin down how the ancient groups would have done so.  I had been assuming that the 'new moon = new month' formula, as seems to be the case for the Coligny Calendar and other Celtic sources, would be the same for other groups.  But then I came upon an Anglo-Saxon calendar listing, which quoted Bede's  Reckoning of Time   as indicating the month of  Wynterfylleth  as beginning on the full moon ( "because winter began on the first full moon of that month [of October]."   So I asked my friend  Alaric Albertsson . He usually posts on his Facebook page about which Anglo-Saxon month it is... and I noticed he also goes full-moon to full-moon. The upshot (and Alaric, PLEASE correct me if I misinterpreted) is that the Anglo-Saxons likely didn't have calendars the way we think abo

  Special guest appearance by Taco towards the back  I am not 100 percent sure how I came to be so...YULE!!!  When I first became pagan, I felt like I was all about the Samhain, the spooky. And heck, yeah, I still love it.  But somehow Yule took hold and now I plan Yule Lad visit to my grove's kids, and Solstice eve vigils, and a Yule Along for the 12 days, and then Twelfth Night sumble.... Anyway, here we are again. The last two years there's been Yule-A-Long and Yule Lads, but that's it.  In 2020, we tried to have a Zoom Twelfth Night. I get that Zoom has been a godsend for many, and we certainly used similar technology (Blackboard Collaborate), but as much as they can help people with some anxieties, they do the exact opposite for mine. So in 2021 I didn't even bother, and was mostly too full of Seasonal Affective Disorder to even care. We didn't even decorate those two years.   BUT, this year is all... well, different. Not normal, but close. (I despise the term