Winter Solstice Celebration
Our Annual Celebration of Winter with Maine Mountain Children’s House is full of love and light
Bethany Mahar, Director of Maine Mountain Children’s House talks with us about how Kingfield’s Montessori school celebrates the winter solstice.
Thanks, Bethany! We love when the crew from MMCH gathers at the Beer Shed ❤️
Winter is a magical time here in the mountains of western Maine where we receive copious amounts of snow and cold weather that cover our grounds and frost our trees. Children of western Maine learn to love the winter months where they ski, sled, slide, and eat the sparkling snow. As the days get darker and the temperatures plummet, we gather together to talk about all that we love about this part of Maine and all we look forward to for the winter months ahead.
December not only marks the start of Winter, but it also kicks off the "holiday season" and the various celebrations of light across world cultures. At Maine Mountain Children's House, we introduce children to many of the major holidays, including Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, but it is the Winter Solstice that peaks our senses and gives us something concrete to experience together. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are experiencing the darkest days of the year. The children are seeing and feeling this every day as they start and end their days with dark skies. This gives us a great opportunity to talk about why this is happening and how it makes us feel. Where do we have light in our lives? How do we use light? How does light make us feel? We love to teach the children of how, in the past, people thought the light was being swallowed by evil spirits, and that it would only return after the people spent weeks celebrating light late into the night and begging it to return. We now know that this loss of light is only temporary, and will start to slowly make it's way back as the earth tilts towards the sun again during it's yearly rotation. To learn more about how we celebrate this month at MMCH, visit our Celebration of Light and World Holidays blog on our website!
When Kate and the folks at the Maine Beer Shed invited us to be part of their Winter Solstice Celebration in 2021, we instantly said "yes"! Here we were able to participate in life a size solstice calendar, where the children get to light torches one at a time in the Waldorf spiral. If you did not have the pleasure of participating last year, it is a must. It was incredible to see the way the children took such care waiting their turn and then slowly walking the spiral and lighting the next torch in line with a long, graceful candle stick.
This year, we will participate again, and will also offer warm, creamy hot chocolate as a small fundraiser for the school. In addition, there will be Solstice-themed activities including garland making for our outdoor critter friends to enjoy, ice globes, and small solstice calendars for the children to take home. Please come join us to celebrate the darkest day of the year, and bring a little light into each of lives when we need it the most. Hope to see you there!
