Happy Winter Solstice. This day, the shortest day of the year and the darkest, always seems special to me. It’s been pretty gloomy and foggy here in Northern California, but this means we are about to turn the corner and can look forward to more hours of light and warmth.
When my son Griffin was young he took piano from the most wonderful woman, Kathy Goldbach. She and her sweet husband Evold, always held the December recital on this day where he concluded the concert by the reading of this poem, which I found really fitting. He did it with such emotion, you could imagine all those that endured dark winters through the ages and how they gathered and made merry to get through. After the poem, we would be invited to have some of Evold’s homemade stollen which was par excellence and made with ingredients his family sent from Germany along with punch from a real punch bowl-a rarity nowadays. To top it all off, they would send us home with bags of persimmons from their Campbell yard, which was still orchard-like and very old California.
Those are sweet memories and on this day I cannot help think of what kind and generous people they were and how their little tradition and effort made us all feel a bit of the magic of this season. I hope next year to start the same tradition – having friends over in our new home and reading this poem while sharing some food and good cheer.
