What is Mid-Winter?
Adorn Your Space for Mid-Winter
The season of mid-winter invites us to revel in the beauty of our snow covered surroundings, to feel into the cold and the stark landscapes we see. We can live into the mood of this beautiful season by focusing intention on creating surroundings that help us stay present in this moment.
You can bring these feelings to life in indoor spaces through:
Burning candles and incense 
Fire plays an important role in traditional cultural festivals from this time of year, and it is a way to bring warmth and light into this often cold and dark season.
Creating coziness
Indulge in some comfort and surround yourself with items that make you feel nourished, in what is often a difficult portion of the year.
Soft pillows and cozy blankets can make your space feel warmer and more welcoming, and invite you to pause and sink into quiet.
Decorating with items from nature
Branches from trees, evergreen boughs, and crystals are appropriate and bring the outdoor landscape in.
Deep cleaning and organizing
This is a wonderful time to clean out often neglected areas like cupboards and closets.
Create a feeling of spaciousness and lightness by reducing clutter.
Snuggle Up and Tell a Mid-Winter Story
Midwinter Garden Candle Blessing
Celebrate the waning of winter, the first stirrings of green and the warmth of lengthening days by warming your garden with candle light! In keeping with the tradition of making new from the old at this time year create a candle for your garden. This ritual symbolizes the power of the sun to invite the return of green and fertility to the land.
- Clear a spot in your garden and dig a small hole.
- Gather burned down candle stubs (preferably beeswax).
- Melt the wax by creating a double boiler by washing out a bean or tomato can and placing it into a pot of water or in a crock pot. Heat at fairly low temperature.
- While the wax is melting cut a piece of candle wick slightly longer than the depth of your garden hole and place in the hole.
- When the wax has melted pour the hot wax into the hole in the garden while keeping your wick upright. Let cool.
- Light your candle and celebrate that the time of darkness and fallow earth will soon end. Rekindle your resolutions, welcome the returning light and witness re-birth and new beginnings in nature all around us.
“Candle, candle, burning bright,
Winter’s halfway done tonight,
With a-glowing we are knowing,
Spring will come again.”
Candlemas Verse, Waldorf Book of Poetry
Create a Light Garden
During this cold, wintery time, we can all appreciate the opportunity to focus on the stillness of the snowy world, while we also tune in to the stirrings that begin to come with the anticipation of the coming spring. It is not yet time for planting seeds in our garden, but it is a time for planning the seeds we will plant.
Cultures around the world use this special time for mindful intention setting. Just as we begin to imagine the harvest we want in our gardens and the seeds we need to decide on now in order for the plants to materialize in the summer, now is the hour for considering what we want to bring forth in the coming year in other ways, as well--for visualizing and setting into motion ideas and dreams.
A beautiful way to live into this aspect of mid-winter is to create a light garden. This is a sweet activity to do with your family; even small children benefit from the connection and quiet intention this brings. There are many ways to do this activity, and it can be modified in any way that feels fitting for your personality, for the other people who are participating, and according to the items you have available. Adult supervision is necessary, of course, for lighting candles!
You will need:
- Soil (this can either be outdoors, in a garden bed or a bare spot in your yard, or can be dirt in a flower pot or other container indoors);
- Small strips of paper;
- Something to write with;
- Candles (any kind, even birthday candles can be used).
***Note: If you created your garden in potting soil indoors, it is fun to use the soil, with the paper in it, in your garden in the spring. Think about your intentions becoming a part of the soil as the paper disintegrates, and imagine the realization of them represented in the plants that grow out of them.
