fullupwithfire | Solstice Night Blanket Fort Party

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Solstice Night Blanket Fort Party

Welcome One and All!

Tonight, at least up in the northern hemisphere, is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. My family tradition is for whoever can make it to spend the night awake, holding a vigil for the return of the light and the rebirth of the Sun King. Tonight I offer an open space to anybody who'd like to join me, whether for the entire night or just a little while, to come join in the cuddle pile and await the dawn.

(And if your version of joining in is setting up two feet away and offering good vibes from afar, you're just as welcome.)

So come on in! We've got every kind of blanket you can think of, fuzzy or not, oversized or tiny, weighted or as thin as you can get. We've got stories and songs, crafts and games, dancing spaces, roaring fires, and whatever else you need to get through the dark. We've got sleeping spaces and quiet spaces and loud spaces alike. We've got cider on the stove and eggnog in the fridge and coffee on the counter, snacks of every kind and room to bring your own. We've got hugs and hearts and kind words to remind you that you're here, and we're glad that you're here, and the light will come back.

I'll throw up a couple spots for sharing on a theme here and there -- songs and stories and if anything else comes to mind -- and you should feel free to float your own. Make yourselves comfortable. Have a happy Solstice, everyone. ♥

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Come sit by the fire an tell the stories of times gone by. Tell us about traditions you carry with you, stories from past holidays that make you happy. Maybe tell us about things you want to start doing and hey, maybe start doing it this year, f you can!

A past memory: We used to have parties all the time around the holidays. My family was big on Christmas Eve stuff and we would invite a whole slew of people over, eat lots of food, and open gifts at midnight. It was always a fun time, if not occasionally stressful and while I would never keep the party tradition going myself, I appreciate how open and willing to take anyone in my family was.

My family also has had... a progression of party traditions. My maternal grandfather's birthday was actually Christmas Eve, so when I was a kid, we always made the 8-hour drive to where my mom's parents lived in Virginia a few days before Christmas, and there was always a big birthday celebration for Pop. One year, it turned into a big family reunion thing, even; we rented out the development's club house (they lived in a small condo right on the Chesapeake Bay) for it and there were... a *lot* of people.

For a few years when I was in high school, Pop and Gran came to spend Christmas with us, instead, and the party was lower-key, but I always loved making his birthday cake. And being home for Christmas turned out to be my favorite thing ever, the first time we did it, because it meant I had access to a computer, and didn't have to sleep on the floor!

When we started staying home, we also started going to our next-door neighbor's Christmas Eve party. My parents don't still live in that house, but we've kept going to that party, and I love it. All my grandparents are dead, now, but our old neighbor's like another grandfather to me.

This won't go on forever, and sometimes I wonder what it'll be like in a decade or two. I'm not the sort of person to be the keeper of that kind of tradition, either, but I think I'll still want something to mark the holidays, even if it's small.

Aww, that's really sweet, tbh. I'm just not a huge party person most of the time but I think that, if we ever find ourselves with people who don't have anywhere to go near the end of the month, I'll see if they'd want to come over for a night and have warm drinks and share a meal.

Yeah, I feel like if there's ever nothing, I'll be there, like... hey nerds come be a holiday nerd with me. It still means something even if I'm not religious in that way anymore.

Yeah, exactly. <3 I will be there with chocolate, coffee, and an open door.

That is a lovely series of traditions. ♥

I understand that feeling. My mother's a very big fan of holidays -- not just winter ones, holidays in general, though especially the Halloween-to-Christmas run at the end of the year -- and I'm not always in a place where I want that big a thing, and also I intend to one day not live close enough that I can be around every single holiday; but on the other hand, doing nothing at all always feels kind of... sad. I'm hoping I can find a balance somewhere that doesn't feel like nothing, but doesn't drain me entirely to put together.

Yes, that's exactly how I feel about it, too. Do you have a particular place you and your partner want to end up? Or is it just "far away from here"?

I'm hoping to live in the Pacific northwest someday, myself. While I do have one cousin up there, nearly all the rest of my family is still on the east coast.

We're not sure at this point; a lot of it depends right now on how the next few months go -- they've never done a proper winter, and I haven't in 20 years, so if it turns out to be too rough, it's going to have to be somewhere warmer. In general, we're kind of hoping for farther from family. I love them, and I really appreciate how much my mother has helped us in getting out of Florida and settled here; but they're stressful, and I have a habit of making myself overly available to my mother to the point of draining my ability to do anything else if I'm near her, so distance would probably be good for me.

I'd actually really love to live in the Pacific northwest too. Between cost and how far it is away from most people who could help us get settled, I'm not sure how likely an option it'd ever be, but it's on my dream list.

Finding balance with someone you genuinely appreciate/care for but with whom it's hard to avoid giving too much is... important, yeah. I've got a friend theoretically in my life like that whom I'm trying to navigate inviting back in in practice. I can see physical distance being a big help with a family member who probably isn't a total internet citizen.

I hope we all eventually get somewhere we're at least content with the idea of staying.

My mom's side of the family have always celebrated on Christmas Eve. My grandparents always hosted; my grandpa just loved the holiday and loved everybody being there. He handed out the presents from under the tree.

We didn't get presents until after all the dishes were done and leftovers put away from the big dinner. I was never so keen to help with chores as I was then. And I'm still drying dishes, almost 30 years later, because it was the job I was first given as the first thing I could be trusted with. And after presents, now everybody has to play games but when we were too little and had to go to bed, the adults played cards and yelled and laughed and pretended to get mad but it was all in fun. I like those memories more than I like having to play games now.

I get that. I have nothing against holidays with my family (well, sort of) but the memories are always sweeter than the reality, you know? For me, the marking of the holiday actually felt like something. Now it just kind of feels like another day in which I have to exist around people I might not want to be around.

Which is more depressing than I intended it to be.

WHat's the tastiest thing you've ver had around the holidays?

For me, the marking of the holiday actually felt like something. Now it just kind of feels like another day in which I have to exist around people I might not want to be around.

Yeah, exactly. I liked it being special when I was a kid and I would like it to still be again but it's hard when my family will never be whole again. It's hard when nothing distinct happens to distinguish one year from the next, and yet I'm grateful that I'm still able to do the same things I'd always done for Christmas: my grandpa's gone but my grandma still lives in that house and still hosts every Christmas Eve (albeit with her kids doing most of the work now she's not able to). I'm 37, and how many people that age can say they've done the same thing every Christmas and still (for all the complications) enjoy it, still don't want to be anywhere else that day? I feel lucky even as I complain about my family and I also feel insufficiently grateful too.

WHat's the tastiest thing you've ver had around the holidays?

My family make amazing Christmas candy. Lots of things dipped in chocolate, homemade fudge... My grandma even does (or did) homemade peanut butter cups -- never a lot because the says they're such hard work, but they're amazing. Still I think my favorite is that she always makes lefse at Christmas. She's of Norwegian ancestry and lefse was a normal food in Norway when her family left it but in Minnesota it seems to appear at Christmastime. I got to help her make it a couple times and I loved to see how the elaborate process happened. It's something I particularly look forward to every year: I was thinking about it on the plane over, the day before yesterday. And I had some for breakfast yesterday. :)

That does sound like a lovely memory, even if it's sad that some things don't quite live up to it.

Cards were always a part of holidays for us too, though usually Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve more than Christmas. It's probably going to have to be skipped this year, as our usual third party is my grandmother and she's likely not going to be up to it, but it's something I looked forward to a lot for a while there.

My mom's family love playing cards. Even if we just went to my grandparents for dinner or something, we'd probably end up playing cards. My grandpa's family had card parties as an excuse to get the relatives together.

Now we play Apples to Apples (a game Andrew and I introduced my parents to when they were visiting us) at Christmas so my grandma, who's even more blind then me now, can still join in even though she can't see normal cards. Well when she's not being too grumpy and sulky to join in. :)

Many years ago now, my partner's parents noticed that a fox had had its kits in their backyard in the middle of winter. Being the kind of people they are, they worried that the mother and kits wouldn't get enough to eat.

So they started putting out food for the fox. And because they are very schedule-oriented people, they put the food out every night at 11 pm.

Foxes are smart, and they notice when the food keeps coming.

At this point, we're pretty sure the fox who comes around is the original fox's grand-kit. It doesn't come every night, but every night that I'm here for Christmas I crouch at one of the upstairs windows in the dark and wait to see a fox.

It's one of my favorite parts of Christmas.

Okay, that is absolutely adorable. Christmas fox! I love it!

Awww, foxes! That's adorable. :D

Presents-wise, there was always "one can be opened on Christmas Eve, the rest must wait until the day of, when it is properly time and the extended families have gathered in their respective places." And usually a very frenetic round of "everyone contribute a gift under this amount, pick a number, pull a gift from the pile, unwrap it, and then decide if you want to keep it or exchange it with someone else's unwrapped gift."

That's not usually the thing that makes memories. That would be the Mass Dash - I have an uncle who is a now-retired Catholic priest, but while he was active, the night of the 24th and day of the 25th would look something like this:

1. Christmas Eve service in the church nearest to home...unsurprisingly, once there were enough family members who played musical instruments, we ended up being the musicians for that particular service.

2. Leave home church, find open Chinese restaurant nearby. Eat food so as to be sustained.

3. Drive to the church where the uncle will be having services. Often in snow and on roads that were in varying states of plowed and safe to drive on. Much fun had by all.

4. Small snacks in the rectory before the service, which became more of a "Midnight Mass at 10pm" as time went on and the average age of the parishoner got older.

5. Service number two. Thankfully, only singing rather than fuller performance. Also, a specific shout-out from the altar because family.

6. Food and drinks (usually some amount of soft and less soft drinks, along with a sampling of all the foodstuffs given by the parishoners to the uncle that he can't and doesn't want to try eating and drinking by himself).

7. Dispersal to sleeping spaces, to get up and come back together for more drinks, food, and presents on the day of.

It's different now, being so far away, and also with the retired priest and the not really having been a practicing Catholic for a reallty long time, but I have retained the "find somewhere that's open and have Chinese on Christmas Eve" part of the tradition.

And the opening of one present a day early.

Oh wow, that's a lot. But I"m glad you still hold onto the things that work for you. Good, good times.

It seems like a lot, but it was so well-orchestrated that we barely noticed how much it actually was.

Yes, the Christmas Eve present! We didn't do the second part (we stopped having our extended family around when I was pretty young, for one thing), but the "one gift on Christmas Eve, the rest in the morning" was always how we did it. Or technically two -- my mother generally gave us pajamas and a book on Christmas Eve, and we'd wear our new PJs for pictures in the morning.

The other thing was that if you woke up before a reasonable hour to wake the adults, you could get into your stocking.

That sounds like a very busy holiday. I'm glad you have memories, though, and have managed to find parts of it you enjoy.

It works out for us. Although, if you chose wisely in the presents, you might get a clue about any other presents that were going to be available. That almost never actually happened, though.

As I said starting this post out, but for my family, Yule night is a vigil. We try to go outside and watch the sun go down, we spend the night awake if anybody can manage it, and then at sunrise we go outside to welcome the light and the Sun King back. We bake bread overnight, and after the sun comes up, we have warm drinks and warm bread, and then everybody meanders to bed.

We've gotten out of this in recent years, now that the kids are all at least in their older teen years, but sitting around for stories was always one of my favorite parts of Yule. I really miss it, to be honest; even though it was the same couple of stories every year, it was always nice and comforting to sit there and listen.

As Christmas goes -- I outlined this upthread, but every year on Christmas Eve, we would have the traditional Christmas Eve presents. The rest of them were for the morning, but my mother would get us a book, and a new pair of pajamas; we'd wear the PJs in the morning for presents and pictures, and I'd generally spend my night curled up with the book. It's actually how I got into my first fandom -- my uncle got me the first two HP books one year -- and it was always a good memory.

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Solstice Night Blanket Fort Party

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