Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Moon of Long Nights

December moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We've just entered the lunar cycle known as the Moon of Long Nights in Old Farmer's Almanacs. It is the lunar cycle that includes the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, the time of greatest darkness before the light begins to grow once again.

In a hunting and gathering society in the northern parts of the Earth, or in a northern farming culture before the (very recent) advent of electricity, this would have been a time of deep rest. The fields would be resting from cultivation, blanketed in snow. The forests and wild areas would be resting after the tremendous activity of animals preparing for the winter, trees dropping their leaves and going bare, and plants pulling all of their energy back down into their root systems. Life would slow down to wait for the spring.

Human life would slow down too. There would be no tilling or planting and very little harvesting. Hunting would be limited and gathering very scarce. Fires would be built for warmth and light, for gathering and storytelling, but without electric lights or computers or television, without movies to see or streetlights to guide the way through the night, this deep of winter would be a time of staying home, staying in, and a kind of enforced period of rest.

What we have in America is more like an enforced period of activity.

Just as the darkness and long nights should be signaling to our body that it is time to sleep, to go within, to be in silence and retreat, our culture revs up for the holidays. Unless you want to be thought of as a scrooge or a grinch, you had better get moving: shopping for gifts in stores with bright lights and constant music (opposite of darkness and silence); attending evening parties with friends, coworkers, and community members (opposite of going within), and traveling on crowded roads, airways, or trains to be with family and friends (opposite of rest or retreat). For the many people who work in the retail industry, this is a time of year of ambitious sales expectations, extended hours, heightened inventory, and work days that are longer, harder and more stressful than any other time of year.

I am one who loves the rituals and many of the implications of Christmas. I love the sense of magic, of generosity, of giving, of sharing, of coming together in community. But I find the secularized, commodified version of Christmas that this culture celebrates to have many troubling effects. Too many of us never get a chance for deep renewal or rest in this moon of long nights. The holiday season serves to propel us through the 'slow' time of year into the busyness of the new year and on through until summer, without ever slowing down. There IS a sense of cycle and ritual that comes from it, but our American cycle is: busy, busier, busiest, busy again.

In the traditional Christian calendar, the major holy day of the year was always -- until very recently -- Easter. Easter marks the crucial theological event in the faith: the resurrection. This is a part of the calendar that is generally skipped over nowadays. Schools and stores don't close on Easter, few people even know when the day is.

And yet everything closes for Christmas and the whole culture begins preparing for the date months in advance. And yet how many of the people who are drawn into the celebrations of the holiday are even practicing Christians? How many practice other faiths, and how many are not religious at all? But it doesn't seem to matter, because Christmas is no longer really a Christian holiday at all -- only titularly. Christ has very little to do with it anymore.

There was one year when I had a truly restful and renewing Moon of Long Nights. I signed up, well in advance, for a ten-day silent meditation that began around December 13 and went through December 23. It was a Buddhist retreat, where participants learnt and practiced sitting and meditating in silence for ten days straight. We were not permitted to talk with one another: meals were silent, lodgings were silent, break times were silent, and meditation times were silent except for an hour or so of daily instruction in meditation. We were woken with a gong at 4:30 in the morning, and we were asleep by 9pm each night. For the first few days I found myself falling asleep constantly during the meditation times -- I couldn't keep my eyes open or my back straight up. When released for break, I would go back to my bunk, lie down, and fall fast asleep. I was not the only one. We were all exhausted, and it took four days or so of off-and-on sleeping to be 'caught up' enough to begin to apply ourselves fully to meditation.

When I returned to 'civilization' on December 23, I brought with me a profound peace and inner rest that I had not felt in ages. The wonder and magic of Christmas came on to me fully after that: the colored lights on the Christmas tree, the great blessing of the love of family and friends, the miracle of renewal, of birth, of life that comes into the void, light that comes into the darkness. I was able to appreciate, enjoy, and really soak-up Christmas in a way that I never had before and haven't since.

That experience made me realize how much we lack, in our current culture, the experience of contemplative, quiet, inactive time; of rest. The Christian monks and nuns of old spent whole decades, whole lifetimes in quiet contemplation and prayer, balanced with prayerful meaningful activity to provide for the needs of the convent, monastery, or surrounding community. They would have celebrated Christ's birth with a mass, with singing, with good works and perhaps some modest gifts. But they wouldn't have needed sales projections, piped-in cheerful muzak or the endless merchandizing of colors, printed images, lights, and holiday displays that have become for us today the emblem of the season. I think that is a shame, and a loss. It is hard enough to slow down in this culture, harder still to do it with Christmas coming.

The kind of cooking I've been doing and teaching lately has reinforced the point. Making sauerkraut, there is a flurry of activity with shredding, pounding, and salting cabbage, but once the cabbage is layered in the crock, there's nothing you can do but wait. You can eat it in as little time as a week, but it's not really sauerkraut yet. It just keeps getting better and better if you let it sit for six weeks or so before transferring to jars and refrigerating. There is no substitute for that period of waiting. It is a slow cool fermentation, and there is no shortcut.

I recently bought a special sauerkraut crock with a weight inside and a lid on top that is sealed with a ring of water to prevent mold from developing on the top of the kraut. The instructions say not to open that lid for two weeks after you put the cabbage in. This was very hard for me to do. I am used to being able to fuss over my kraut a little as it ferments, skimming the scum off the top of the brine, pressing the weight down to make sure the kraut is completely submerged -- but the instructions were explicit: don't fuss, don't do anything.

It is a wonderful practice for me. This kind of old fashioned, slow fermented sauerkraut is not something that can be bought in this culture -- it's simply not available in stores. It can only be made at home, and it can only be made if you have the time -- a moon or more -- to let it rest.

Sourdough bread is the same, the bread won't rise unless it has time to rest -- hours in this case, not weeks. And stocks, too -- once you cover the bones with water and bring them to a simmer, there's nothing to do but wait. Over time, the simmering cauldron works its magic and the water becomes full of the goodness, the flavor, and the nutrition of those bones. It is a wonderful lesson, really: "Stop! Do nothing! Everything will ripen in its own good time..."

While this might have also been the lesson of the Long Nights Moon many years past, on the farm or in the forest, it is no longer the message we get at this time of year. Alas.

And yet I do see signs of hope. There is a steady, if quiet, awareness that Christmas has gotten to be a bit too much, and that we shouldn't need to buy buy buy to show our Christmas spirit. Many people turn to homemade gifts as a restorative to the commodification of the holiday.

But making gifts by hand can be its own form of over-achieving, of over-busyness in an already over-busy time. Is there a way we can slow down and shift our expectations? I think so. I hope so.

As for me, I am preparing to take a bit of a sabbatical. I will still be working, but I will be focussing on writing my book -- the manuscript is due May 1 and I need to give the project my undivided attention for a few moons. So my weekend workshops and full moon feasts will take a break from January through April, and start up again after the manuscript has been submitted in May. I'm looking forward to this time of inner work, looking forward to retreating, just a bit, from the busyness of engaged life.

Thank you all so much for all your support of my cooking classes, feasts, teaching and writing. I am deeply blessed, this Christmas season, by your presence on the planet and your steady appreciation and encouragement of my work.