Quaker Pagan Reflections

Yule Wreath. 2014. It was twenty-five years ago: Coming through the door, we stamped snow off our boots and were hit with a wall of noise. There must have been fifty people crowding the farmhouse that night. Some were locked in conversation, clustered in twos and threes.  Toddlers careened across the room at knee level, and out in the kitchen two guitarists and a drummer hunched over mismatched chairs, their music lost in the general roar. . A wish-net filled with lights and tokens hung over the battered sofa, potluck foods were laid out in heaps, and the wood-stove cranked out needless heat. Hats and boots and mittens steamed in the entryway, friends greeted each other with hugs, and a man I’d never met before pressed lyrics into our hands. . Outside under a dark sky studded with stars, the snow was too cold to make snowballs; inside, everything was laughter, and light, and noise. . We sang the songs, we lit the candles, we called back the sun. At the en