For all the heathens amoung us

bevans6 · December 21, 2014, 08:09:02 AM

For all my fellow pagans and heathens, Happy Winter Solstice! You can sip some fermented fruit juice, rub blue mud in your belly button, and celebrate the longest night of the year. For everyone else, it's a downhill slide of ever longer days to spring!

Brian (kind of Zen, slightly leaning towards Buddhist)

Jeremy · December 21, 2014, 08:24:40 AM

And there's an explanation of what exactly the Winter Solstice is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30568325

Jeremy (devout Jedi - according to what I put on the last two census forms anyway)

PP · December 21, 2014, 04:49:12 PM

Happy Solstice to you too Brian. It's my favorite day of the year and yet it goes so fast LOL
Will

Dave5Cs · December 21, 2014, 05:59:31 PM

Brian I can't even find my belly button let alone rub blue mud in it, LOL

(Devout Moon person once removed)

PP · December 22, 2014, 03:19:08 PM

Quote from: Dave5Cs on December 21, 2014, 05:59:31 PM
Brian I can't even find my belly button let alone rub blue mud in it, LOL
(Devout Moon person once removed)

Arms too short?

Sorry, you left yourself open (literally) LOL
Will

Dave5Cs · December 22, 2014, 03:46:43 PM

Yep

and I wear glasses

bevans6 · December 22, 2014, 03:47:58 PM

My father in law, who I never met, was in the British Army during WW2. He was an Officer Courier at one point, hit the arse end of a parked car whilst on his Triumph at night (his face was never the same), etc. Many stories I have heard. One is that the British Army was very concerned about the spiritual welfare of their soldiers, and encouraged regular attendance at services. He was not altogether spiritual, would far rather sleep in on a Sunday, and so declared his official religion as "Druid". When I seemingly jokingly make that "blue mud in your belly button" joke, I am in fact paying homage to a man I never met, judging by his wife and daughter a man of vast humour and intelligence, and to my forefathers who I fondly imagine built the stone circles at Stonehenge and all over the rest of Britain. Someone had to build them and why not an "Evans"?

Another of my wife's fore-relatives was Speaker of the House in Ontario, and one built a bus-home and went panning for gold in the far North of Canada - an early bus-nut if ever there was one! It's no wonder when I said "let's buy a bus" she was all "what took you so long"...

Happy Solstice Eve..

Tomorrow will be slightly longer than yesterday was.

Brian

Oonrahnjay · December 22, 2014, 08:14:19 PM

Quote from: bevans6 on December 22, 2014, 03:47:58 PM
My father in law, who I never met, was in the British Army during WW2. He was an Officer Courier at one point, hit the arse end of a parked car whilst on his Triumph at night (his face was never the same), etc. Many stories I have heard. One is that the British Army was very concerned about the spiritual welfare of their soldiers, and encouraged regular attendance at services. He was not altogether spiritual, would far rather sleep in on a Sunday, and so declared his official religion as "Druid". When I seemingly jokingly make that "blue mud in your belly button" joke, I am in fact paying homage to a man I never met, judging by his wife and daughter a man of vast humour and intelligence, and to my forefathers who I fondly imagine built the stone circles at Stonehenge and all over the rest of Britain. Someone had to build them and why not an "Evans"?

Another of my wife's fore-relatives was Speaker of the House in Ontario, and one built a bus-home and went panning for gold in the far North of Canada - an early bus-nut if ever there was one! It's no wonder when I said "let's buy a bus" she was all "what took you so long"...

Happy Solstice Eve..

Tomorrow will be slightly longer than yesterday was.

Brian

There was a community of Welsh immigrants who settled near my home here in the Cape Fear valley of NC om the 1730's. There were many Evans names among them. The "blue stones" at Stonehenge came from Wales, so you never know! I love your "Druid" story, although apparently Stonehenge predates the Druids by a couple of thousand years (and predates the Pyramids by more than that). Happy Solstice to you, too -- and wishing you more sunlight soon up there in the Great Dark North!

Dave5Cs · December 23, 2014, 07:31:46 AM

Brian here ya go. This is the Druid Tomb in Ireland. It was and has been there in Carran Ireland for many years in the middle of a field. The descendants go there every year and lay down in this rock formation and then walk through it and hope to leave this earth for another plane as the plaque said. We happened to be there the day they were doing it again in 2003. They should be there today. It was weird but interesting. I was more interested in how they put it together and why it has stayed without some teenagers knocking it down or painting it, LOL

Dave5Cs

bevans6 · December 23, 2014, 08:26:07 AM

I saw and partook of a different pagan festival in England once. Midnight on New Year's Eve in Leicester Square. There was a century old merry-go-round, lots of extremely happy people, and Bobbies kind of rounding them up, putting them on cots in a tent, and looking after them until they could walk again...

Brian

oltrunt · December 23, 2014, 06:39:05 PM

Are you sure that wasn't Burning Man?