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This week, Fable and the Verbivore are back from a two-week hiatus to share our winter holiday episode - diving into cultural and family traditions, winter tales, winter soltice, and cultivating silence and engaging in the practice of rest.

Our conversation takes us many place, but here are a few things we touch on:

• As we near the longest day of the year, as human beings we tend to start to shift our focus to reaching for warmth, gathering with our loved ones, and looking for the light.

• We touch on the centuries old heritage of spinning tales around the fire - warm stories and ghost stories. Things that remind us we’re alive.

• The diversity of winter holiday traditions and celebrations, and how it looks (and smells) uniquely for each individual. And that is part of the beauty of this time.

• Rest and nourishing ourselves are things we have to work at - as well as make time and space for in our lives.

We hope you enjoy this episode and wish you all blessed holidays!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Here are some articles that we found helpful in preparation for this conversation:

• Keep Inspiring Me - “Winter Quotes”

• https://www.goddessandgreenman.co.uk/yule/

• Article by Well and Good - “How 2019 Became the Year of Burnout—and Effectively Ended Performative Wellness”

The Verbivore read the text from a visual poem written and designed by Morgan Harper Nichols, and posted last December 23rd, 2020. Here are her words and the Instagram link:

• “There is a reason the sky gets dark at night… We were not meant to see everything all the time… We were meant to rest and trust - even in the darkness…”

• https://www.instagram.com/p/CJKQZJJgrTK/

The Verbivore reads a winter quote by poet Edith Sitwell.

• “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

The Verbivore references a centuries old painting that shows people gathered around a hearth. Here is that painting: A Winter Night's Tale by Daniel Maclise (1806–1870)

We touch on several of our previous podcast episodes. They are as follows:

• Episode 65: Let's talk about Christmas stories

• Episode 8: The one where we talk about Christmas and story

Books & Movies Mentioned:

• A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) by George R. R. Martin

• The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

• A Christmas Carol - The Original Classic Story by Charles Dickens: 1843 Illustrated Edition

• Olaf’s Frozen Adventure; Directed by Stevie Wermers, Kevin Deters

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)