January is for dreaming.
holding onto remnants, listening closely and waiting for the right time to unfold.
I’m Lyndsay, mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR. Story & Thread. is a weekly letter exploring the intersection of creativity, mothering and the living world, with a home and a garden at the heart...
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“All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening”.
—
, The Winter of Listening, from David Whyte: Essentials.Hello everyone
A happy new year to all of you. I hope you had a calm and content Christmas-time and if it did not unfold that way, I am sending you much comfort and warmth.
My intention to turn inwards over Christmastide led to many heart-filled moments immersed with my family and friends for which I am very grateful and will always hold close.
It has been full to the brim in the best possible way, and yet there has been very little space. Sparkling lights and little hands have exquisitely illuminated and filled the quiet, dark emptiness of the middle days, leaving no room for the reflecting and visioning I had planned — though a constant stream of scattered thoughts and half-formed words have found me around the edges.
In my last letter of 2023 I spoke of immersing myself in the fullness of time, taking a pause and holding words inside the darkness. Taking a week away from writing was needed and appreciated in the midst of winter’s festivities but the urge to write and create has been strong, and holding words in stillness has been harder than I imagined. It has been a continued learning in holding and waiting, trusting that the right time will come…
Festive remnants.
And here we are in January — a time of fresh starts and blank pages, though this is a notion that has always felt too stark a contrast from the twinkling cosiness of Christmas for me.
There was a hush in the air as we walked to nursery this morning in a kind of half light at 8.45am. Christmas lights still twinkling in the windows of the homes we passed, cold rain pouring down and an unmistakable emptiness to the roads — certainly not the time to be turning over any new leaves. This is a feeling that runs deep and the more I lean into a continuation of wintry magic and a need for cocooning comfort, the more easeful January feels to me.
I came across a quote a couple of years ago which I continue to stand by,
“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don’t clean it up too quickly”. —Andy Rooney.
I loved hearing this at the time (when 39 weeks pregnant) for taking the pressure off, but also as a reminder to bask in the messiness of presence and to celebrate beauty in the chaos.
And so wintry fragments and the remnants of Christmas prevail — in the air, adorning our home and in my bones. Just like in December, we wake to darkness with neighbouring homes like advent windows revealing sparkles in the inky mornings; I continue to find golden stars and glitter strewn on discarded pieces of wrapping paper around our home; ivy remains wrapped around our banister and boughs of holly with bright red berries bring cheer; my favourite festive candle, a blend of orange, mandarin, cinnamon leaf and clove is lit each day; a wintry playlist fills the air; dinner continues to consist of festive fare; and paper snowflakes make shadowy shapes on the wall.
This lingering and continuation of Christmastide well into the New Year is ingrained and was practiced by our ancestors throughout history. We have all heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas, which lasts from 25th December to 5th January, a date also known as Twelfth Night. For some, the Twelve Days are from 26th December - 6th January or Epiphany when Christmas decorations should be taken down. Though in Elizabethan England, decorations were left up until Candlemas at the beginning of February, which remains the custom in some European countries today.
Yuletide dreaming.
A while ago, I provisionally scheduled a post this week revealing the vision for this letter and community in the year ahead, but the more I feel into the haze of hibernation as winter deepens this month, the more I find it to be a time not to herald beginnings or announce new starts but instead a time for softness, listening, feeling and dreaming.
I am trusting that during this month, my thoughts will become slow-forming concepts, ideas and intentions ready to unfurl as the buds reach a fullness of potential at Imbolc, the festival celebrating the first signs of spring, at the start of February.
“It is the intimate experience in sitting alone by a fire, in silence and in reverie, with both a simplification and a growing clairvoyance of what is just beginning to be made known”. —
.
Again, this idea of reverie is not a new one — before Christmastide in pre-Christian Europe, Yuletide was a celebration to honour the winter solstice and dream of lighter days ahead. The Yuletide season lasted from the end of November to the beginning weeks of January. Once upon a time, December and January were combined into a single period called Giuli. Giuli was a two-month span that marked the time when sunlight began to increase again at the winter solstice (though I feel that it can often feel darker at this time of year before it begins to feel lighter) — it was not a festival as such but a marking of the passage of time.
Twelve sacred nights of Yuletide are still practiced in places like Germany and are known as the Rauhnächte. In her current exploration and beautifully personal interpretation of these 12 magical nights,
suggests that the origin of Rauhnächte likely goes back to the Germanic lunar calendar of 12 lunar months and 354 days — thus the missing 11 days or 12 nights were considered ‘days out of time’, a mystical period in which gods and goddesses were born according to ancient mythology and as Laura believes are nights for dreaming, each with a different quality,
Omens, oracles and divining the days ahead.
I intend to bring Yuletide’s ethos of introspection, stillness and dreaming into the weeks ahead, allowing myself to slowly unravel the months that have gone before and sense into the words that will be guiding lights for this year (with the help of
’s beautiful and thoughtful Unravel Your Year and Find Your Word workbooks).
This sort of looking forward and divining for the days ahead also has deep roots, this time in a Celtic tradition which lies in the same 12-day period as Rauhnächte — the Omen Days, brought to my attention by the beautiful writing of
. It is a time to notice and observe omens and oracles that foretell the essence of each month ahead. It was thought that these symbols would come from the living world and the message received during the day would indicate the nature of its corresponding month (i.e. 26th December being January, the 27th February, the 28th March etc).
And as I write this, a magnificent Jay has landed amidst the drenching rain, dancing in the puddles of rainwater on the bistro table outside the doors before my very eyes. It is an unusual and arresting sight leading me to immediately look up the bird’s symbolism (which I realise in true augury you are meant to sense into instead!) — I soon discover that this bird teaches you to both to be bold and curious, whilst balancing these traits with discreet silence and the utmost patience in timing.
This precious avian omen and the poem below reach into my current state of being — inviting me to softly hold onto the remnants, to listen, feel and dream courageously, to trust in a becoming that continues to unfold at just the right time…
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognise and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.
—Martha Postlethwaite.
Since my short festive break, I have realised that writing here has become a much treasured way of connecting — to you and to myself, I am so glad to be back and that you are are here with me.
I would love to hear how you are feeling as January dawns — are you ready to unveil a new chapter, or are you, like me, cocooning closely in continuity for a while longer?
Thank you for reading and I really look forward to hearing how January finds you, I hope we can chat more in the comments.
Really warm and comforting writing, Lyndsay. I am glad there are people like you, that can put into words, what some of us are feeling and make us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.
Could not have had a more beautiful and poignant read to kick start my love affair with Substack again after a much needed break over Christmas. Thank you Lyndsay. Mess births beauty is my motto for January 💫