IMBOLC EVE BONFIRE

Our 2022 Imbolc Practice In Short:

• Collect sacred kindling from our favorite river spot (we only brought home two sticks but it was fun for kiddo and plenty enough with the wood we already had here).

• Tidy up home and backyard and sacred fire pit. Finding something to deep clean or tidy up and seasonal benchmarking of what's happening on the land are two of my staples of seasonal celebrations.

• Lay a fire

• Kiddo make some chalk art

• Offer older altar treasures and nature-type gifts like bouquets and past-season intentions on paper to the sacred fire. This is a clean up and declutter tactic and a respectful way to keep special things from just collecting dust.

• Bless a baby blanket and our pregnancy around the fire with our own words, a spontaneous song from Kevin with drumming by kiddo (using two sticks). The blanket is green as a nod to practices of blessing green cloths in honor of (blessings from?) Saint / Goddess Brigid.

• Read a blessing we received from a friend at our Baby Blessing Party the day before out loud.

Monday after work and daycare, kiddo helped me prepare the fire-pit and lay the fire for a an Imbolc Eve fire.

He drew with chalk on the driveway and later decorated his art with grass and oxalis while I weed-whacked around the fire-pit and seating and trimmed the fig.

If nothing else I like to mark the wheel of the year with cleaning or trimming or such.

We laid the wood in the fire pit so it would be ready to go later when we came out after dark. We have found this prep during daylight is key to making winter fires happen especially on week nights with kiddo and our early bedtimes and early sunset.

After dinner, we lit the fire with help from kiddo and the kindling he collected at the river on Saturday.

We brought out a box of treasures from many years (in fact I think I had boxed these treasures up more than one or two years ago). They were pieces of tiny driftwood, now-dried and dusty bouquets, seasonal intentions on paper, interesting lichen and flowers we had collected over the year and had kept on little seasonal altars or just for decor or gifts. Kevin had created and gifted me many of the bouquets from lavender. Making room for the new, we offered these treasures to our sacred fire. Kiddo was reluctant to part with many of them (even though they are mostly things he had not seen before since I've had them in this box for this purpose for a long while). He kept a few treasures for himself.

We delighted in the warmth of the fire on the cool night, read a beautiful blessing for our new baby that our friend had written in a journal-book another friend had hand-crafted for us. We pulled out the new green blanket we had purchased for baby. In a nod to Imbolc traditions that invoke blessings from Saint / Goddess Brigid we blessed the green blanket by the fire and left it out by our hearth for the night.

Kiddo drummed two of the sticks he saved from the treasure-burn-pile together and Kevin made up a song on the spot to go along. Kevin had brought out the leftovers of the previous night's dessert: a summer pudding (in the middle of winter!) that he and kiddo had made from the British section of their Kids Around the World Cookbook.