Whether a solar or lunar calendar is used, the turning of the year causes people around the world to think about good luck and how to send some their way. Traditions, rituals and invocations abound, some practiced with sincere belief and others with tongue in cheek.

Luck is an enormous factor in all our lives. Our country of birth, parents’ genes and bank account are all luck. And a chance meeting with one person can set the entire direction of our lives, a.k.a., falling in love. Only a fool thinks that he or she has arrived in the present moment solely by personal effort.

I am definitely part of the masses wanting good luck for this New Year. But I can’t bring myself to eating herring at midnight like my grandmother did to induce it. The only thing that would induce would be a gag reflex. My best invitation to luck is raising and drinking a glass of champagne at the stroke of twelve.

This year, however, Lady Luck presented me with a delightfully good omen on the morning of January first. We began the day waking up to sun, blue skies and great surf in San Diego. Then came breakfast at our family’s favorite oceanside surfers’ cafe for their aptly named “Big Breakfast”. We figured we needed to fuel up on carbs to return home to six inches of snow and three more months of winter.

I ordered breakfast at the counter and the cashier laughed when he ran up my total. “Would you believe”, he said,” that you owe me exactly $20.20?”

I’m looking forward to a splendid year.

This blog is about spirits, not the alcoholic ones, but they might need to be deployed as well.

The upcoming year is bound to be a wild rollercoaster ride as the dystopia of the Presidential campaign frenzy hurtles to November. Staying sane and keeping spirits up in the midst of this unfortunate spectacle will be a true challenge.

Here are my coping strategies. I look forward to hearing about any that you can supply as well. We all have to help each other.

1. Move to any place on the world’s happiest countries list. That would be Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands.

2. If number one is not feasible, get a pet or pets. They will keep you so busy cleaning up messes you will have no time to brood.

3. Drink wine. It does not have to be expensive. The cheap stuff works, too.

4. Don’t put off seeing friends. Your country as you knew it might be going away, but your true friends remain with their values unchanged.

5. Eat mac and ched with ice cream for dessert. Gourmet food is out, comfort food is in.

6. Get a passport, even if you can’t go anywhere at the moment. You never know when it might be needed.

7. Read books. Good books. Lots and lots of really good books.

8. Don’t forget how to laugh. This is how you will know you are not a Republican. They never laugh anymore.

9. Pray every day that Ruth Bader Ginsburg be made immortal.

10. Throw away your television. It’s hard enough to read the news, let alone see it, too.

11. Make something. Write something. Build something. Play some instrument.

12. Stay positive. We may not be able to save our country, but, hopefully, we can save ourselves and those we love.

There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays and I’ll Be Home for Christmas are two of America’s most enduring holiday songs. The concept of home looms large in our collective minds at this time of year. But what exactly does home mean?

I would make a very poor vagabond. Having a home  is extremely important to me, and I recognize the difference between a house and a home. A house is a structure; a home is where a person has a sense of belonging. Home is a word loaded with emotion.

I would feel completely rootless without my home. But through the years, I’ve come to realize that I have many home places, places where I can also be comfortable and content, other places of my heart. People and memories make a home. And geography, the grandeur of the land, animals and plants can also call to us.

My second home will always be northern New Mexico, even though I’ve never owned a house or bought a piece of land in that state. Family history brought me there: my Uncle and Aunt were stationed with the military in Albuquerque twice and then chose it for their retirement home. I first set foot in the Land of Enchantment when I was seven and have been going back ever since. If I add up all the days I’ve visited, it would be over 600 days of my life. I have a powerful feeling of coming home every time I drive across the state line into New Mexico or I see the lights snaking down the Rio Grande when my plane lands in Albuquerque.

I have other places I feel at home as well; Tucson, San Diego, Annapolis, New York City, Chicago, the Netherlands.

My best wish for all my family, friends and readers is that you all get home for the holidays…wherever those homes may be.

Albuquerque at Christmas

Norway is a land that loves Christmas and one of their most cherished traditions is syv slags kaker. That translates to seven sorts of cookies. Norwegians consider that to be the magic number of treats to bake for family and friends. They also believe that vast quantities of butter must go into those cookies to make them special. These are my kind of people.

This tradition goes back hundreds of years when Norway was not the rich country it is now; in fact, it was one of the poorest Scandinavian countries. Farmers would sell their butter to get badly needed income and use lard for daily use. Butter was a huge treat that was only used for baking at Christmas time.

Although the number of cookie varieties to bake is seven, no specific types of cookies are prescribed. Being dedicated bakers, the Norwegians have hundreds of recipes for buttery cookies. Each family has its own list of seven favorites that have been passed down through the generations. Some of the most popular cookies on the family lists are krumkaker, berlinerkranser, fattigman, sandkaker, smultringer, spritz, snipp and pepperkaker. Even the names are fun to say.

I love both baking and traditions. For our Christmas, I always bake twelve things, eleven different cookies and one fruitcake. If you are shuddering at the thought of fruitcake, my recipe has no candied fruit, only dates, apricots, walnuts and coconut. https://thesuitcaselady.com/fruitcake/

Baking begins the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the results go directly into the freezer. We are great believers in the joy of anticipation. Christmas cookie eating for us commences on Christmas Eve. But rest assured, if you visit our home before Christmas, we will dip into our stash.

Our son had a fascination with Druids when he was in high school and once listed his religion as “Druid” on an information form. Living in a neighborhood that housed a huge Serbian Orthodox cathedral and numerous other churches, I’m fairly certain he was the only self-declared Druid in his school. But he was far from the only person keeping the spirit of the Druids alive. Almost all of us are doing that, especially at this time of year. The practices of the Druids, Celtic priests, live on.

For example, they believed that the sun stood still for twelve days at the winter solstice. The Celts called this festival Alban Arthuan. Fires were lighted to praise the sun, conquer darkness and banish evil spirits. This, of course, worked like a charm; the sun did return, rising higher in the sky. But while the Druids were lighting their fires, they were not singing  “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Those days of partridges and pear trees came much later.

The Druids were, however, extremely interested in trees, although they were oak, not pear trees. They lit a Yule log on the eve of the solstice and burned almost all of it in the next twelve days to bring good luck. A piece was saved to start the fire for the next year.

Might there be a delicious connection here to the wonderful French Christmas dessert, Buche de Noel, a cake shaped like a log and decorated with holly?

And speaking of holly, the Druids laid it around their doors and windows at solstice time. In addition to staying green and beautiful when all the other leaves were withered, holly served two other purposes. First, it was believed to shelter tiny fairies that came in from the cold forest and second, it would capture evil spirits before they could enter the homes.

A Yule tree was also decorated at midwinter with bright decorations of the sun, moon and stars. Then gifts were hung on the tree as offerings to the gods and goddesses. The Celts apparently thought that gifts, aka bribes, might be helpful in coaxing the sun to come back. We now let science take care of the sun and give the presents to each other.

Mistletoe was sacred to the Celts who believed it contained the soul of the oak tree. They ascribed to it the powers of healing disease, making poison harmless, bringing fertility and banishing witchcraft. When enemies happened to meet beneath the mistletoe in the forest, they would lay down their arms and declare a truce until the next day. This practice evolved into hanging mistletoe in doorways as a symbol of peace and goodwill. But the Celts weren’t kissing under the mistletoe…that was an invention of the Victorian era.

Our present days are wrapped with multitudinous strings from the past……may we enjoy them all.