A Very Scary Solstice

Well, I had hoped to post this on Christmas morning, but there was this annoying thing where we were moving.  And I was in a show.  And I lost my job.  And then got a new one.  And I had to write discharge and then intake paperwork for all of my clients in order to transfer them to my new job.  And so between one thing and another, it just didn’t happen.  But here it is on New Years, so it’s not entirely 100% and completely out of season, right?  Right.

So.  For those of you who didn’t know, Matt and I celebrate solstice.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is that if the return of light to the northern hemisphere isn’t worth celebrating, then I don’t know what is.  And the second is that there’s suddenly this thing where fans of H.P. Lovecraft make solstice time the scariest time, because it marks the rising of the Great Old Ones.  And changing all the Christmas songs to parodies of H.P. Lovecraft stories is nothing short of hilarious.  I tell you, once it was converted into “All I Want for Solstice is my Sanity,” I actually found that asinine two front teeth song bearable to listen to again.

Ok, so first we made our solstice tree.  To start with, we found a black tree at Target.  This was a trial in and of itself.  We knew they had little black tinsel trees, because we saw one back before Thanksgiving.  But frankly it goes against everything I believe in to even think about Yule before Thanksgiving is over, so we didn’t buy one.  Much to our dismay, when we were ready to buy there was no black tree to be found.  Anywhere.  In fact, one of the Target employees told us it didn’t even exist.  She was wrong.  We used our smart phone magic, and our powers of obsession to track down the item code, and then made a different Target employee go find one in the back.  AND FIND ONE SHE DID.  Victory.

Finding the Cthulhu tentacles was another thing altogether.  The Wizard’s Chest has tentacles, but not green ones.  We had to find them on some terrible hispster website that now sends us catalogues every three days—and not even nice, glossy, full-color catalogues.  No, these are shitty, cheap, black and white catalogues that look like they were printed on someone’s deskjet printer in the sad little basement of their mother’s house.  But I digress.

Once we had gathered the materials, it was little struggle to put them all together into something amazing.

Butterstix helped.

But it needed something else… A star.  It needed a star.  And not just any star; it needed an Elder Sign.  Because how else were we going to ward off the Great Old Ones when they came to eat our souls on solstice night?  So naturally I decided I needed to embroider the damn thing.

Which only took almost two weeks.  But it was worth it, am I right?

Add some presents in awesome wrapping paper, and you’ve got one traditional little holiday setup.

We’d also been working on this snake wreath since before Halloween.  Believe it or not, it was something I saw on Pintrest.  Try not to judge too harshly.  Note from the experienced: normal spray paint does not stick to rubber.  It’ll stain your driveway really well, but it will not color your rubber snakes.  For that you need the special spray paint, which they ID you for if you buy it at Hobby Lobby.  But we did finally finish it, and added a bit of garland to fancy it up.  Pretty festive, if you ask me.

The one other preparation for Solstice was the Yule Log.  This is actually something I take seriously.  The log we used this year is an aspen that we found right around the summer solstice at my Dad’s wedding, up in Dillon where I grew up.  Matt drilled three holes into it for three candles.  We tried to remember to light it every night of December, to symbolize the light that would return on Solstice morning.  Plus, it’s pretty.

The on Solstice morning, we woke up with the sun.

And got buried in cats.

And opened presents, including the best present of all: we took possession of our new house.  Yaay!

Oh, also?  Not only did the sun come back, but the world wasn't eaten by eldrich monsters with great bulbous three-lobed eyes and tentacles coming out of their faces!  That's what I call a win!

And there you have it.  My scary solstice blog post, a little bit late.  Wishing all three of you who read this blog a very happy holiday season.  Belated Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Scary Solstice, Joyous Yuletide, and a very, very Happy New Year.

Coming up:
Proof that Matt and I are super classy
and Things to do with boxes, possibly including cat torture