The Crossroads Of The Year: Seasonal Rituals
Here in the northern hemisphere, we have just passed the Autumnal Equinox. We’re now officially into fall, a favourite season for many of us here in Toronto: crisp days and cool nights, retrieving our sweaters from summer storage, leaves changing, the beginning of the school year.
Equinoxes are crossroads, of a sort: transition points, meeting points, equally balanced between day and night, between one season and another. Like all seasonal transitions, they ask for our attention, but that attention may be difficult to grant. For one thing, many of us have busy lives, filled with competing demands on our time, focus, and resources. For another, many of us live in urban environments where it may be difficult to perceive the subtle changes of the season like the colour of the sky or the changing of the leaves. But perhaps most relevant to this blog, many of us have lost what I might describe as "ritual fluency,” by which I mean a language of ritual actions and practice that we could employ to mark these transitional days in a way that felt familiar and meaningful. It’s hard to imagine what that might be, so separated are so many of us from familial or cultural traditions relating to the rhythms of the year, and from those rhythms themselves.
How could observing seasonal shifts help us develop ritual fluency, and why might we wish to do so? To take the “why” first, I’m beginning to suspect that building the muscles of ritual fluency by engaging with these smaller, predictable transitions might help us later, when the huge, shocking, and sudden transitions come for us without warning. We may not feel an urgent need to ritually mark the shift from summer into fall, but we often do feel such a need when confronted with death, or with birth, or with the other life-upending transitions. At these times, we may flounder, seeking ritual action that will do what ritual has always done for us - connect us to something bigger - but stumbling, at a loss for gestures, actions, or words that feel right. If we’re not in the habit of lighting a candle to open a connection to those who have gone before us, doing so at a funeral may feel artificial rather than connective. We may have an intuitive sense that the birth of a child calls for… something, but if we aren’t part of a faith tradition, or if we haven’t seen such a ritual enacted within our families, we may find it difficult to imagine what to do. At the times in our lives when we most need ritual, the very unfamiliarity of any kind of ritual practice may in fact distance us when what we most need is to be brought together.
Seasonal rituals give us a chance to practice being in a ritual space, to try our hand at symbolic actions that are a microcosm of the changes going on all around us in our lives. This is probably a good place to mention that if we’re not in the habit, creating a personal ritual can feel rather silly. The first few times I tried it, I couldn’t stop some part of me from watching the proceedings as if from outside myself, wondering why I was lighting candles and reading poems aloud for no one but my cat. It can take a while to figure out what feels right and what doesn’t; what matters is whether it helps you to feel connected to the season, to yourself, and to something bigger than yourself.
What could such a ritual look like? It could be something as simple as lighting a cinnamon-scented candle to shift your mindset toward autumn. It could be as elaborate as hosting an Equinox dinner for family and friends, made with seasonal foods. In some cultures, the Equinox is a time to honour ancestors; maybe your Equinox observance includes a flip through your family photo albums (analog or digital!) or tending to the graves of loved ones who have died. As the years pass, your ritual may change, grow, and deepen. It may become something you look forward to, something that makes it really feel like fall.
Did you observe the Equinox this year? What did you notice about the day? And what traditions could you start for the years to come? I would love to hear how you engage with this particular yearly crossroads - please let me know in the comments!
An autumnal tree, bright orange against a backdrop of dark green leaves.