A Simpler Solstice: Digital Fasting, Dreams, and Old Winter Magic
As the year draws to a close and chill hushes the hills, I find myself turning toward the older magics of winter. The jingling bells and bright wrapping paper, the gingerbread icing and twinkling lights—they’re lovely, and I welcome their sparkle. But there is a deeper, older magic beneath them, isn’t there? I never tire of those ancient rhythms—the season made for dreaming and doing without, for handmade and homespun rituals. As cliché as it can be, I crave these rites as much as I crave sugar and cozy comfort this time of year. Winter asks us to remember the mythmaking, the candles lit against the dark, the subtle transformations that happen when the world grows cold and still.
On my morning ramble through the forest today (really more of a waddle, with my snow pants a size too big, making their soft shushing sounds as I shuffled along in my boots), I wandered off the trail and followed deer tracks into the woods. I traced their path to a bedding ground, wondering what it must be like to lie down in a nest of oak leaves, warmed by bodies and churned by hooves. Why this spot? What made it safe, or sacred, to them? I’m no hunter, but something in me sharpened as I walked—my senses pricking awake, instinctively still and alert as I “read” the landscape for clues.
Eventually the familiar press of what I “should” be focusing on nudged at me, urging me back toward the computer screen. But not yet. I had come out here with a purpose. Besides the exertion and the much-needed sweat of outdoor activity, I was looking for my way back. To where? To what? I wasn’t entirely sure. It felt like trying to remember a dream—you know you had it, but the shape slips away. My legs seemed to know what I meant, carrying me up the hill toward the oldest oak—a tree I visit often, whose great boughs feel like a sheltering roof, a place where I can remember my place in the larger web of life.
Standing beneath its branches, watching the gray sky gather snow, I felt a spark of awareness that didn’t belong to me alone—a sense of the collective longing for tending, for re-enchantment, especially in this time of excess and depletion and overconsumption.
There, as if witnessed by the great old tree, my thoughts settled into a simple truth: I need more time to unplug. More time for digital fasting. More time to be with myself without interruption. More time for dreams.
You know that feeling when you’ve scrolled too long, answered a few too many emails, and then finally look up—the trance breaks, and suddenly you feel all kinds of cruddy and dazed, like Rip Van Winkle with his dusty beard and moss-covered boots, cracking an eye open to the world for the first time in far too long. Who even was I?
I used to have so many hobbies, didn’t I? Who was I before the endless scroll of social media and the reflex to check email? Didn’t I used to read more books? Didn’t I make things with my hands, just for the pleasure of making? Didn’t I used to sit and watch the light touch the snow each morning, reddening into dusk as the day exhaled into night?
Of course, I do still do those things, but it feels harder now. Everything good seems to require more discipline, more intention. With so much dazzling content at our fingertips, the world begins to feel like one long dopamine drip, and we all slip into a kind of collective addiction. Is it still addiction if everyone’s doing it? And what do we do with that question?
The truth is: there is no perfect solution. Pleasure and pain are a seesaw—the brain balancing every high with a corresponding low, every spike with a quiet withdrawal. We don’t have to shame ourselves or go full Grinch over our gizmos and gadgets. I’m certainly not here to take away your devices.
Instead, I want to open another door—one that leads to wonder, curiosity, and genuine presence. A way to step off the pleasure–pain seesaw and place your feet back on the earth. To slow down and re-enchant your life with awe, with rest, with a little handmade, homespun magic.
What that intention, this is how I’ll be marking the Solstice this year:
From sunrise on Friday the 19th through sunrise on the 21st, I’ll be observing a full digital fast. No screens, no electric lights—just the soft company of quiet. I’ll make beeswax candles by hand, let watercolor bleed across paper, read books, journal, doodle, maybe lose myself in a puzzle. I want to feel my nervous system stretch out and breathe again. I’ll go to bed early—8 p.m.—and stay in bed, letting the darkness do what it knows how to do.
Before sleep, I’ll pull a few tarot cards by candlelight and sit with my intentions: What medicine am I meant to gather in the dream world this solstice night? My dream journal will be waiting beside me, ready for whatever dawn chooses to give back.
On Saturday, I’ll drink my morning tea by candlelight, letting the day come slowly. When the sun rises, I’ll join my community for a winter workday—tending the labor that keeps our paths walkable, our wood stacked, our buildings warm, and our shared spaces cared for through the long cold months. As dusk settles, I’ll light a fire in the community firepit and gather with neighbors over warm drinks for stories and, if the spirit moves us, a carol or two.
On Sunday morning, I’ll climb the hill above my house and stand on the stones, waiting with others who rise early on the Solstice to greet the returning light. Together, we’ll watch the first gold edge of sun break open the horizon—our small ritual of welcome for the year ahead.
On Sunday evening, I’ll gather with a circle of women to celebrate a dear friend who is soon to birth her first baby. Together we’ve created a ritual to bless the mother and child, to honor the threshold, to hold the mystery of motherhood with reverence and joy.
After all, the mystery of Christmas—and of every winter rite—is the paradox of abundance within scarcity, of miraculous renewal in the coldest and darkest time. Light returning when light feels most unlikely.
It hasn’t always been easy for me to create these kinds of rituals or to protect the flow into simplicity that winter’s old magic requires. It has taken me many years to shape a life that can hold and nourish me—and I’m still shaping it. Day by day, month by month, I keep stitching together a handmade life, one that carries me in its own quiet, deliberate way. A life woven with my own kind of magic.
Seasonal Treasures to Re-Enchant in a Time of Digital Overload
To help you keep the flame in your own heart bright, here are a few seasonal treasures that never fail to enchant me:
A Winter Folklore Podcast
Danica Boyce’s Fair Folk podcast is a beautiful weaving of myth, music, and old magic. Her episode “Little Christmas: December Almanac” is the perfect way to steep yourself in the deeper rhythms of the season. It will leave you tingling and twinkling from the inside out, seeing your own home through different eyes—like a spellbound little mouse on Christmas Eve in The Nutcracker, taking in the familiar world made suddenly strange and fantastically charming. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4nZXlx2iQfGa3BXz3bAQc4?si=THVUVJakTOSxDjtb9umelg
A Film for Enchantment
Watching the film The Snowman is a ritual I return to every holiday season. I adore this movie. Everything about it is special and it just thrills my inner child. The music alone feels like a lullaby for the dark season—I even learned to play it on the piano so I could feel that quiet swoon of melody on winter nights. Sometimes when I can't fall asleep I imagine the scene where they fly – I picture myself taking the cold, puffy hand of the snowman, lifting off the earth, and easefully, gracefully soaring over treetops and rooftops, to the north pole. Pure magic.
A Carol That Opens the Heart
My oldest and all time favorite carol is is Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming. It’s an ancient song, steeped in the ancient folklore of winter miracles, the divine feminine, and the death/rebirth cycle in mythology. There are many gorgeous renditions, but the one that unfailingly stirs my imagination toward the solstice miracle is the version by VOCES8 from their album Winter, which is sung in the German Est Ist Ein Ros Estsprugen. https://open.spotify.com/track/4nOyPDxuz3UYWRgAo5eon8?si=ae32ec5f945d426b
Books for Winter Magic
As a kid, I adored Happy Winter by Karen Gundersheimer—a sweet little book that somehow captured the hush and coziness of the season. I highly recommend revisiting your favorite childhood picture books this time of year. Truly—pull out Frog and Toad, The Wind in the Willows, Winnie-the-Pooh. There is a softness and honesty in those pages that modern life rarely gives us. Your inner child will thank me.
For the adult imagination, last year I read The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, a luminous retelling of an old winter fairytale that feels like stepping directly into a frost-lit myth. Highly recommend!
A Winter Dream Practice
And because winter is the season of deep rest and dreaming, here’s a small offering from my forthcoming book Herbal Dream Magic, which will be released in time for next Solstice, to fill your winter season with dream spells and rituals rooted in the ancient practices of dream incubation.
This practice is simple, perfect for the long winter nights when sleep pulls you into its bottomless, star-lit waters:
The Night-Blooming Intention
Before bed, dim your lights—or better yet, turn them off entirely and let the evening end by candlelight.
Keep your journal nearby with a pen and a small, soft light for writing. (If you wake in the night with a dream memory, you won’t want to flood your senses with bright lamps.)
Hold a warm cup of an herbal tea you loved as a child—chamomile, mint, Sleepytime, whatever lived in your mother’s kitchen cabinet.
As you sip, place one hand on your heart.
Gently ask yourself: What part of me needs tending as I sleep?
Don’t force an answer. Let the question drift into you like a snowflake dissolving on warm skin. If anything rises, write it in your journal. It’s a good idea to write that question in your journal as well.
When you lie down, whisper your intention out loud—ten to twenty times—I will remember my dreams when I wake.
That’s all. A simple invitation. A doorway opened.
Trust the magic of the dream to do the rest.
(Note, if you wake and don’t recall any dreams, affirm and reassure yourself that your dreams are always speaking to you, even if your recall muscle isn’t quite developed. Then try again the next night, keeping it playful and light. Self-shaming and striving evergy will block your dream practice. )
An Invitation To Gaze into the Winter Mirror
And so, in the spirit of this season’s old-world magic, I’m offering a special End-of-Year Tarot Pop-Up special, as a brief but potent ritual of reflection, presence, and possibility. I rarely offer anything between Solstice and the New Year, but this winter I feel a clear call to open my doors and hold space for a bit of shared enchantment. A little voice is telling me you could really use some support to get clarity on your path right now in a way that is safe, accessible, accurate, and true.
I’ll keep a candle lit and the cards warm, the cloth spread out and waiting. I’ll be home, offering readings over zoom. Bring a cup of tea and come sit at the winter mirror, that quiet place where you can glimpse who you have been, who you are now, and who you are becoming as the wheel turns again—while the Great Bear circles overhead and Orion keeps watch in the clear, cold sky.
20-minute readings
Sliding scale $20–$40
Monday, December 29th // 10am–4pm
Tuesday, December 30th // 5pm–7pm
Inspired by the tradition woven through A Christmas Carol, we’ll take a gentle walk with the cards through what Charles Dickens called “the Past, the Present, and the Future…the Spirits of all Three.”
Not ghosts this time, but the living wisdom within you—your inner guide stepping forward in the soft glow of winter light.
These sessions are meant to feel like stepping out of the digital noise and into something timeless:
a candle flickering in the dark, an ember of insight for the year ahead, a whisper from the part of you that already knows the way.
This is not a deep-dive or a twelve-month forecast. Instead, think of it as a small, luminous spell—a tender look at where you’ve been, what is true right now, and what is quietly forming on the horizon.
If you’d like to re-enchant your season and enter the new year with clarity and inward warmth, I would be honored to read for you.
Reserve your spot and step into a little holiday magic.