Solstice, Christmas, Remembering the Deceased

This was sunrise on solstice day. Just had to share. From inside this house's arctic entry, complete with icicles. It warmed up to 12 degrees this morning!

When I was growing up, my family celebrated Christmas in a non-religious but spiritually aware way, although "spiritual" is a scare-quotes word for my parents. I'm just using it as a quick index of the tapping into collective consciousness of the stasis and preparation for forward momentum lent by the Solstice, as well as harmonization with the celebratory mood all around us.

But one tradition I want to honor is this: we always made a toast (regardless of what was being drunk) to "absent friends." Christmas is obviously a celebration of birth and new beginnings at the darkest time--in Romance languages at least, the name of Christmas refers to birth (Noel, Natale, Navidad, etc...) But since it's the time where energy, life force, dwindles, diminishes to vanishing point, it seems right to me to remember those who left us this year as well. 
So, here I am wearing a jacket that Larry gave me as a gift some years ago.

Around my neck is a chain from my grandmother, and on it an old Iraqi gold ornament intended to be worn, several of them, in the hair. There are little leaves of beaten gold at the bottom, together with an old coin, and they would have jingled in the hair slightly as the wearer moved about. And check out the intricacy of curled gold on the main "bulb" itself.

It's a little too three-dimensional to wear all the time, I'm finding, but oh my I love it so much. Christmas, remembering my Iraqi-Jewish grandmother, my artist brother in law... I feel gratitude and warmth; gratitude also for my home away from home friends and family here, who fit me in so graciously.
Love, warmth, renewal to everyone.