The year is our teacher.
A festival is how a child comes to know the year in their bones rather than on a calendar. Getting ready, celebrating, and remembering together weaves a bright and living community around them — one where courage, kindness, wonder, and gratitude are lived rather than merely spoken about.
Each one is two or three hours: songs and stories, food shared from many kitchens, and a seasonal craft made by hand and carried home.
Twelve turnings, kept together.
These are the festivals our families keep through the year. Some are quiet and take an hour; others fill an afternoon and a table. Each one is prepared for in the weeks beforehand, so that by the time the day arrives it already belongs to the children.
The light begins to go, and we answer it with courage first and then with sharing.
The year turns toward the dark, and we meet it with courage. There is the tale of Michael and the dragon, iron and fire, dragon bread torn and passed along, and games that ask something of a child’s nerve.
As the evenings close in, the children carry lanterns they made themselves out into the early dark. We walk slowly and we sing, and no one’s light is dimmer for another one shining beside it.
Martin was a soldier who met a beggar at the gate on a bitter night and cut his cloak in two. Told plainly, the picture does its own work; a loaf torn in half and handed on says the rest.
The darkest weeks, kept with candles, and then the first turn back toward the light.
Boots are left by the door and found in the morning with oranges, nuts, and something small inside. The gifts are modest on purpose. What is remembered is the surprise of having been thought of.
In the darkest part of the year a child comes in wearing a crown of candles, bringing light and something warm to eat. It is the shortest of our festivals and often the one the youngest remember longest.
A spiral of evergreen is laid on the floor with one candle burning at its center. Each child walks in alone carrying an unlit candle and walks back out with a lit one, setting it down along the path until the whole room is bright.
Twelve days after Christmas, the three kings finally reach the stable, following their star. We tell the story of their long journey, share a king’s cake with a bean hidden inside, and each family takes home chalk to write a blessing over their door.
Halfway between the solstice and the equinox, the light has returned enough to notice. We dip beeswax candles and stand them in the windows, and we go looking for the first green things pushing up.
Everything underground begins to move, and the year opens outward again.
Light and dark stand equal. We plant seeds, and we pay attention to what has come back on its own without any help from us.
We keep it simply and well away from the shops. Eggs dyed with onion skin and beet, a hare who leaves things in the grass, and the long, serious attention children give to something hidden and then found.
Ribbons on the maypole, flower crowns woven in the grass, and dancing that takes a few tries before it comes right. It asks nothing of anyone but to join in.
The year at its height, and the one festival that runs until the light gives out.
The longest day. Flower crowns, a bonfire lit as the light finally goes, and the whole garden outside for as long as the evening holds.
Prepared by hand, and shared.
The children make what the day needs in the weeks before it — the lantern, the crown, the dipped candle. By the time the festival arrives, it already belongs to them.
Families come together for the celebration itself. There is always singing, always a story, and always a table with food from many kitchens on it. Parents are not an audience at a festival; they are part of it.
The nature table.
Many of our families keep a small table at home that changes with the season — a cloth in the season’s color, a few things gathered on a walk, a candle, whatever the children bring in.
It costs nothing and asks very little, and it quietly carries the rhythm of the festival year into the week at home.
The year, gathered.
Photographs from our festivals will gather here as the year turns.
Celebrate the next one with us.
Families are welcome at our festivals, and it is one of the warmest ways to meet the garden for the first time.
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