Martinmas

Apple Blossom's beautiful lantern walk celebrating the Martinmas festival occurs every November. Martinmas falls halfway between the summer solstice and the winter solstice. The meaning, as I understand it, is that we our celebrating the light inside ourselves as the season turns to a time of darkness.  From connecting with this light within we help ourselves and each other build up our inner resources of courage and strength to be our best selves.

  

Before the lantern walk a parent makes a lantern for his or her child out of a beautiful watercolor painting made by the child and the parent illuminates it with carved shapes covered with kite paper.  At the lantern walk we each place a candle inside  our lanterns and the entire community of parents and children does an evening walk throughout the school while singing lantern songs. I love this festival!  My children are still singing Glimmer Lantern Glimmer.

Glimmer, lantern, glimmer
Little stars a-shimmer
Over meadow, moor and vale
Flitter, flutter, elfin veil
Pee-wit, pee-wit, tikka-tikka-tik
Rucoo, rucoo.

Glimmer, lantern, glimmer
Little stars a-shimmer
Over rock and stock and stone
Wandering, skipping little gnome
Pee-wit, pee-wit, tikka-tikka-tik

Rucoo, rucoo.

Parents' evening

Such focus!

Last week, on a chilly evening after the sun was down and the kids were asleep, the Apple Blossom parents and teachers gathered inside school. The topic of the evening was Warmth -- how essential it is to our children in their physical and emotional growth and how to encourage and support it. 

We sat around a beeswax candle under a soft light, savored warming refreshments (peppermint tea, warm soup and homemade bread) and enjoyed a lively and fascinating -- and sometimes silly -- conversation. 

It's wonderful to really spend quality time with the Apple Blossom teachers and hear their thoughts on children and home life. So many new ideas and helpful tips and loving guidance, and right at the end of a long day when we often need that most. When the discussion opens up and different parents chime in with comments or questions or simply a funny story you can feel how dear everyone holds each other.

 

Adding a wire handle to a finished beeswax lantern.

While we chatted and ate and laughed, we all worked on lanterns for the upcoming lantern walk. Using beeswax warmed in our hands, we molded colorful patterns onto glass jars. How beautiful they will look, lit up with candles on a cold autumn night! What fun to use our hands and make something all our own.

In the end, such a peaceful, calming -- and yes, very warming -- evening to connect and create together.