Advent Calendar Day 17

Yay! Only a week to go, well, for us at any rate, since we celebrate Wigilia (Christmas Eve) 😀

The repaired glass is holding up, but still has an aroma of Araldite that is not entirely compatible with the bouquet of the wine and leaves a slightly headache-y tang 😛 I think perhaps I will have to leave it to one side for a few more days.

But, busy, busy today as the festive season begins in earnest tomorrow, with drinks in the evening and a party on Friday, plus all the food shopping to get organised before it becomes an impossible scrum for the last bag of sprouts. So without further ado or more waffling, I’ll get straight to the Advent card.

For today’s deck I thought I’d veer briefly away from Tarot proper and into the realms of the Oracle. Since halls are being decked up and down the country (and the rest of the Christmas/Yule-celebrating world), what better than the Green Man Oracle. Of course, this could prove somewhat limiting in terms of gift associations and almost certainly won’t involve chocolate, but we shall see.

And the card I have drawn is….Birch. (I must admit I was expecting Holly :D)

I’m very fond of Birch trees. I have one outside my window, in fact, and can see it as I write. I’m not sure why I like them particularly. Perhaps it’s the clean-looking silvery-white bark or the whisper of the little leaves in the breeze (although there are none at present). I think mine might be a Paper Birch as the bark peels off in large rectangular pieces that you could probably write on if you wanted to.

Anyhow, in terms of gifts, I already have a set of birch wood knitting needle (circular) tips and I have been half eyeing up some DPNS. I prefer circulars but find DPN’s are better for starting off a piece, not to mention being handy cable needles. I’m not entirely convinced yet as most DPNs are sold in small sizes for making socks and I have a tendency to break thin wooden needles.

The only other Birch-based gift I can think of is Birch wine, though I also have a recipe somewhere for a Birch sap liqueur*, but I’m not sure you can buy that. I have tried Birch wine, but don’t remember if I liked it or not. I’m more of a red wine drinker, white wine tend to just make me peckish and I end up snacking excessively.

I probably ought to at least glance at the accompanying book and a quick skim reveals that Birch “drives out evil spirits and returns to sanity those who have become mad“. Well that will come in handy for the festive season! It’s also associated with new beginnings, so ties in neatly with the New Year, though that might be due to besoms being made from birch twigs.  New year, new broom, new sanity? Nah, maybe not. I’ve grown accustomed to my insanity, we drink together regularly 😀

*No, tell a lie, just went to find the liqueur recipe for you only to discover that it’s actually made with Beech leaves, but if you would like, I can post that recipe up for you if you’d like?