Two Sisters, Two Solstices
Winter in the Southern Hemisphere holds its own beauty.
As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a small organic café in the southern end of Tasmania surrounded by old growth forests and fat pademelons (small marsupials), although they are nocturnal so I can’t actually see them. But driving at night through remote bushland you can’t help but come across them hopping on impossibly short legs, their pink bottoms iridescent in the glow of headlights.
When I woke up this morning on a small property in the middle of nowhere, the mist hung heavy like someone had forgotten to lift the curtain to the day. The only sound penetrating the damp was a bird call that I have never heard before. A lament of sorts. It echoed and bounced in the treetops so I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. The whole tableau was as if the earth was exhaling and I was inhaling its breath.
I’m not from here but it has a familiarity to my home in the ACT, in the Southern Tablelands of NSW. I have long been a lover of winter. Early morning frosts make even the most mundane items look magical with sparkle. The air is like crystal. The cosiness of a roaring fireplace and the urge to hunker down and rest. I secretly wish we had snow but am grateful we don’t have the hassle of shovelling driveways. Everything is still.
And on the 21st of June is the Winter Solstice – also my sister’s birthday. My birthday is on the 21st of December, the Summer Solstice. A funny, family quirk that also feels a wee bit magical. In ancient Greece the Winter Solstice was celebrated with festivals that focused both on religious rituals together with feasting and some outright bawdy undertakings. As you would expect a lot of these were focused on fertility, renewal and looking forward to the return of the summer months, back to the abundance.
The Haloa Festival specifically was dedicated to the Goddess of agriculture Demeter, Dionysus, the God of wine and Poseidon the God of the sea and storms. This festival was comprised of feasts and massive bonfires, but my favourite tidbit is that it was known for women-only secret rituals and phallic shaped cakes to induce fertility for the season of spring. Women chatted and exchanged dirty jokes, and I’m sure talked about their husbands (and lovers) as well!
At Wild Goddess Botanicals, we believe winter deserves to be met with intention rather than endured. Our small-batch botanical formulas were made for exactly this season — for slow mornings, for skin that needs nourishing warmth, for the quiet ritual of tending to yourself when the world goes still.
To honour the Winter Solstice, every order placed until 21st June includes a ritual card, a warming teabag, and dried flower petals — a small ceremony to mark the turning of the season, from us to you. Shop here before 21st June.