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Here in the Bay Area we have two cycles that run together, but one of them seems to be the opposite of the other if you're expecting a Northern European pattern (or even a New England pattern, really).
The Animals follow the cycle of Light (and Heat), which is about the same as you'd expect from traditional European lore. It's cold and dark in the winter, so animals are less active. Spring is all exciting and they all get out and breed and such. etc.
But because it rarely drops below freezing around here, the Plants are more attuned to the cycle of Water than to the cycle of Heat, to which end we have two seasons - Fire and Flood. That is, the winter everything is green, and in the summer it's all gold. The food plants do about what you'd expect, orchards heavy with fruit in the summer, but the grass and the native plants are all thirsty in the winter and dry as tinder in the summer.
The two intersecting cycles make for four overall seasons, but Autumn is kind of weird, because it has a couple sub-seasons.
So what does it all mean for me? Well, I guess I'm an animal, 'cause the Light/Heat cycle affects me more than the Water cycle by far. So I do still identify with some aspects of the traditional Northern European stuff of things being down in the winter and coming back up in the spring. But at the same time it's hard to really get behind the idea of a Dead, White winter, because Winter around here is when everything is bright green.
So... I mostly embrace the Heathen and some of the Wiccan calendar in as much as it relates to light levels, but I identify Yuletide as a time of abundance in some ways, not in counter to the cold, but as a result of the water.
I do think this mix sort of blurs the line that comes up in lore - there's this idea that Winter is Bad, and Summer is Good. Winter is when people are in serious danger of dying just by going outside, and Summer is when the divine gifts come to us in the form of warmth and sustenance and such. Yay!
Except... around here, it's not so cold in the Winter that folks are at all guaranteed to die, and in Summer the fires threaten our homes at the same time the fruits are harvested. So at all times it's clear that the good and the bad go hand in hand, and the value of a thing is in its use, not its nature.
--Ember-- |
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