Happy December to all my friends and readers
New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch
"Märchenzeit"
"Time for a Fairy Tale"
December is greeting me with a misty morning. Seems like November. Well, all the seasons are different nowadays.
We've had a busy month with visitors and celebrations. But we've also both been sick, so no blogging was done. And no reading which is even worse. Let's hope December is going to be better.
December was called Ærra Gēola "Before Yule", or "First Yule"by the Old English Germanics and Hailag-mānod "holy month" in Old High German. It shows that it was always a special month.
The flowers of the month are the holly and the narcissus.
The holly (Latin: Ilex) represents domestic happiness. We all like nature and there aren't many flowers around at that time of the year, so people used to take into their homes whatever showed some greenness. Druids believed that holly protected them against evil spirits. In heraldry, it stands for truth. And for all Harry Potter fans, his wand was made of holly wood.
I always thought the latter represents Easter, but there we go. Apparently, you can harvest the bulbs in summer and keep them dried until the winter and they will bloom again. One always learns something new while researching a certain topic. In the Western culture, we see the narcissus as a symbol of vanity, in the Eastern culture it stands for of wealth and good fortune. Maybe the two are not too far apart?
It is also the national flower of Wales, though, my son once mentioned, when little, that it should be the national flower of England since they had so many.
Have a happy December with this beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch.
You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.
New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch
"Märchenzeit"
"Time for a Fairy Tale"
December is greeting me with a misty morning. Seems like November. Well, all the seasons are different nowadays.
We've had a busy month with visitors and celebrations. But we've also both been sick, so no blogging was done. And no reading which is even worse. Let's hope December is going to be better.
December was called Ærra Gēola "Before Yule", or "First Yule"by the Old English Germanics and Hailag-mānod "holy month" in Old High German. It shows that it was always a special month.
The flowers of the month are the holly and the narcissus.
The holly (Latin: Ilex) represents domestic happiness. We all like nature and there aren't many flowers around at that time of the year, so people used to take into their homes whatever showed some greenness. Druids believed that holly protected them against evil spirits. In heraldry, it stands for truth. And for all Harry Potter fans, his wand was made of holly wood.
I always thought the latter represents Easter, but there we go. Apparently, you can harvest the bulbs in summer and keep them dried until the winter and they will bloom again. One always learns something new while researching a certain topic. In the Western culture, we see the narcissus as a symbol of vanity, in the Eastern culture it stands for of wealth and good fortune. Maybe the two are not too far apart?
It is also the national flower of Wales, though, my son once mentioned, when little, that it should be the national flower of England since they had so many.
Have a happy December with this beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch.
You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.
Happy December! What a nice post.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lydia.
DeleteI wish you a happy new year with lots of books.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHappy December! Sorry to hear you were sick. Holly is such a happy plant in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's why it represents happiness.
DeleteHappy New Year!
I wondered why your blog was quiet. Hope you’re well again now. I reas this post when you first posted but I have trouble commenting on blogger for some reason & it only seems to work if people have pop up comments or if I use Chrome, which I can omly do on an Pad & its not always available. ☹️
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot, Carol. I'm well agan, just too much to catch up on and I haven't read much. :(
ReplyDeleteOur sons were were home and we had a happy month.
Happy New Year!!!!
DeleteAnd I'm sorry about the problem with blogger. I have similar problems with other blogs, sometimes I think they do this on purpose so we'll change to the other provider. but I've been with blogger too long and would have to change everything. No way.
ReplyDelete