The Practice of Solstice
Thirteen wishes of prayers: honest expression of longing
original art work by Bren Littleton
“May the light of your soul bless your work with love and warmth of heart.” — John O’Donohue
The fire is already awake when the winter solstice arrives. Even before the match is struck, something in the dark knows what is coming. Wood remembers flame. Ash remembers form. The season itself leans toward the hearth.
This is not a holiday to me so much as a pause, a held breath, a threshold where life itself seems to listen.
The solstice is the place between what has already been lived and what is quietly gathering itself to emerge. We do not cross it by effort. We cross it by noticing. By allowing ourselves to slow enough to feel where we are standing.
I have come to trust these thresholds. Psychologically and spiritually, they matter. They interrupt momentum. They soften the body’s grip on forward motion. They create just enough stillness for the soul to speak. Something in us recognizes this instinctively. This is not a time for pushing or fixing. This is a time for listening.
Emotionally, the season often brings tenderness. Fatigue. Heightened sensitivity. A natural turning inward. I do not see these as problems to overcome. I see them as intelligence. The solstice honors what the body already knows. When we meet ourselves here with curiosity instead of judgment, something loosens. Something honest rises to the surface.
When people talk about manifestation, it is often framed as effort or control. That has never been my experience. Grounded manifestation is not about forcing outcomes. It is about alignment. It asks me to notice what I am ready to release and what I am willing to participate in creating. That distinction matters, especially now.
Rituals held at this time help the nervous system settle during transition. They remind us that uncertainty does not mean danger. Change does not have to be abrupt or violent. It can be held gently, with reverence, like a small animal cupped in warm hands.
This is why practices involving writing, fire, and gradual release feel so natural at the solstice. They mirror what is already happening inside. Nothing needs to be rushed. The work unfolds in its own time, the way seeds know when to break open.
On the night of the winter solstice, I write thirteen wishes; not goals, not affirmations, just honest expressions of longing. Each wish goes on its own piece of paper. I roll and seal them with wax, and place them on my alter or on my writing table, in a Waterford candy dish from my Irish grandmother.
Beginning on December 21, and continuing each night until January 1, I choose one scroll of paper at random and place it into my wood stove.
I do not open it.
I do not read it.
I do not try to know which wish I am releasing.
The fire takes it.
This matters to me: not knowing is part of the offering. I am not managing the process or curating the outcome. I am trusting Fate to move what no longer needs my tending. One wish each night is surrendered without analysis, without story, without rehearsal.
I let the fire do what fire has always done: Transform. Complete. Carry away what is ready to be released.
Over these days, awareness reveals itself slowly, the way winter light returns. Not all at once. Not on demand. I do not second-guess what is gone or speculate about what remains. I simply participate. I show up. I tend the flame and let the unseen do its work.
At the end of the cycle, one wish remains.
That wish is not surrendered. It is entrusted to me.
This is the part of the ritual that feels most sacred. Releasing twelve wishes teaches surrender without disappearance. Keeping one teaches responsibility without pressure. Together, they restore a sense of agency that feels grounded rather than strained.
Almost every year, the wish that remains is not the most dramatic. It is the most honest. The one that asks for patience. Participation. Courage. The one I cannot burn away. The one I must live into.
This practice does not ask for belief or doctrine. It does not belong to a religion. It works because it engages relationship: with desire, with control, with trust. It begins where so many of our cultural practices do not. It begins with release.
Your wishes do not need to be beautiful. They do not need to sound hopeful. They can speak of healing, relief, steadiness, grief, or not knowing at all. What matters is honesty. Performative hope has no power here. Sincerity does.
If fire does not feel right to you, the ritual can be adapted. Write and tear the paper. Breathe the wish out slowly. Offer it to water or wind. Move it through the body. What matters is not the form, but whether your system feels safe enough to tell the truth.
Clarity is not required when you begin. Insight often arrives through the releasing itself. One wish at a time, something loosens. Something makes room. Something ancient exhales.
This ritual can be practiced at other times of year, but the solstice carries a particular weight. It marks an ending and the slow return of light. It reminds us that even now, in the dark, the earth is working.
The winter solstice does not promise sudden transformation.
What it offers is quieter.
And closer.
So tonight, and in the nights that follow, I pray this way.
To the earth beneath my feet, steady and bearing the weight of my ordinary days:
Bless the floors I sweep, the meals I prepare, the work I return to again and again.
Let what feels repetitive become rhythmic.
Let what feels heavy become rooted.
To the sea that teaches surrender without collapse:
Bless the washing of dishes, the folding of clothes, the small endings that happen without ceremony.
Teach me how to release what has been used up,
how to trust that what leaves my hands does not leave the world.
To the heavens that keep time beyond my worries:
Bless my waking and my sleeping.
Bless the light I turn on before dawn, the kettle warming, the quiet first breath of morning.
Help me remember that even these small gestures are part of the turning.
Bless the wish that remains with me.
Not that it would hurry,
but that it would grow legs strong enough to walk beside me.
Let me tend it through attention rather than force,
through patience rather than pressure.
Bless my listening.
Bless my pauses.
Bless the moments when nothing remarkable happens,
and I am simply here, inhabiting my life.
May the fire receive what I have released.
May the ash return it to the soil.
May what stays be shaped by time, kindness, and courage.
As the days slowly lengthen,
Let me move at the speed of what is human.
Let me recognize the sacred in the sink, the desk, the path I walk each day.
Let me remember that holiness does not wait elsewhere.
It lives here.
In what I touch.
In what I tend.
In what I choose, quietly, to love.
written by Bren Littleton
original art work by Bren Littleton
Tin Flea Press c. 2025