In the days before the winter solstice, the year was thought to pause. Solstitium means the sun standing still. Not turning back yet, just stopping its long retreat.
Across northern Europe, small offerings were made at forest edges. Bread. Grain. Beer poured deliberately onto the ground. Not unlike the way beer is still shared with the earth elsewhere in the world. In the Low Countries, these gestures were not formal rituals, just acknowledgements that the forest had carried people through another year.
Deer, more visible now against pale trunks, were seen as creatures of the threshold. Neither wild enough to vanish nor tame enough to belong, they moved easily in this in-between time, when the year itself hesitated.
This was not yet a season of celebration. It was a held breath. A moment when the forest stood open, listening, before the light began its slow return.
Five days to the solstice.