The Beauty of a Winter Faire
““All the calendars measure the months of the seasons; None of them painting the same scenario for all. Still all know the reasons for the different seasons.
…Sharing is a must to accompany our reasons If we truly intend to know all of heart’s seasons.””
Lights twinkled, as little hands clasped homemade cookies. An early childhood classroom transformed into a magical tunnel where crystals glimmered and stories danced when told. In the Eurythmy room, skeins of colorful yarn elongated on wooden pedestals, then spun into tightly wound jump ropes, carried home by beaming children.
Earlier this month, the Detroit Waldorf School Parent Group transformed our building into a magical Winter Faire, welcoming the community to participate in the Waldorf approach to welcoming the winter season. What a delightful community-filled and community-building event!
It takes a community to educate a child.
Not only did our devoted parents, faculty and staff make over our building into a winter wonderland; our dedicated families contributed their time, too, whether baking cookies for the cookie forest, sharing their expertise or talents in our vendor marketplace, manning stations, or performing on our stage and in our hallways. It was a celebration of all that Waldorf education can and should be – making childhood, and life itself, truly magical.
Waldorf philosophy has at its core the idea that the surrounding world mirrors human nature. As seasons evolve and change, shift and transform, so do we – throughout life and throughout each year.
This is why it’s so essential to weave seasonal activities and celebrations into our days and our learning.
Festivals mark moments.
They give us opportunities to appreciate the small details that are inherently special. In earlier times, when families lived according to the agricultural calendar, they celebrated the different rhythms of the seasons as their true sustenance, according to Sharifa Oppenheimer, author of Heaven on Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children. Today, as we are increasingly busy and distracted, these opportunities are ever more important to frame our lives with meaning.
Winter brings long, dark nights and cold, short days. All the more reason to light our lives from within and gather together for warmth, literal and metaphorical. When we connect as a community, we enrich everyone’s existence. When we huddle together for warmth, we feel the beating heart of another and know we are never alone.
This Winter Faire was more than a simple festival. It was an opportunity to open our community to the great public and share the beauty of Waldorf.
It was an opportunity to come together as friends and as families, outside of school, but within our campus, in a nurturing way.
It was an opportunity to celebrate the gray, cold days of Michigan winter and find good in the fluffy clouds above.
There is magic in the rhythm of the changing seasons. We anticipate each one anew, as if it is the very first, knowing that the first snow, the first snow day, the break from school to breathe in cool air and gather for holidays at home, is special every time, no matter how many times we experience it.
This season, root into your natural inclinations to enjoy winter, knowing that as part of our Waldorf community, you are right at home.
