![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/solstice-king-queen.jpg?resize=217%2C300&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I saw this sign last Friday at the public library in Pueblo, Colorado, and I liked it for a bunch of reasons.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I get tired of the “jolly old elf” and would not mind seeing a more dignified winter monarch(s). For all its other problems, I thought that the Soviet Union’s promotion of (non-religious) “Grandfather Frost<\/a>” was a pretty good idea. (Here is more about him, with regional variations<\/a>.)<\/p>\n So has he infiltrated\u00a0 the public library system? And has the Snow Maiden come along as well?<\/p>\n If she has, I am for it. But then I was the little boy who read Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Snow Queen”<\/a> and came away thinking that the Snow Queen was in fact admirable, not the villainess from whom the little boy had to be “saved.”<\/p>\n Mea I have not heard how the metro Denver “solstice war” is playing out this year \u2014 here was the 2015 version<\/a> \u2014 but this year’s astronomical solstice is at 1628 GMT<\/a>, so 0928 Mountain Time, Thursday the 21st. Perfect for drumming-up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I saw this sign last Friday at the public library in Pueblo, Colorado, and I liked it for a bunch of reasons. Sometimes I get tired of the “jolly old elf” and would not mind seeing a more dignified winter monarch(s). For all its other problems, I thought that the Soviet Union’s promotion of (non-religious) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[296,43],"class_list":["post-8956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pagan-ish","tag-yule"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2ks","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8498,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8498","url_meta":{"origin":8956,"position":0},"title":"Books and Movies for a Pagan Mindset","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 22, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been thinking that I needed to add a new category of reviews \u2014 not just books etc. deliberately focused on Paganism (which to my mind automatically includes polytheism), but those that promote a Pagan mindset without coming out and saying it. Go ahead and say it: Pagan-ish. My\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11594,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11594","url_meta":{"origin":8956,"position":1},"title":"Dior Dresses the Fair Folk","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This promotional film has me thinking of the special \"Paganism, Art, and Fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate, guest-edited by Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne, and coming very soon Or at least it is the very object correlative of \"Pagan-ish,\" which is how I will label it.","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10263,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10263","url_meta":{"origin":8956,"position":2},"title":"A Pagan-ish Easter Ceremony in Poland","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"R\u0119kawka is a celebration held in Krakow the Tuesday after Easter, so loosely speaking, it is a spring equinox festival. My friend in Krakow calls it \"a civic holiday with Pagan roots.\" R\u0119kawka is also one name for the tumulus (artificial mound) in the video. The celebration has long included\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"equinox\"","block_context":{"text":"equinox","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=equinox"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9172,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9172","url_meta":{"origin":8956,"position":3},"title":"Some Pagan-ish Advice, Offered as “Brutal Truths”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"You know the most-quoted verse from H\u00e1vam\u00e1l: Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal: But the good name never dies Of one who has done well . . . there is a lot more, of course. After you read #7 in this list, you will think of it \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Norse\"","block_context":{"text":"Norse","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=norse"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7758,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7758","url_meta":{"origin":8956,"position":4},"title":"Pagan-Studies Scholars Tell Their Stories","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The new double issue of The Pomegranate is something different. It contains two long papers, but the rest is devoted to a special section on scholarly autobiography conceived and edited by Doug Ezzy (U. of Tasmania). Doug visited Hardscrabble Creek in November 2014 and while holed up in the guest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Pom header","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Pom-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Pom-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Pom-header.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11613,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11613","url_meta":{"origin":8956,"position":5},"title":"Pagan-ish: “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the last films made by the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910\u20131998) was Dreams, which he wrote himself, based on his own dreams. It premiered in Cannes in 1990 to \"a polite but muted reception.\" A series of unconnected stories, its themes as \"childhood, spirituality, art, death, universal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8956"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8964,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions\/8964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Siberianwinterking.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1\")
nwhile, our Pueblo Winter King can aspire to equal that Sakut “Khan of Winter”<\/a> (photo at left).<\/p>\n