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December 2022 - The Mistletoe Kiss
Design notes from the artist: Chris Mackey
In ancient times when gods walked the earth, the mother goddess of the Norse, Frigga, was the living embodiment of life, renewal, love and beauty. She had been blessed with the power of divination and while it was a blessing, it was also a curse. She could see visions of the future to come, but was powerless to affect these outcomes through her actions. Blessed and cursed with these visions, she went about her work instilling life into plant and animal alike during the warm seasons and reserving her strength during the cold winter months to save a small portion of life such as nuts, seeds, evergreens and the hardiest of animals to survive despite the cold so that life could begin anew in the spring.
One day in the spring, she had a new vision... she would have a beautiful baby boy who would fill her existence with happiness. She was overjoyed with this revelation, but also terribly afraid because he would be born on the winter solstice, December 21st, when her powers were at their weakest during the coldest, darkest day of the year. Time passed and her baby grew and on the day of the solstice, her baby boy was born on a cold, dark winter day. He was indeed beautiful and perfect in every way. As she gazed lovingly into his pale blue eyes, she had another vision... a vision of her son dying tragically and violently after a full life. The color drained from her face from it's normally beautiful rosy glow to a frosty, pale white. The hardiest plants and animals around her bore witness and many of them paled along with her to a snowy white at the revelation. Even the hardiest plant in the forest, the mistletoe, paled to a ghostly white as it hung over Frigga while she rocked her baby and cried at the knowledge of the future.
She said to the forest around her "I can't change the future, but I will always appreciate the present." When she noticed the snow-white berries of mistletoe, she pulled them down over Baldur's head as she kissed him and vowed to bestow another kiss every time she passed under mistletoe and to light a candle on this darkest of nights to remember the life of spring to come. To this day, under the mistletoe, mothers kiss their children, and we all kiss our loved ones in appreciation for the short time we have together on winter's solstice. We can not stop the future from arriving, but we can appreciate the beauty of life around us in the moment.
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