Bringing in 2010
My New Year process began with champagne tasting at a wine store owned by some Latvian Germans. They sell wines and champagnes mostly from small German wineries. It was a fun evening where I met up with three of my ex-classmates from the school that I went to in Germany for my 13th year of high school. Not only was I able to choose champagne to take with me for New Year, but I was also able to spend more time with the three of them. Here we are, not too bad for 40 somethings :-) .
The boys and I spent New Years Eve in Pamati, which is on the way to Aluksne. It is actually my mother's property, and she and her family lived there before they left Latvia at the end of World War II. She requested the property back from the state in 1991. In the last few years my sister and brother in-law have been doing a fantastic job of renovating the house and organizing for the property to be well taken care of. I am amazed at their tenacity and ability to keep the process going. It is an absolutely gorgeous location and the boys and I love visiting there whenever we return to Latvia.
This year we decided to make it a simple family affair for New Years, and we went the traditional route of pulling the log around the house, and pouring luck to bring in the new year. The next door neighbors who are also relatives came over for the evening.
While preparing for the evening I looked outside to see the moon rising. I know that it is meant to be a blue moon. I am not quite sure that I saw the ring of blue, but the white perfect shape of the moon cannot be done justice in these pictures. We did not see the partial lunar eclipse due to the cloud cover that followed with a snow fall.
Here I began to play with my evening settings on the camera. It was not as dark as the pictures make it seem.
Here we are sitting down to another meal.
These are the grey peas that we were supposed to eat before the end of the evening. We never quite got through them all.
Following the meal we went outside to prepare for our log pulling. The Latvian tradition of pulling the log usually occurs on the Solstice, but it is now common practice to also do it on New Years Eve. Usually this involved the mummers (budeļi) who traditionally travelled from home to home during the winter to sing and dance, and also in the process received a free meal. I had bought the kids masks from a little old Latgalian lady in the market in Riga so that they could get the feeling of this. She had made all the masks herself, painted, them and brought them to sell. All of them are works of art, and the kids had a lot of fun wearing them, as did Monvids, who was our bear. Anna is the fox, Ingus is the wolf, Didzis is the deer and Namejs is the tiger.
Here we all are ready to begin pulling the log around the house three times to bring the home luck in the next year. I have pulled logs around larger areas, and technically we could have done all the buildings on the property, but we decided that with all the snow, that the house and a larger portion of the central area would do.
Here we are done with the job. Didzis collapsed on the ground from the effort. :-)
After the log is pulled around the house, each person gets the chance to take an axe and cut a mark for every bad thing that has happened in the last year. It is a way to get rid of all of those things, and put them behind you for the next year.
Then we turned the log on its end, and with our fists put all of the good things that we wished for ourselves, Latvia, and the world.
Following this process of cutting and thinking, the log is then burned. Usually it is burned on a large bonfire, but because the log actually has to be completely burned up, Eriks decided that it might be better to put it into the fire place they have in the house - it is a meter in depth, and the log fit perfectly. It burned for the rest of the evening, giving us the peace of mind that our cathartic efforts would not go to waste, and that perhaps we had truly rid ourselves of the bad things from the previous year.
After burning the log we started pouring our luck for the next year. This is done by taking pieces of tin that have been formed into shapes. In ancient times it was done with small pieces of lead that would be reused. Here you see the two shapes that Namejs chose: a dragon for being born in the year of the dragon, and merman that reminded him of Poseidon (a huge Percy Jackson fan...). Inside the shapes were fortunes that we first had to remove. Once removed we could go to the next step.
Step 2. Melt the shape in the oven. At the Christmas market in Riga I had found a metal spoon specifically made for this task, and purchased it to become a permanent Pamati feature. We began to melt our pieces in the fire.
Step 3. Once melted, the metal is then poured into freezing cold water that then forms a new shape.
Step 4. Take the formed shapes out of the water. The one we see here was Didzis'.
Step 5. You then take the shape to where you can see a shadow of it behind a candle. In the shape you search for a recognizable form that could help you to foretell your future in the next year. Here we saw a dragon. Didzis was not sure what it might mean, but thought he had the coolest shape because it was a dragon. :-)
Just as we got done with the last of the laimes, we suddenly realized that it was 5 minutes to midnight. We popped another bottle of champagne, kissed each other Happy New Year, and our evening slowly ended.
Here are two pictures of Didzis and Namejs taken during the evening. I wish them and all of you a wonderful new year, and hope that it just gets better with everyday!
Namejs outsid after the log pulling.
Didzis drinking the children's champagne.
Welcome to 2010!
The boys and I spent New Years Eve in Pamati, which is on the way to Aluksne. It is actually my mother's property, and she and her family lived there before they left Latvia at the end of World War II. She requested the property back from the state in 1991. In the last few years my sister and brother in-law have been doing a fantastic job of renovating the house and organizing for the property to be well taken care of. I am amazed at their tenacity and ability to keep the process going. It is an absolutely gorgeous location and the boys and I love visiting there whenever we return to Latvia.
This year we decided to make it a simple family affair for New Years, and we went the traditional route of pulling the log around the house, and pouring luck to bring in the new year. The next door neighbors who are also relatives came over for the evening.
While preparing for the evening I looked outside to see the moon rising. I know that it is meant to be a blue moon. I am not quite sure that I saw the ring of blue, but the white perfect shape of the moon cannot be done justice in these pictures. We did not see the partial lunar eclipse due to the cloud cover that followed with a snow fall.
Here I began to play with my evening settings on the camera. It was not as dark as the pictures make it seem.
Here we are sitting down to another meal.
These are the grey peas that we were supposed to eat before the end of the evening. We never quite got through them all.
Following the meal we went outside to prepare for our log pulling. The Latvian tradition of pulling the log usually occurs on the Solstice, but it is now common practice to also do it on New Years Eve. Usually this involved the mummers (budeļi) who traditionally travelled from home to home during the winter to sing and dance, and also in the process received a free meal. I had bought the kids masks from a little old Latgalian lady in the market in Riga so that they could get the feeling of this. She had made all the masks herself, painted, them and brought them to sell. All of them are works of art, and the kids had a lot of fun wearing them, as did Monvids, who was our bear. Anna is the fox, Ingus is the wolf, Didzis is the deer and Namejs is the tiger.
Here we all are ready to begin pulling the log around the house three times to bring the home luck in the next year. I have pulled logs around larger areas, and technically we could have done all the buildings on the property, but we decided that with all the snow, that the house and a larger portion of the central area would do.
Here we are done with the job. Didzis collapsed on the ground from the effort. :-)
After the log is pulled around the house, each person gets the chance to take an axe and cut a mark for every bad thing that has happened in the last year. It is a way to get rid of all of those things, and put them behind you for the next year.
Then we turned the log on its end, and with our fists put all of the good things that we wished for ourselves, Latvia, and the world.
Following this process of cutting and thinking, the log is then burned. Usually it is burned on a large bonfire, but because the log actually has to be completely burned up, Eriks decided that it might be better to put it into the fire place they have in the house - it is a meter in depth, and the log fit perfectly. It burned for the rest of the evening, giving us the peace of mind that our cathartic efforts would not go to waste, and that perhaps we had truly rid ourselves of the bad things from the previous year.
After burning the log we started pouring our luck for the next year. This is done by taking pieces of tin that have been formed into shapes. In ancient times it was done with small pieces of lead that would be reused. Here you see the two shapes that Namejs chose: a dragon for being born in the year of the dragon, and merman that reminded him of Poseidon (a huge Percy Jackson fan...). Inside the shapes were fortunes that we first had to remove. Once removed we could go to the next step.
Step 2. Melt the shape in the oven. At the Christmas market in Riga I had found a metal spoon specifically made for this task, and purchased it to become a permanent Pamati feature. We began to melt our pieces in the fire.
Step 3. Once melted, the metal is then poured into freezing cold water that then forms a new shape.
Step 4. Take the formed shapes out of the water. The one we see here was Didzis'.
Step 5. You then take the shape to where you can see a shadow of it behind a candle. In the shape you search for a recognizable form that could help you to foretell your future in the next year. Here we saw a dragon. Didzis was not sure what it might mean, but thought he had the coolest shape because it was a dragon. :-)
Just as we got done with the last of the laimes, we suddenly realized that it was 5 minutes to midnight. We popped another bottle of champagne, kissed each other Happy New Year, and our evening slowly ended.
Here are two pictures of Didzis and Namejs taken during the evening. I wish them and all of you a wonderful new year, and hope that it just gets better with everyday!
Namejs outsid after the log pulling.
Didzis drinking the children's champagne.
Welcome to 2010!
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