Have a happy and Civil New Year!

Phaedra and I would like to wish all our readers the very best for the coming civil new year—and may it be far more civil than this last one was!

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Updates at neopagan.net

Frequent visitors to our website may notice that the contents of the Druid section have been seriously edited and updated. I’ve posted a couple of excerpts from Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism and removed a few old essays that I will replace partially with more excerpts. Unfortunately, there’s a limit to how much of the stuff that’s in the new book can be posted online. On the bright side, the stuff in the book is far more up-to-date, with only minor exceptions.

I did some minor updates to the Current Druid Groups and Friends page as well, mostly because the Council of British Druid Orders finally has a website! It’s taken them a long time because everything had to be hand-carved from Welsh bluestone, with no post-neolithic technologies allowed…

In the Holidays section, I added Visions of Sugarplums, by Margaret Morrison, a charming Pagan story about one recovering Christian’s encounter with Santa. The fact that I’m actually mentioned in the story makes it even cooler (at least to me).

The Schedule page has been updated as well, so if you’re wondering whether I’m going to be anywhere near you this coming year, that’s the place to check.

If you’ve got particular items or topics you’d like us to have on this site, just let us know and we’ll see what we can do!

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Hardiness Zone Changes at arborday.org

Hardiness Zone Changes at arborday.org is an animated map of the “hardiness zones” the National Arbor Day Foundation uses for showing what species of trees will grow best where. This particular animation shows the changes in those zones caused by warming trends from 1990 through 2006. It’s scary.

Phae keeps telling me that our local SSE New York weather reminds her of North Carolina—Zone 7, which used to cover most of NC through VA, eastern MD, and DE, plus a bit of southern NJ, now covers western NC, almost all of VA, MD, and DE, plus most of NJ and our part of NY and southern CT!

All the other zones move north as well, with the warmest taking over half of FL and coastal/desert southern CA, and the coldest nearly vanishing from the northern states into Canada.

It’s really happening folks. Time to start buying that ocean front property around the edges of California’s Central Valley…

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O Holy Night: A Solstice Carol

O Holy Night
(music trad., words modified by IB)

Oh holy night, the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the Sun God’s rebirth!

Long lay the world in cold and darkness pining
Till He appeared and His rays warmed the Earth.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn!

Rise from your knees, oh hear the Faerie voices.
Oh night divine, oh night the Sun’s reborn
Oh night divine, oh night, oh night divine!

I’ve got a number of rewritten Yuletide carols clattering around in my head. This is one of the less inflammatory ones…

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