Day 9: Coming Soon

This post is part 8 of my 12 Days of Yule series, inspired by the seasonal framework at Pagan Grimoire. Day 8 turns toward volunteering and service, approached here not as instruction, but as a way of noticing how care, dignity, and generosity surface in winter stories and imagery.

In the rush of ordinary holidays, I let these quieter observances slip past me. Not intentionally. Just through accumulation. Days stack. Time moves forward. There is no retrieving what was missed.

But the meaning does not vanish with the calendar. So this continues, slightly out of date.

The Five of Coins from the Tarot of the Divine deck by Yoshi Yoshitani shows the Little Match Girl by Andersen beneath a stained glass church window as she lights a match for warmth. Tarot of the Divine by Yoshi Yoshitani

In winter stories from Europe, before streets were lit with gas or electric light, food was sometimes set aside for travelers. For those moving along cold roads. For neighbors whose hearth had gone thin. For strangers who might bring news, danger, or possibility. Hospitality was not ceremony. It was survival. 

What survives of that tradition is atmosphere. A sense that generosity, in winter especially, is bound up with presence rather than transaction. Less display. More noticing.

As I digested this, I immediately thought of Yoshi Yoshitani's Five of Coins from the Tarot of the Divine. Based on Andersen's The Little Match Girl, it's set solidly in winter, as a lone child sits outside shelter, cold, hungry and unnoticed. 

What a difference five coins would make to her.

The Day of Service calls for simple gestures.

These are not actions meant to resolve anything. They're closer to acknowledgment:

  • Time, attention, warmth offered without accounting. Sometimes that looks like help. Sometimes it looks like listening without urgency.
  • Unmarked giving. Something left quietly. No explanation required.
  • Sharing what is available, whether that is food, money, skill, or steadiness.
  • Clearing a path. A step. A small obstruction removed for someone else.
  • Tending shared ground. Picking up what has been abandoned. Not as improvement, but as care.

To serve, here, is to acknowledge that scarcity exist. They are conditions. Sometimes inherited. Sometimes maintained. Always endured. Small gestures matter precisely because they do not pretend to be sufficient.

Service, then, moves in more than one direction. Outward, yes. And inward. Toward the parts of ourselves that learned to expect less than shelter.

And so this continues.