Midwinter

I give thanks to the Yule Log:
for seeing us through another year.

I also give thanks to the gods,
for helping me recover.

As the sun dims and lowers in the cold sky.
Winter is at it's darkest and shortest.

Tonight there is going to be a ritual.
I will be present at the rite of Midwinter.

Winter Solstice

Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001)

A review of mine. This rather modern version of the Grimm's fairytale film was made by Hallmark in 2001. Not like the Disney animation with musicals and following the story to the book, this TV version has another slant to the tale.

It's all illusion and nothing is real, as the theme goes. First of all, the parents of Snow White are poor instead of royalty. A woman hopes for a child at the beginning of the film, and her wish results in a daughter being born. However, it also meant paying the price for her own life, and so the mother dies. The father of Snow White falls on hard times and he carries her off into a blizzard, where he wakens a magician by accidently breaking the ice because of a tear. He is granted a wish, for a secure home, a palace, and a queen. There the man is not so much a real king but his wish is granted, and he too would end up paying  a price.

The queen would arrive, and she's the stunning red-haired Elspeth, who is a vicious natured witch. She also does truly look "fair" although that is illusion. Her appearance is glamour, and yet she is so dazzled by it all that she's forgotten how she truly looks. The king, father of Snow White, falls in love with Elspeth only after a shower of glass, using it's magic to capture his heart and it's a love spell. So his love for her isn't real. The gnomes of the palace are all not what we assume either. There is, amongst them, a dwarf who was turned to stone that sits in the garden. We as viewers get to see why this happened. Snow White grows into a young woman and the queen clearly is jealous of her.

The spell is fractured when the queen's greed of wanting the visiting handsome prince Alfred's heart, resenting the king as she cannot feel love herself, only wants others to love her. To do that she uses shards of magic mirror dust. The piece of mirror in the king's eyes falls out after the queen hits him in a rage. She tries to use her tricks again by capturing the love of a prince but it all fails. The prince accidently crushes the chink of enchanted glass but a servant has already fallen for the queen under a spell when another piece of glass enters his vision instead of the prince's. Using glass magic reflected back shows a false unreal love. Here the queen discovers that even her flawed magic is shaking when it's revealed who the true fairest of them all is: Snow White. The queen does not return the love of the servant but uses him in her game to kill Snow White and remove the princess so that she can have the prince.

Now the film gets tricky but for kids it's lovely and colourful.

The servant cannot kill Snow White but he lets her escape but in so doing, betrays the queen. Snow White runs through the night forest and attacked by trees. She's is persued by the handsome prince who becomes a bear, and this frightens Snow White away. The queen also caused that dilemna. Now the queen is exposing her hatred to all. She may have the reflection of looking beautiful, but her very inner self is twisted and vile.

Snow White reached the dwelling of the six characters with the comeback of the long lost seventh dwarf after that spell was broken too. The dwarves consist of days of the week and colours of the spectrum. Not all are pleased by Snow White's arrival at first.

As the film unravels, one can become easily dazzled by what is meant to be real and what isn't. For example, the dwarves control the elements and become rainbows. They also create snow! The prince one wonders if he's a bear or if he's a human. As a bear, he gets locked in a glass snow globe, picked up by a wild wolf, and dropped further up the stream. The illsuion shatters to extreme later and there are some weirdness, when all the gnomes come back to life and the queen shows her true colours. The film is lush in bright technicolour, and the effects of glass and mirrors create a prismic field of fakeness and distortion.  All of it is the queen's own illusion and all live under her false making, cast under her illuminating spells.

The film is also like a combination of other stories, "The Snow Queen" and "Snow White and Rose Red". Is there a werewolf theme to it? The prince in the shape of a bear, the transformation and indication, of shapeshifting by a curse, and imprisonment in more glass. Both father of Snow White and the prince and future husband of Snow White find themselves trapped in glass as Snow White is locked in a case made of ice. Ice resembles glass. Much of this illusion shines on every single fragment of the film's plot. The story expands on the mirror and eyes instead on the apples. The apple in this film looks unreal too, with one half red and poisonous but natural looking, while the other half dipped in white chocolate is purified of poison. It's as though the apple was deadly anyway.

Snow White: Fairest of Them All

Huskies

Huskies are one of my favourite dogs. The husky dog is also called the sled dog.

They can be found in Scandinavia, Siberia, Greenland, Alaska and Canada. These dogs have very thick fur and they usually have really pale blue eyes. Some of them have brown eyes.

Huskies live in cold habitat and snowy regions.

Often used in work, such as rescue operations or commonly as a form of transport for pulling sledges, they can also make quite loyal pets. 

They are becoming very popular as a choice of dog these days.

Is there anything else we know?

Okay. Huskies are one of the oldest breeds of dog.
Huskies don't really bark. They make other sounds like this you hear: Husky dog sounds
Huskies resemble wolves but they are not wolves.
Some of these dogs enjoy digging or running.
The Siberian husky tends to eat flowers and plants.
Unlike many other dog breeds, most huskies can climb up things easily.
Huskies are said to be good with children.

Huskies are a popular trend in Yule celebrations in many towns and city centres. Instead of reindeer, some councils may opt for huskies / sled dogs to pull Santa's sleigh, adding to the midwinter magic of Yule in different angles. The husky tends to be overlooked in myth and fairytales.

Here are some beautiful websites:
Everything Husky
Siberian Husky Club
SHWAUK
Dreamcatcher Huskies
Siberian Huskies
All About Huskies

If I was to choose a dog, a husky would be very helpful and also fascinating. These dogs are trusting and full of inner warmth, regardles sof the cold that they seem to enjoy.

The Winter Wolf

The country freezes in almost Arctic conditions. The snows came in November, and the air was stinging of North Winds. The frosts began, with fogs, and snow followed, leaving a blanket of white beauty across the land. This lovely picturesque landscape, like a traditional card for the festive season, holds many problems. The temperatures are not only chilling and could damage the soil as well as roads, but it's killed and removed vital energy sources from residential homes. People have gone without light, heating or electricity. There is the inability to travel. Snow causes immobility. It freezes everything and shuts down the system. While people try to carry on doing their work and living their lives, or even enjoying the snow (schools closed meant that children had extra time off so that they can play!), the snow has caused a breakdown of traffic and food shortages.

It's a winter unlike other winters on record of the British weather. Since the weather reports began in the 19th Century, the United Kingdom has never been this cold. It's unknown how the temperatures were before these records began (but we did experience drastic temp changes in ancient and pre-historic times).

This is the time of winter and although it can be extremely cold in other places, it has never been so cold here in the UK before. It caught everyone by surprise. This doesn't usually happen, and it could be the thing of whatever comes in future as we may see this from now on. Maybe we'll see more winters like this? Perhaps it's the start of an Ice Age era? Maybe there isn't such a thing as Global Warming but instead Global Cooling. I personally think we're long anticipating some form of catastrophe anywhere in the world, and there is so much chaos in the world that it effects the weather and the earth. I'm sounding frantic here but not because there's been so much snow. It's observation and reports that ring bells.

The white coldness is the symbol of my post: "The Winter Wolf". The Wolf of iciness, with a heart rigid and cruel. It stops time itself. It makes our tools too difficult to use and power supply becomes useless. The Winter Wolf is not an actual wolf of the forests or parks, but a primordial sense like a force of nature, a spirit, divine being. Some might suggest it's the opposite of life, the bringer of death, the destroyer of warmth and love, clouds which cover the sun and moon from us and what makes the land infertile. It's winter itself, but also a glacial period, and a sign that nature is out of harmony. We have winter because of the technical layout of our orbital pattern around the sun and distance it moves from it. However, this does not explain why the fact that the earth is closest to the sun during winter and furthest from the sun during summer. Or why such seasons we have did not occur at the time of the dinosaurs. Look at mythology and even fairy tales. Notice how the symbol of SNOW and WOLVES appear to represent what I've mentioned here.    

These are websites of interest:
Ice Age Now
Climate Cooling
Fimbulvetr