How to Burn the Year Clear

Cleanse it with fire, my loves.

"Sometimes what’s dead must be burned away to make room for new life. Sometimes you just have to step back and let the brittle bits ignite - but once those flames begin to dance their caustic dance, don’t you dare look the other way. Don’t close your eyes.”

― Cristen Rodgers

We are at the darkest part of the year, friends. Our shortest day is nigh. I always wondered if people in the southern states feel the Winter Solstice as keenly as we do in the North. Our Saturday’s solstice will hang a 19-degree high on the day, that’s a coupling that rather demands notice.

I believe in fire. In its dual destructive and life giving force.

Pagans built fires on the solstice to ward away evil spirits, while others built fires and lit candles to celebrate the eventual return of the sun. The yule log was, in some early Scandinavian villages, an entire tree dragged into the house on the solstice, not for decoration, but for burning over the days until Christmas. The last bit of charred log was kept hidden in the house all year, to ward off lightning, and to light the next yule’s warming blaze so that the year remained unbroken. Your sweet and delicious buche de noël cake is a symbol of that log and its life giving and destructive power. As a treat.

Ten years ago this seasonal darkness lay heavily on top of a personal darkness which became too much to deal with alone. So I threw a Burn Party. Because You know what smells real good as we dance toward the ending of a year? The wafting smoke from the burning ships that brought us here. Viking burials for all that's past, and signal fires for what's ahead.

I called people out to my house in the woods the night before the night before the New Year, with promises of low-key cooking, cheer, and a opportunity to burn things. People came and went, but at some point a few of us braved the wicked sub-zero temps to circle around the fire-pit on my deck. I remember there was a heartbreak in the midst that burned a love note, and someone had been rejected from another publisher and burned that printed out email, there were bad reviews from petulant bosses, snarky blog comments aimed at credibility and integrity, plans however well wrought that never came to fruition, etc.. I burned a piece of paper with the questions about my husband that were always burning in my mind.

We all hoped to set these things free. Freedom through flame. There’s found power in burning something down to the ashes. As explained by The Bloggess, “Carrie Fisher blazed a trail by setting fire to everything blocking her path, to all the debris and overgrowth that stood in her way, leaving open ground behind her that made those of us following behind her so much easier. She blazed and burned and lit the way for others. She lived fully and touched many." Let's be Leia.

Burn Party has happened, in some form, every year since. Even in 2020 when no one was in the house and a few were even there remotely.

It’s never the exact same people, though there are a few loyalists and many repeats, but if you’ve been invited to Burn Party once, you have a tacit invitation to always come back.

Over the years, the assembled have burned many, many things. We’ve smashed watches of former spouses and sprinkled the bits over the flames, we’ve burned business plans, divorce decrees, medical bills, an entire year’s worth of magazines from an under-appreciated writer, photos, unsent letters, and even some bits of a haunted sweater which kept someone under a certain spell. A teacher friend burned 26 things, A to Z, and she still holds the record.

But it is not all regret that goes into the fire.

We burn wishes. We burn intentions. We cast whispered words into the flame, eyes set on the unseeable. We put hopes into motion on that night, sealing deals with ourselves which turn into smoky whisps that wrap into our hair and coats, reminding us later of promises made. Once, we even had a brilliant singer offer a luscious song to the flames.

We burn clear the year. We reconcile our own accounts so that we are free to begin again. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.' Fire does. Fire is.

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

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How To Throw A Burn Party

Paid subscribers get a little help if you want to host a burn on your own!