2025 Life Logs, Day 355: Winter Solstice and Revels
Date: Sunday, December 21, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 47, Low 23 degrees F
Location: At the Sheraton Commander Cambridge
This ‘darkest day’ was spent reveling in Cambridge. As we have done for many, many years, Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, Ollie and I headed to Cambridge this afternoon to attend the 2025 Midwinter Revels at the Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus. This year, as in the past two years, Jed’s mother Marti drove down from Maine, and his brother Toby and Toby’s significant other , Stephanie, flew in from Portland, Oregon, to meet us at the theatre. And this year, Marti’s brother John joined us. So, this annual trek to Cambridge to Revels is becoming a growing family tradition.
This year’s production was A Scandinavian Story for Christmas, inspired by Gregory Maguire’s Matchless. The blend of storytelling, joyous music, and song and dance is the perfect way to celebrate the darkest day and usher in the new year. Shouting “WELCOME YULE” together with everyone in the theatre and then dancing from our seats to the lobby with everyone in the theatre holding hands is always so much fun. Since we actually attended on solstice this year, all of us were greeted in the lobby at intermission with prosecco to make a toast to the new year. I think this Revels was my favorite to date.
And as we did last year, afterwards we had a wonderful Indian dinner at The Maharaja in Harvard Square. Then, just as we did last year, we made our way to the Sheraton Commander for a nightcap in their bar before heading up to our rooms for the night. The dinner and overnight stay is Marti’s Christmas gift to us all, and what a wonderful gift it is.
