Pine Forest School is a community that embraces festival life. We come together to celebrate the turning of the seasons, to find joy and meaning in diverse cultural traditions, and to strengthen our connections to each other and to this world. Our festival life always nourishes both our community spirit and our sense of the seasonal rhythms – it is a treasured part of our days together! While some cultural festivals are celebrated as a part of a specific grade’s curriculum, other festivals take place as schoolwide events. For those new to Waldorf traditions, below is a brief description of festivals that take place within the larger school community.
The Rose Ceremony is always how we begin and end our years – it is an event that marks the transition from one stage of life to another. It recognizes the beginning of a new journey for all of our students, with much celebration and reflection especially for our 1st and 8th graders. We begin the year with our 8th graders welcoming our 1st graders with a rose, and we come full circle at the end of the year with our 1st graders passing along a rose to our graduating 8th graders. Our 8th graders guide our 1st graders during the ceremony. It is our way of celebrating the beauty and growth of our students as well as marking the passage of time and change within each student. Our Kindergarten students cross the rainbow bridge at the completion of kindergarten into the warm embrace of their first-grade teacher.
On September 29th of each year, Waldorf schools around the world come together in celebration of the first major festival of the year –Michaelmas is a traditional Waldorf festival that is celebrated as the summer warmth and light dwindle. As we begin to face the challenges of the darker season ahead, the Festival of Strength and Courage reminds us to find our own strength and courage to overcome fears in our lives. Typically, the day is celebrated with a school-side pageant followed by a field day of games requiring us all to bring our strength and courage.
Lantern Walk occurs each year on or near November 11th. We celebrate by honoring the gentle warmth and love brought to the world by Martin of Tours. Legend tells us that. Martin of Tours was a gentle and unassuming man who upon discovering a poor beggar, took his own coat, tore it in half, and covered the shivering beggar from the cold. The festival calls us to shine our inner light to others as the darkness of the season grows stronger.
Walking the Winter Spiral is a Waldorf tradition that is celebrated as the days grow their darkest. Each class walks the Winter Spiral together, with the children taking turns to quietly carry an unlit candle along a spiral evergreen pathway leading to a single lit candle at its center. As each candle is illuminated, it is brought outward and placed along the spiral- expanding the light and shining brightly together for those that follow. It is a reminder that within each of us is our own light and beauty- so that we may move forward in the darkest season ahead, radiating our gifts with one another, and contributing to the light.
This is our school’s spring celebration. It is meant to be inclusive for all living on our Earth, celebrating the health-giving rhythms of the year and bringing attention to the efforts toward sustainably honoring our planet. Bringing together several spring traditions, we gather, play, sing, and dance as our whole school community unites in celebrating the renewal of life and the passing of winter. All families are invited to join festivities to watch students sing, dance the maypole, and enjoy spring activities.