November is a special month, especially for families practicing Waldorf education. One of our favorite seasonal traditions is the lantern walk, where we light up the darkness with real candles and create a sense of togetherness. We’ve been lucky to experience this tradition on different continents, and each time it’s a reminder of the beauty of the light and togetherness that carries us through the darker months.

Since we have experienced the lantern walk on different continents—it also means experiencing it at different times of the year. It’s quite a different feeling to join a lantern walk in the Southern Hemisphere, where you can sit on warm grass and the night feels more like summer than the start of winter. But in both places, the darkness settles in deeply, and the light, along with the feeling of being together, makes me love this Waldorf tradition.

Even for a baby or toddler, the lanterns are magical. Theo Vilje started walking around our garden with his self-painted jar and a real candle when he was just 20 months old. We always used real light, helping him to light it safely. It’s always felt like a beautiful thing to experience. When he was a baby, we carried him—and even then, he was excited by the bright colors and glowing lights.

Preparing for Christmas

After the lantern walk, we usually spend a few weeks focused on Christmas themes. We sing songs about gnomes (Norwegian nisser), and we explore how ice works. In Cambodia, it wasn’t cold of course, but we froze things and brought them outside to see how fast they would melt. We did the same indoors in Norway when Theo Vilje was a baby—for the sensory experience it gave him.

We also prepare our Advent calendar, which is always made from what we have, depending on where in the world we are. One year we used tape and Velcro, another year toilet paper rolls. Theo Vilje has always been part of the process—creating it and hanging it somewhere. It usually holds pictures of food or books, and after he gets the little picture, he hangs it on our homemade tree, always made of a combination of Velcro and tape. He usually takes them all down again several times, so by Christmas we’re often missing 3–5 pieces. But that’s part of the fun. It’s a great activity for little hands and also a good way to practice balance and movement by getting up and stretching.