Women’s Christmas

How the Stars Get In Your Bones

A Retreat for Women’s Christmas

Sunday, January 4, 2026
10:30 - 12:30
Lunch included

at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church
2427 Church Street
Cross Plains, WI 53528

A suggested donation of $7 will be collected for A21, an organization devoted to ending human trafficking and providing sanctuary and healing for those rescued from slavery

From Jan Richardson, founder of the Sanctuary for Women, we offer to you again a Women’s Christmas Retreat.

About Women’s Christmas

There is a custom, rooted in Ireland, of celebrating Epiphany as Women’s Christmas. Women’s Christmas originated as a day when the women, who often carried the domestic responsibilities all year, took Epiphany as an occasion to celebrate together at the end of the holidays, leaving hearth and home for a few hours of rest and reflection.

Whether your domestic commitments are many or few, Women’s Christmas offers an opportunity to pause and step back from whatever has kept you busy and hurried in the past weeks or months. As the Christmas season ends, this is an occasion both to celebrate with friends, and also to spend time in reflection before diving into what this new year will hold.

About the theme: How the Stars Get In Your Bones

“I am finding it challenging to describe what my questions [about the wise women] have been about. Transformation is the closest word I know, but even this doesn’t quite get at this year’s theme. What I can say is that it involves how we enter into the constant presence of change and how we engage the events, sought or unbidden, that happen to us. It has to do with how we continue to become who we are—a becoming that begins in our marrow, in the crucible where time, intention, accident, and grace work together to keep forming us in the love of God that is the truest part of who we are.

For this year’s retreat, I have gathered up some stories, reflections, blessings, and artwork from other occasions of navigating questions such as these. From the place—and the person—I am now, I am visiting these pieces anew and sharing them here by way of inviting you to contemplate how transformation happens for you. Think of them as being like votive candles: little lights I am offering to remind you of the fire you already carry—the love that lives deep in your bones.” (Jan Richardson)