Winter Solstice

I have long preferred the quiet of the Winter Solstice to the noise and chatter of Christmas.  Although the two occasions have for centuries been intertwined and sometimes indistinguishable from one another, I like to consider them separately.

Years ago, and for several years running, dear friends Jim and Lois celebrated the solstice with Pete and me.  It all began one December when we met for dinner on what happened to be the date of the Winter Solstice.  Having enjoyed such a good time, we determined that we should do it again.  Mindful of how often we plan on doing things and then somehow forget to follow through, we vowed to again meet for dinner on the Summer Solstice.  As Jim said that night, "Well, that's the long and the short of it."  And so began our tradition.

Jim and Lois were in charge of Winter Solstice, which meant that they had to pick the place, make the arrangements, and pick up the check.  Pete and I did the same for Summer Solstice.  For the several years that we enjoyed this tradition, we were always raising the bar.  Although we began with dinners at local restaurants, our adventures eventually led to an overnight at an inn in Vermont one June and a limousine ride to NYC to see the Paul Winter Consort at St. John's Cathedral one December.  Had Pete survived, I suppose we might now be celebrating on a beach in Hawaii or seeing the Northern Lights in Finland.

When I was teaching, I engaged my Creative Writing classes in a poetic celebration of the Solstice.  There was music, food, poetry, and good will.  I remember one year giving them pieces of obsidian I'd gathered in Santa Fe.  We held our stones above our heads and stared into the mystical light that shone within.  It was all pagan and new-agey and really, really nice.

The word solstice itself comes from the Latin sol stetit, literally "sun stands still," which recognizes that for approximately six days in June and again in December, the sun appears to rise and set at more or less the same point on the horizon, appearing to stand still in the sky.  For the people of the old world, the solstices effectively divide the year in two, a dark half and a light half; six months of waxing sun and six months of waning.  The points where intersection occur . . . have always been recognized as mysterious, shadowy, uncertain times, when the conviction that the sun would return becomes doubtful, and when the gates between worlds stand ajar.  At these times the coming and going of other-worldly beings, communications between the dead and the living, happen all the more easily . . . 


I will testify that, beginning yesterday, coincidence has been more apparent in my daily activities, and my dreaming has seemed somewhat prophetic.  I choose to believe that those gates are indeed ajar, and I am paying close attention to what wisdom I can gather from the light and the darkness.

And if all of that sounds like phony-baloney to you, look at it this way:  from this point on, the days will be getting longer.  How can you not be in love with that?