Winter solstice officially takes place at 12:47 pm, Monday, December 21st. The solstice signifies different things to different people. It is considered the first day of Winter, the beginning of the winter season. It is also the shortest day and longest night of the year.
We have noted the solstice many ways over the years. As a kid, it was always just the first day of Winter. An exciting time, and quite often, the first day of the Christmas school holiday.
Later on, while exploring different theologies and beliefs, we discovered that Solstice had a spiritual meaning to many folks. We started celebrating the solstices and equinoxes and the natural rhythms of the earth. Not necessarily as a religious experience, but as a recognition of those rhythms. I spent most of my waking life out of doors and felt very attuned to nature’s changes. I meditated daily and followed my own spiritual path. I felt a part of the earth.
Some years we invited friends over for a big bonfire, snacks, drinks…a big party outside. Other years, we hosted a Solstice dinner with the family. In fact, the solstice dinner evolved into the Christmas dinner that we host now. Two dinners in one week was just a little too much.
The last few years, probably more like eight, we haven’t really celebrated solstice, as in the past. I’ve spent too much time inside at a desk. We lost sight of the things that really made us happy and that made us feel at One with all. In fact, at least one year, we forgot all about it. Other years, we noted, the night before or day after, “Hey, did you know solstice…”
I think that in these past two years, we have had a great awakening. I’ve begun to re-discover the things that I love to do, and to pursue those things again. Over the past year, I blogged about much of the things that I enjoy and those re-discoveries, such as my garden, landscaping, building things with hand tools, writing, art and learning new things.
Solstice is a re-birth. The sun and its light have been waning every day since September. Once Halloween rolled around, there has been, and always will be, more darkness than light to each day. We go to work or school in the dark, drive home in the dark, and our outside activities are limited by the amount of daylight left each day. Finally, the solstice arrives. The first day of Winter. Old man winter has barely cast his icy breath over our world. There are many weeks yet to come of ice and snow and deep winter is still ahead. And Yet…The sun is already on its return path. Each day from now on, the day grows a little longer, a little brighter. Before the solstice, we were heading into both the dark and the Winter. Solstice reminds us that although the winter still has yet to come upon us, the sun and warmth are on their way back.
This year, we are going to recognize and celebrate, in our own small way, the end of the darkness and return of the sun. Tonight is the last night that the sun is still waning. Tonight, I’ll let the fire in the woodstove die out, and prepare a special log for the morning. We will light a special candle at our advent table, a light to carry us through the final darkness until the light returns tomorrow. In the morning, to symbolize the re-birth of the sun and the new year, we’ll re-light the fire in the woodstove with the flame from our Solstice/advent candle. In reality, the darkness will carry through until the calendar new year for us. We’ll spend the Christmas season, warm and safe in our den, sharing food and gifts with family and friends. And when 2010, the new year, arrives, we will come through on the other side.
Happy Solstice to all of you, my readers, my old friends, my new friends, my family. Tomorrow, the sun, still pale and weak, and undoubtedly cold, returns.
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