Winter Solstice: Half-spent was the Night

"Light! More light!" -Goethe

Christmas falls very close to the winter solstice: the shortest day of the year is the 22nd of December.

I have noticed that many Christians seem uncomfortable with the proximity of one of Christianity's holiest days to the ancient, pagan celebration of solstice. "Pagan" elements in the celebration of the Nativity are regarded with deep distrust. Christmas trees, yule-logs, gift-giving, Father Christmas, even the Christmas ham are identified as "heathen" intrusions in an essentially Christian holiday. And this suspicion is not new: in the 17th century Protestants in Britain and the United States banned the celebration of Christmas for its heathen notes (and its idolotrous "trappings of popery.")

Non-Christians also enjoy pointing out the (supposedly) pre-Christian roots of many Christmas traditions, implying that, after all, the "authentic" holiday was pagan, earth-centered, and has survived *despite* Christianity's appropriation of the solstice symbols.


A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities and deploring and avoiding those who 'though they knew God did not glorify him as God...'

I have never understood either of these approaches. What was true and good and beautiful re-Christian pagans is true and good and beautiful always and for all. Or, as Augustine wrote, "truth belongs to the Lord, wherever it is found." The pre-Christian Europeans might have celebrated the return of light in the midst of darkness. But this longing for LIGHT, the joy at light's return--these impulses are fundamentally human and universal. They are the foundation of any religious desire, any quest for truth. They are, in the end, our desire for God. "My soul waits for the Lord," the Psalmist sings, "more than the watchmen wait for the morning. More than the watchmen wait for the morning."

Before the first Christmas both the psalmist and the scop in the dark Germanic woods, both the priest in the Holy of Holies and the ordinary man in the field--all waited with foreboding and longing for the advent of light: literal sunlight in a dark season--but also divine brilliance to pierce the soul's darkness.

In the centuries before Christ the prophets of Israel looked forward to a real incarnation of Light: the "Son" who is dimly suggested by the "sun" in the sky.

The People who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined.

Meanwhile, the fertile imagination of the gentiles waited for the solstice and invented myths to illustrate the same hope: tales of gods who died and rose again--Dionysis, Mithras, Osiris. For us--we are gentiles--Christmas was the day of fulfillment, the day that "myth became fact."

Gentile that I am, I balk at the idea of throwing out the "pagan" elements of Christmas celebration. I have no qualms about celebrating the winter solstice. My Christmas tree is full of light. If these things are partial they have been fulfilled in Christ. If they were pagan, they have been baptized.

Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night

New Look

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Light Leaving

Goodbye to sunshine. Goodbye summer. These days the light goes earlier and earlier and I find myself slowing down, curling in.

I struggle with sorrow every autumn. The final days of Indian Summer are so much more poignant than midwinter--because now midwinter is all before me. The solstice still approaches. Next spring is so far away: another calendar year, hardly even imaginable.
Despite the cold, the dark--I love the seasons. I even love winter, that it forces me to mourn, forces me to confront some of the darkness inside myself, darkness I was able to ignore while the days were hot and bright. When circumstances change, when my life is not easy, so often the veil is suddenly stripped and I find myself again - - weak, selfish, angry, afraid.
Light is leaving this November. There is mist outside today and stillness. The tops of the trees are blurred. I hear crows. On my front porch the squirrels are eating our Halloween pumpkins. I read somewhere that wild animals know when a winter will be particularly long, hard, cold. They feast accordingly.

Announcement!

Earlier this year I was shortlisted for this competition conducted by the Ravenglass Poetry Press.

I am pleased to announce that Ravenglass Press will be publishing my first collection, entitled Blue Wasp, which will soon be available as a kindle edition on Amazon.

Be sure that I will keep you posted on any developments!

Coming Home Again

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-T.S. Eliot “Little Gidding”

Growing up, my parents took us up to Weston, Missouri, each October. We picked pumpkins and looked at the animals at Red Bard Farm and spent the day at Westbend State Park, which sits above the bluffs above the Missouri River.

The trail at the park is a three mile loop; my brother and I rode our bikes around while Mom and Dad walked. Sometimes, if we were feeling particularly strong, David and I would ride around again and catch them up from behind.

This year we took Harriet with us for a second time. Last year she was just a tiny baby, and Devin carried her around the trail in a sling.

This year she isn’t a baby anymore, but though this loss of baby-dom at times makes me unutterably sad, it was delightful to watch her interact with her surroundings with her boundless toddler energy and insatiable curiosity.

For me, going up to Weston is always a lesson in memory and nostalgia, and taking my child to my old haunts adds yet another layer to my experience of the place. This year, as I looked over the bluffs and down the river, the forested landscape pristine, turning gold, I thought about our childhood bike-trip around the Westbend Loop.

Now, I thought, I’ve really come full circle. I have caught my parents up from behind: I have become a mother myself. I’m bound to watch my daughter experience these places that are mine.

There is something rich about moving back to the place where you grew up. Richness and a strange kind of sorrow in watching a new child in your old place. Sorrow because you know you can’t be that child again. Sorrow because your daughter’s childhood is—though *yours* in one sense—in another sense completely inaccessible. Hers.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am so glad to be home, biding here in these familiar parts. Home, I find, is not the dull wasteland I feared it might be. Your house is, after all, your castle and your hometown a country of terrible beauty.

Announcement

And now for an announcement!

Earlier this year I was shortlisted for the Ravenglass Poetry Press Competition.
The competition was judged by John Burnside.

Ravenglass Press is a small press based based in England and edited by Julia Wallis Martin. Every year they publish an anthology highlighting those poets shortlisted in their competition. And, behold! I am one of them!

You can buy the anthology on Amazon UK. For my American friends, there is not, alas, an American addition. But everyone likes getting a package from abroad, yes?

Purchase the anthology by clicking HERE!