The Winter Solstice - December 22, 2011

Winter Solstice Meditations – December 21, 2011

Call me a pagan, but, to me, the Winter Solstice marks the most significant part of the holiday season. It has signified hope for the future for many cultures throughout the ages. It is no coincidence that winter religious holidays coincide, quite consistently, with the Solstice. This year, in our home, we’ll be celebrating tomorrow’s Solstice quietly with our little Christmas tree lights, window candles and Menorah all going at the same time to remind us that, finally, with the onset of winter, the sun is coming back.

To wax technical for a moment, the Winter Solstice occurs exactly when the axial tilt of the Earth’s polar hemisphere is farthest away from the Sun that it orbits. In other words, Winter Solstice occurs on the shortest day and longest night of the year.

Several years running we had a Winter Solstice party here at our house. Everyone was assigned a culture’s rites and celebrations to describe for the rest of us. I always chose Druids and stories about mistletoe. I think that’s because Sir James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (aka mistletoe) has always drawn me in.

For many of us, equipped with electric lights, a good heating system (when the power stays on) and also a relatively new essential, the Internet, the changing of the seasons may have little significance beyond gratitude that the days are getting longer. How often have you heard, “I hate these short days!”

But in ancient times, the sun’s progress through the seasons was an important component of survival. Astronomical events controlled the mating of animals, sowing of crops and metering of winter reserves between harvests. So, at the Winter Solstice, when the days finally began to grow longer, people celebrated in many different ways. Various cultural mythologies and traditions have emerged around it. Many of these rites and customs have made their way through the ages to our own celebrations.

Of course, Christmas, with its religious services; music, both sacred and secular; elaborate decorations; and commercialism dominates our contemporary culture here in the United States. Now, in many places, it starts right after Halloween, skips right over Thanksgiving, and continues until the New Year.

But, along with Christmas, cultures around the world celebrate at the time of the Solstice in many different ways. Hanukkah, The Festival of Lights, commemorates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd Century, BCE. The eight-day lighting of the Menorrah symbolizes this event. In ancient Greece and Rome the Solstice was celebrated with the Saturnalia, a time of revelry and feasting. In the Inca Empire they celebrated with the Inti Raymi, or Festival of the Sun. (In Machu Picchu there is still a large column of stone called an Intihuatana, or “hitching post of the sun.”)In the Persian calendar, Shab-e-chelleh is celebrated on the eve of the first day of winter, when family and friends get together. In Scandinavia, a girl dressed as St. Lucia, with a wreath of candles around her head, “brings the sun back.” The Druids celebrated the Celtic Midwinter with ceremonies involving rites with mistletoe. During the Viking Age, there were celebrations while the Yule logs burned, sometimes for 12 days (“The Twelve Days of Christmas”).

No matter how people observe the Winter Solstice, it marks a time of hope and celebration.