Thoughts on the Shortest Day

Solstice. At 7 am, I rise in near-darkness and go into the front room. I open the  louvered blinds, and peer out, to the south, at an overcast, dim morning. The weak and greyish light reminds me of the day three months ago when we landed in Reykjavik, where it is now dark all day long. Here, inside the room with me, is a green spruce tree, bare except for hundreds of sparkling tiny lights that have been glowing all night long. I close my eyes and smell its fragrance, and open them to see again its incongruous beauty.

Yesterday, though, was clear, and in the early morning I watched the sun itself trace a low arc behind the trees. I left the house at 1 pm, wanting to do my shopping in the brightest part of the day, but even so, walking down boulevard St-Denis, I could only feel a faint warmth on my face. It’s no wonder we in the north feel bereft now, forgotten.

In spite of science, all my life I’ve thought of the sun as the wanderer. He begins to leaves us in August, becoming as neglectful as a distracted lover, and travels south  to where he is right now – Patagonia perhaps – standing on a mountain peak gazing toward Antarctica. Later today he’ll slowly come down the path he climbed, pack his things, and once again turn his face toward the north.

Northern pagan people spent these weeks in anticipation, and celebrated the solstice with joy.  Because the sun seems to stand still at solstice, the Roman astronomers waited for a few days before definitively declaring its return journey; therefore they placed the date of Christ’s birth on December 25. The clever placement of Christmas, a few days past solstice, conflated the new religion with the existing festival.

Oriens, the Latin word for East, also became the morning star – Venus when seen at dawn — the dayspring, dawn of heaven, even the rising sun itself, and these became epithets for Christ. For weeks we’ve been singing O Dayspring from on high appear, and calling on the brightest and best of the sons of the morning to dawn on our darkness and send us his aid. Christ died and left us, goes the theology, but he returns at Christmas to renew us, and will eventually come again to reign.

I’ve been even less enthusiastic than usual about Advent this year. Anticipation, yes; bringing life and light inside our cold, dark homes, yes — but focusing on my own unpreparedness, forgetfulness, sins and weaknesses, no. Only western Christianity would create a penitential season at a time when people are already depressed and starved for light. But I’m not a pagan, for all my love of the natural world, and my awareness of the way its rhythm beats in my heart, and always has.

What do I believe then, what do I believe? Not in Christ’s return, except metaphorically. I believe in now, and so, I think, did he. I know from experience that times of obscurity are often followed by insight, darkness by light, and that the two are necessary for each other, but that wisdom comes from being observant to this very moment: the weak light, the clarity of ice.  Today that paper-thin edge of duality — that single but two-sided coin — turns its face, but neither one is better than the other. I believe in long journeys, the persistence of love, and the value of endurance: my face in the stinging cold, my feet that want to slip on the ice but find their balance, the sun’s eventual return.