Tuesday, December 21st, marks winter solstice, the day with the fewest hours of daylight here in the Northern Hemisphere, and consequently, the longest night of the year.
The word “solstice” comes from “stands still,” because for a few days around the winter and summer solstices, the sun seems to stand still in its apparent migration from the southern sky to the northern sky and back over the course of the year. (“Apparent” because it’s not the sun moving, but the tilt in earth’s axis as it rotates around our giant source of heat and light–the sun–that causes that seeming solar movement.)
For many of us, the short days and long nights bring a kind of existential discomfort and dread, something deep in our cells that harks back to the days before electric lighting, when our lives were entirely shaped by the coming and going of natural light.
No wonder that our major winter holidays all feature light in some form, whether Christmas lights or Chanukah menorahs, the candles of Kwanzaa, or the Hindu Diwali festival of lights (although Diwali fell in late October this year).
In this time of literal darkness, we need light to remind us that our hemisphere will turn back toward the light, and that spring and green will return. With the Omicron variant of COVID, continuing political and social divisiveness, racism taking violent and deadly forms, and our climate in meltdown, we need signs of light and hope to ameliorate the figurative darkness weighing on us all.
One of my favorite traditions of lighting the darkness at this time of year comes from southern New Mexico, where Richard and Molly and I lived for seven years: luminarias, little candles sitting on a bed of sand and nestled in lunch-box sized paper bags. Traditionally, luminarias are lit on Christmas Eve, to light the way of the holy family to the stable. The fragile lights burn all night long, guttering out as dawn comes, signaling the turn toward longer days and shorter nights. (In northern New Mexico, they’re called farolitos.)
We adapted luminarias to our winter solstice celebration, one of two big parties we held each year. At the celebration of Richard’s life, Molly and I supplied luminaria-makings, and guests decorated the bags with messages for Richard and placed them around “Matriculation,” his sculpture in the Salida Sculpture Park.
I still have some of those decorated luminaria bags, which I re-use year after year. They remind me of the outpouring of love from our community as Richard, Molly and I journeyed with his brain cancer, and after his death. Our friends and family truly lit our way, and I am grateful.
In this dark season, ten years after Richard died, I am turning toward the light in another way, engaging in a mindful “divestiture” (in the apt words of my playwright friend, DS Magid). I’m working at freeing myself of literal and figurative stuff I’ve been carrying with me, lightening my load as I move on.
That means finding new homes for books, beds, and other possessions; sorting through the boxes of Richard’s archives I’ve moved from place to place to place and picking out what I think Molly might want someday; and also taking a close look at my mental and emotional stuff, working to let go of habits, expectations, fears and misperceptions that don’t serve me.
It’s not easy to let go–especially of books!–but it is freeing. And that feels right for me now.
As the Northern Hemisphere turns toward the light, we can each bring light to our own worlds, at least metaphorically. For inspiration, here’s singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer’s song, “Lean in to the Light.”
Winter Solstice blessings to you all!
