On days like today, I feel very much like this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the moldering wall,

But at every gust the dead leaves fall,

And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;

It rains, and the wind is never weary;

My thoughts still cling to the moldering past,

But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,

And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;

Thy fate is the common fate of all,

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

 

 

I’m worn, I’m weary, I’m overwhelmed.

And if I’m feelin’ it, you’re probably feelin’ it too. And I don’t have many presents to buy or company to entertain or parties to plan.

One of the reasons I know I feel overwhelmed is that it is so dark. And I mean SO DARK. Since my childhood, every place I have lived has had some reasonable ambient light from a more populated area – sometimes, in the case of the upper west side, too much ambient light. But this year, out here on the north fork, where the only ambient light I get is from the Christmas lights decorating the nativity scene at St. Patrick’s across the street from the parsonage, it’s dark. REALLY REALLY DARK. And the dark closes in, makes days so short – and then when the weather is so weird, it is dreary and un-holiday like.

This dark and dreary thing? Human beings have been feeling like this for as long as there have been human beings.

 

Now there are ASTRONOMICAL REASONS, of course….

Tomorrow is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

Now what happens is kinda cool: this planet is always tilted – about 23 degrees – and that tilt means that as the Earth follows its orbit around the Sun, this hemisphere will be pointed away from the sun, meaning less exposure to the sun, meaning winter. The opposite happens in the summer, of course, but while the warmer weather here makes us wonder sometimes, it is still winter, with sunrise after 7am and sunset at nearly 4:30. And the further north you get, the shorter the day is, until you get to places where there really isn’t any light at all.

Now it happens like clockwork – we can measure it, see it, know it. But us modern types with our fancy equipment take all the mystery out of it – and what a mystery it was.

To fill the space and make sense of this time of darkness, humans have created festivals of light.

Four thousand years ago, the Ancient Egyptians took the time to celebrate the daily rebirth of Ra, the god of the Sun. As their culture flourished and spread throughout Mesopotamia, other civilizations decided to get in on the sun-welcoming action, tying it to their new understandings of agricultural cycles.

The Romans took their celebrations to a new level – Saturnalia was a festival of general merrymaking and debauchery held around the winter solstice. This week-long party was held in honor of the god Saturn, and involved sacrifices, gift-giving, special privileges for slaves, and a lot of feasting. Although this holiday was partly about giving presents, more importantly, it was to honor their agricultural god.

In what we now call Israel, a festival of lights emerged during the Maccabean war as the story of the oil that lasted eight nights was told as proof of God’s favor – the oil would last as proof that light would return.

Far to the north in Scandinavia, the winter solstice was celebrated with feasting, merrymaking, and, if the Icelandic sagas are to be believed, a time of sacrifice as well. Traditional customs such as the Yule log, the decorated tree, and wassailing can all be traced back to Norse origins.

The Celts of the British Isles celebrated midwinter as well. Although little is known about the specifics of what they did, many traditions persist. According to the writings of Pliny the Elder, this is the time of year in which Druid priests sacrificed a white bull and gathered mistletoe in celebration.

Winter festivals were common throughout Europe, and as Christianity spread north, so did the celebration of Christ’s mass, set nine months after the Orthodox belief of a springtime conception – hence Christmas, whose celebrations incorporate many other winter festival elements.

In some traditions of Wicca and Paganism, the Yule celebration comes from the Celtic legend of the battle between the young Oak King and the Holly King. The Oak King, representing the light of the new year, tries each year to usurp the old Holly King, who is the symbol of darkness. Re-enactment of the battle is popular in some Wiccan rituals.

New light. New life. New Year.

We humans have found ways to get through this dark, dismal, dreary time… and still we feel the heaviness, the sadness, the darkness.

When I feel like this, I turn to the poets.

Some might call this cheating… filling a sermon with other people’s words… but sometimes it’s helpful for perspective. The words of the poets often tap into that deep something within us – that thing that’s hard to describe except in metaphor and meter. Poetry helps us approach the difficult, sideways… the words of poets speak to something deep within us. And on these dark days, when we are so full of something we can’t quite name, it is nice to stop, be still, and give thanks that poets can name the unknowable.

 

Like Robert Frost, who wrote this classic poem, about stopping…

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

But sometimes we are afraid of the dark… all its mysteries unknown. I think this is why there are so many festivals of light at this time of year, because we do not know the dark. Wendell Berry offers this advice:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

 

I wonder sometimes what the dark really calls us to do… I know sometimes it just seems to be calling me to nap, to zone out, to hibernate. But what if, as David Whyte suggests, the dark is also calling us to listen?

 

No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with the summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years

listening to those

who had

nothing to say.

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make

itself heard.

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong

to everything

simply by listening.

And the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

Silence and winter

has led me to that

otherness.

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own.

 

 

Let this winter of listening be enough, for the new life I must call my own.

It’s not a surprise that soon after the winter solstice, we celebrate the arrival of a new life – a new light. This bleak midwinter time calls us not just to stop, be still, and give thanks…but to make a change, renew and refresh. In the darkness – that nap I said I wanted? That’s a good thing. Rest… recuperation… hibernation. So we can come out the other side energized for the new life.

Tess Baumberger expresses it this way:

Something has changed in me this winter.

In the past I’ve focused on how long winter is,

How miserable I find it, and how it seems so interminable.

This winter, I find myself thinking instead

That every day, every hour, every minute

Brings us just that much closer to spring.

We all experience wintry times,

When things seem harsh and frozen,

Or muffled by layered shrouds of snow.

It is helpful to remember that each

day that dawns bleakly,

Each night that wraps its cold cloak around our hearts,

Brings us closer to that time of warm and vibrant sun.

It is perhaps helpful to consider that

turning toward spring is an active thing,

The earth which seems so stable

in fact flies quickly through space,

On its path that tilts us ever towards the Source.

So, too, each memory we lay to rest,

Each truth in ourselves that we encounter and accept,

Each wrong act that we forgive, ushers us on towards our renewal.

 

It is in this time of renewal that we celebrate – the birth of new hope, the coming of the light, the triumph of life.

Tomorrow may be the longest night, but before we know it, the darkness of the year will lift and the time of light will grow longer. We may be together now, feeling dark and dreary, tired and overwhelmed. But we are together now, finding comfort amongst each other – finding tenderness and love, finding strength and power of this beloved community.

So let us be embraced by the darkness.

Let joy and sorrow join in the fullness of our living.

Let us stop, be still, and give thanks for the possibilities that await us in the coming year.

And let us pause…and be silent together.

Topics: Holiday Celebration