“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs - as if to say, "Well done. Well done, everyone. We're halfway out of the dark." - Kazran Sardick, Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol
The Wheel brings us now to the darkest part of the year, to the moment when the axial tilt of our world brings the northern hemisphere to its farthest point from our sun. The Winter Solstice will happen at 12:30 am Eastern Time this Thursday (Dec. 22nd). It will be the year's shortest day, and longest night. On that day, the sun will rise to its lowest elevation, and burn its weakest. As it did during the Summer Solstice (which is happening now, for our friends below the equator) the sun will seem to stand still for that moment.
It's an astronomical waypoint of our year, recorded and regarded throughout our history. It's had many names, and worn the guise of many celebrations, but Neo-Pagans know it most commonly by the old Germanic name.
Yule.
Read on . . .
"When Adam saw the day gradually diminishing, he said, 'Woe is me! Perhaps because I sinned, the world around me is growing darker and darker, and is about to return to chaos and confusion, and this is the death heaven has decreed for me.' He then sat eight days in fast and prayer. But when the winter solstice arrived, and he saw the days getting gradually longer, he said, 'Such is the way of the world,' and proceeded to observe eight days of festivity." -Talmud Avodah Zarah, 8a
Ancient peoples across the globe noticed "the way of the world" long before there were written words to record it. At the 5,000-year-old Newgrange site, in County Meath, Ireland, a narrow opening is positioned so that the rising sun on the Winter Solstice floods the interior with light, while the setting sun illuminates the large passage-tomb at nearby Dowth. At the ancient cemetery Carrowkeel in County Sligo, "Cairn G" is aligned so that the moon shines through a small opening at the Winter Solstice. Near Dorset, UK, the ancient ceremonial route known as the Dorset Cursus is arranged so that, to anyone standing in the western earthworks, the setting sun on the Winter Solstice descends straight into a nearby barrow. And of course, Stonehenge has alignments with the Solstice, as do dozens of smaller markers and stones across the British Isles.
The great earthworks at Poverty Point, near my childhood home in Louisiana, contain alignments with the solstices, as does the 3,000-year-old Cahokia Mounds Site, in south-western Illinois. The ancient Hopewell tradition left solstice alignments across the Midwest, particularly at the High Banks Earthwork near Chillicothe, Ohio. The Pueblo peoples were particularly attentive to celestial alignments, and at the Casa Malpaís site near Springerville, Arizona, the rising Midwinter sun illuminates an altar on the west wall. At Ute Mountain Tribal Park, in Colorado, the Hopi shrine called the Butterfly Panel is an intricate Winter Solstice marker, and the nearby irregular cliffs create a "shadow effigy" on the Winter Solstice, forming the clear figure of a Bear.
"It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned." - Boris Pasternak
They marked this night, from time immemorial, because it was the longest night, falling in the midst of the cold of Winter. They marked this night, because it seemed, every year, like the end of the world. The sun was leaving - and in the dark and the cold, there always comes a fear that it might never come again. So they gathered together to stand against the darkness. They feasted, lit fires and candles, and did their best to call back the departed sun.
Germanic peoples burned the Yule log through the long night. The Kalash people of Pakistan marked this night (Chawmos) with ritual purification, festivals and bonfires. Scandinavians, following a tradition called Lussevaka, also stayed up all night to protect their homes from evil - and its traditions filtered down into the modern, candle-happy Saint Lucia's Day. Baltic peoples lit candles and kept a fire burning for Ziemassvētki. And every Christmas season, Western nations still light luminaries and string lights in Midwinter, even if they no longer quite remember why.
“A new year is unfolding – like a blossom with petals curled tightly concealing the beauty within.” - unknown
And in the morning, the sun rose. The longest night always gave way to a new day. Ancient people often saw this, not too surprisingly, as the start of the year, as well. Old traditions say you are "one year older" at the Chinese Dongzhi festival, where families gathered and feasted on Midwinter. Saxons called this night Modranicht, "Mother's Night", and Asatru preserves it as the first of the twelve days of Yule that start the New Year. The Slavic festival Karachun called this night the "death of the old sun", and a new sun was believed to rise the next morning.
The Babylonian Zagmuk festival marked a new year, celebrating Marduk's victory over darkness. The Hopi marked the Winter Solstice with a ritual called Soyalangwul, and believed it began another turn of the Great Wheel and the return of the Kachina. In the Southern Hemisphere, where the Winter Solstice comes in June, the Mapuche of Southern Chile marked the Solstice as We Tripantu, the start of their year, while the Inti Raymi festival of the Inca brought a new year to the Andes.
"It is the morning of my birth, the first of many. / The past lies knotted in its sheets asleep. / Winds blow, flags above the temple ripple. / Out of the darkness the earth spins toward light. / I feel a change coming." - Awakening Osiris
(The Egyptian Book of the Dead), translated by Normandi Ellis
And as time when the world turned back toward light, Midwinter was a popular time in myths and legends for the birth of gods and heroes. In Ancient Egypt, Horus was born on the Winter Solstice - and, until Mary and Jesus, Isis and Horus were the widely revered mother and child of the season. The Latvian Ziemassvētki festival celebrated the birth of the supreme god Dievs on this day. This was also the day Dionysus was born from the earth, and the day the harvest-goddess Demeter gave birth to Persephone - who, by marriage to Hades, would one day go to the Underworld and back.
The Welsh hero Pryderi was born at the Solstice. Mithras, carrying a dagger and a torch, sprung from a rock at Midwinter. By some accounts, King Arthur was born on this day. And it was around this date, of course, that the Christians set the birth of Jesus.
"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come."
- Chinese proverb
In the diary about the December moon, I wrote about the long associations of evergreens of various kinds with celebrations of the Winter Solstice. Even in the dead of winter, they remained green and alive, and were thus symbols of hope for the continuity of life, even in the darkest times.
The Germanic peoples decorated their homes with boughs of evergreens, as did the Romans before them. The Norse decorated trees, and brought them into their homes. Wreaths of holly were given as gifts among the Romans for Saturnalia in late December. And that most revered evergreen plant, the mistletoe, has likewise had a long association with both the older Solstice celebrations and the later Christmas holiday.
In some Neo-Pagan traditions, an Oak King and Holly King battle for control throughout the year. Midwinter marks the peak of the evergreen Holly King's rule. After this, he will fade until the Oak King rises, upsets him, and presides over Midsummer. Some sources claim the red-garbed Holly King as a source for our image of Santa Claus, but his true pedigree is uncertain. While it's a dear tradition among many Pagans, there's some evidence that it's a relatively modern one.
"The sun has not yet set for all time." - Titus Livius
Much is made of the Mayan calendar, and the supposed end of a "Great Cycle" next year on the Winter Solstice, that will - depending on who you talk to - be either a cataclysm or an awakening. While it's true that next year's Solstice happens to mark the end of a significant cycle in the calendar, the interpretation of that as some time of world-shaking change is off-base. The current B'ak'tun (a cycle of approximately 394 years) does, in fact, end next year. This is the 13th B'ak'tun since the Long Count's beginning in 3114 BC, and while the prior world (the third) ended after 13 B'ak'tuns, there's no reason to think the Mayans believed this one would. For them, reaching the end of a B'ak'tun would have been a party, not a Roland Emmerich film. And inscriptions have been found referencing Long Count dates far beyond our own - including one all the way out in 4772 AD - so don't cancel next year's New Year's Eve plans just yet.
Connected to the Mayan misconception are theories about supposed "grand alignments" scheduled for next Solstice, but those are just as bogus. There is nothing lining up next year that isn't lining up this year. Our sun moves through the signs of the Zodiac in a great cycle of over 25,000 years. Currently, our Winter Solstice position is in Sagittarius, back-stepping into Scorpio. Because of the position of those constellations, the Winter Solstice puts the sun into alignment with the so-called "galactic equator" each year. We are, in effect, passing through the plane of the Milky Way - but we've been doing that all your life. The whole process takes about a thousand years, and the most precise alignment with the equator of our galaxy happened some eleven years ago, in 1998.
Our ancestors once feared the Winter Solstice was the end of the world, but it wasn't - not for them, and not for us.
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” - Hal Borland
The Winter Solstice is our long, dark night. It is the deepest part of Winter, when we are as far from the bright and green world of Summer as we can be. That distance affects us - emotionally, physically, spiritually. We have, since time immemorial, countered that with celebration, with family and feasting and lights. We have been joyful in the darkest night, because we are not alone. We are not doomed.
And we are halfway out of the dark.
Blessed Be.