Thursday December 21 marks the winter solstice this year.
The solstice has been honored and celebrated for millenia by cultures all over the world -- the ancient Egyptians, Celts, Persians, and Norsemen just to name a few -- as the birth of the new year and the return of the sun.
There many sources for histories of solstice traditions, one of my favorites being this one. It's fascinating to read about how ancient solstice traditions originated, and how they have been co-opted and assigned new meanings in modern times.
But for today, rather than going into any detail about the origins of the midwinter holiday currently known as Christmas, I'm simply going to re-tell my own personal favorite winter solstice myth, which is a story from Pacific Northwest Native American tradition.
In the beginning, the world was in darkness.
A powerful and wealthy chief owned the sun. He kept it hidden away in a locked box. The Raven grew tired of the darkness, and decided to take action. He went to the chief's house, and after observing the scene from a perch high in a tree, he saw that the chief had a daughter and that the box containing the sun was kept inside the house.
When the chief's daughter went to get water from the stream, Raven turned himself into a spruce needle and floated into her basket of water. When she drank from it, she swallowed the needle and became pregnant, and soon gave birth to a baby boy.
The chief was obliging and kind to the new baby, and spoiled him. Nothing was denied his grandson, and Raven was very mischievous and took full advantage of the chief's indulgence.
The only thing the chief denied his grandson was to play with the box of daylight. But Raven became very good at throwing fierce tantrums. The chief grew weary of the scenes and finally one day acquiesced to baby Raven. Raven snatched the sun from the box and darted out of the smoke hole in the ceiling with it. Until this time, Raven was white, and the trip through the smoke hole made him black, as he is today. With a flick of his head, Raven shot the sun high into the first morning light of the land, and so gave the light back to the world.
Happy Solstice.