Of all of the meanings that have been assigned to the winter holidays -- be they Christian, Jewish, cultural, pagan, secular, whatever -- what has come to be, for me, the most meaningful aspect of this season is the solstice.
Autumn is a lovely but difficult time of year for me, living as I do in the Northwest. Days become appallingly short as we move through November and into December, and when the gloom of cloud cover and rain is added to the mix, what we end up with at times is going literally for days without seeing the sun.
It is -- and I really can't come up with a better word to describe it -- rather a bummer.
And it seems it wasn't just a bummer for modern-day residents of the Northwest. Cultures all over the world, including Pacific Northwest Native Americans, have celebrated the winter solstice for centuries -- perhaps millennia -- as the time of the rebirth of the sun, and the return of light to the world.
I've posted the Northwest Native American Raven myth for the past couple of years at this time of year, but Northern Exposure tells the story far better than I ever could, so without further ado:
As I write this, I'm looking out my window onto fresh snowfall. Everything is absolutely silent, absolutely peaceful, absolutely pristine, and absolutely beautiful.
Happy Solstice.