Category Archives: Solstice

Jan 03 2015
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Christmas, Solstice

There is a Light and It Never Goes Out

St Genevieve

NINTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
St. Genevieve’s Day

We are in the midst now of a more contemplative period within the Twelve Days of Christmas. Yesterday we remembered St. Macarius, or St. Macaroon the Confectioner, and tomorrow we remember a few other saints (four of them, to be exact). Today, though, this Ninth Day of Christmas is given to the Feast of St. Genevieve, who is sacred to Paris, where she lived in the fifth century as a nun. She saved the city from an attack by Attila and his Huns in 451. This she did through fasting and prayer, encouraging the residents of the city to join her. And around 475, she founded Saint-Denys de la Chapelle in Paris, which stands today as part of the Basilica of St. Denis.

There are no particular customs associated with the Feast Day of St. Genevieve, nor this Ninth Day of Christmas (as well as the day that follows) and my theory is that this more contemplative time within the Christmas revels is here by design. We need some time for quiet and for reflection, and the most proper way to celebrate this Ninth Day of Christmas, I think, is with stillness and candlelight. St. Genevieve is another of the midwinter saints typically associated with light: she is often seen holding a candle, and the story goes that the devil time and again would blow out her candle as she went to pray at night, so as to thwart her. Genevieve, however, was able to relight her candle without need of flint or fire. And so she is another of the light bearers in midwinter’s darkness. Thirteen days on the other side of the solstice, already light is increasing as we begin the journey toward summer’s warmth once more in the Northern Hemisphere. The light of St. Genevieve promises to never be snuffed by the darkness.

 

Image: St. Genevieve by an unknown artist, 17th century. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

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Dec 21 2014
4 Comments
Solstice

The Longest Night

Snow Fields

Tonight at 6:03 PM here in Lake Worth, which is Eastern Standard Time, comes the Winter Solstice. But you don’t need a precise moment in time so much as a sense of wonder and a celebratory spirit to mark this longest night. The longest night is accompanied, by definition, by the shortest day.

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their home with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshines blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us––listen!

So goes “The Shortest Day,” a poem by Susan Cooper that is central to the Christmas Revels each year in Boston. Seth and I got to attend one year when we spent Christmas with his family in Maine. It was a matter of pure serendipity that we happened to be at the Revels on the night of the solstice. It was the year of their Scottish Revels theme, and it was an incredibly special way to welcome Yule. Be that as it may, I think my favorite way to welcome the season is the way Seth and I welcome it now, and I don’t know if it’s our own tradition or if anyone else does the same, but here it is: We take what is left from last year’s Christmas tree, which has been quietly resting in a corner of the garden, and with it we build a fire to bring light to this longest night. Our celebration is outdoors in a copper fire bowl in the back yard, but this is Lake Worth, where our nights are generally mild, even this time of year, and even if there is a chill in the air, the fire is there to warm us. In more northern places, a fire with last year’s Christmas tree could be built in the fireplace. It is, to us, a sacred way to mark the passing years and to honor the trees that bring us such joy each Christmas. So much more honorable than tossing the tree at the roadside for the trash pickup.

It is this night that really welcomes in the Christmas season for us. We will sit by our fire with those who will join us and we will pass around something warm to drink, most likely St. Bernardus or Baladin Nora, two wintry spiced ales, or maybe some mulled wine. I think the spice is important, for ginger, cloves and cinnamon light fire within; so outside so inside. In the house, this year’s tree will be illuminated. We bought it just two nights ago at the tree lot at Yamato Road and US-1, from the same people we’ve been buying our tree from for years and years. They remember us, we remember them, we see them once each year and it is part of the ritual.

You can take part, too, even if you don’t have last year’s Christmas tree. Light a fire, or light a candle if you don’t have a place to light a fire, bring some light of your own to this longest night of the year. These are busy days, I know, but I guarantee you a quiet ritual like this will find and occupy a place in your memory for a long time, whereas the rest will fall by the wayside. Tonight also happens to be the Fourth Sunday of Advent, in which we light all four candles in the round of our advent wreath. Three purple candles and one rose: all four candles are lit and that signifies that Christmas, the old welcome guest, is soon to be with us.

And so raise your glass with us if you care to, or speak a quiet prayer softly to the dark and holy night. Light, now, begins its gradual return. Happy Midwinter. Welcome Yule.

 

Image: Snow Fields (Winter in the Berkshires) by Rockwell Kent. Oil on canvas, 1909. [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]

 

Jun 24 2014
5 Comments
Midsummer, Solstice, St. John's Day

St. John’s Day

St_John_the_baptist_-_Leonardo_Da_Vinci

Solstice celebrations have a long history… all the way back to prehistory, in fact. And you can count on things like this, handed down through the generations, to be fiercely protected. And so it was with people and the early Church as entire empires and city-states began converting to Christianity in those formative years. Old ways persisted a long time and still do, but the early Church opted to rededicate many of these celebrations. The Church placed the birth of Jesus Christ at the winter solstice and the birth of John the Baptist, who prepared his way, at the summer solstice, keeping those solstice celebrations in place but repurposing them to the celebrations we honor today.

Consider the imagery: John is born at Midsummer, just as light begins to decrease. “He must increase, but I must decrease,” we read in John 3:30. Conversely, Christ is born at Midwinter, just as light begins to increase. Again, in John 8:12: “I am the light of the world.” No one knows for sure the exact dates of birth of these two historical figures, but the Church knew what it was doing when it chose these dates, there’s no doubt. The message is a powerful one, especially when you go back to simpler times, before electricity: We were much more attuned to the patterns of increasing and decreasing sunlight in the past.

Most of the Midsummer traditions have to do with St. John’s Eve, which was last night. Still, one tradition is to cut divining rods on this day. Hidden treasures are also thought to reveal themselves on St. John’s Day (perhaps St. Anthony’s influence from earlier in the month?). Explore lonely places, it is said, and there these treasures shall be, awaiting any lucky finder. The magic passes with the day.

St. John the Baptist is unusual in that he is the only saint for which we celebrate his birth (today) in addition to his death (August 29). So you’ll see his name come around again in late summer. St. John is sacred to Puerto Rico, Québec and Newfoundland. He is a patron saint of tailors, innkeepers, and printers like me. It is customary to eat strawberries on his feast day, and in Estonia and Finland, a special St. John’s Day cheese is made, flavored with caraway seeds. Luckily no one has made a tradition of eating the foods that St. John himself is known to have eaten: “And his meat was locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4). Try serving that at your next Midsummer dinner and watch your guests clear out in a hurry.

As with Christmas at the opposite solstice, it is the eve of the feast that is charged with more magic and mystery. And especially so with St. John’s Eve. The fires of people across the planet were blazing last night, lighting the midsummer night, calling down the power of the sun, marking our celebrations across time and geography.

 

Image: St. John the Baptist by Leonardo DaVinci [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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