Book of Days

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.]