Bringing the Light Inside

The cold sun sets earlier and rises later each day. Daylight hours are sparse and the night is long and frigid. The green has long departed from the hardwood leaves which now brown-rustle and skitter around the doorway in the white wind. And Deep Winter’s Night has yet to come.

Imagine the disquiet of early people. Even those attuned to the cycle, the wise ones who had lived many seasons, quailed as the warm vanished and life itself went dead-white and brittle..

And perhaps, a very wise one said – “a festival. Let us celebrate. For we have a fire and we have the warm love our tribe. Let us sing songs of gratitude and praise.”

“So bring in the fir tree and the evergreen; remind us that springtime will soon come again.”*

Ancient light-seekers created stories to explain the cycle. Persephone is visiting Hades. The Winter Katsina has imprisoned the Blue Corn Maiden. Cailleach has stolen firewood from Brighde and warms herself from stone;  do not fear, in spring Brighde will bring the fire back. Mythology paints a picture of balance; the light loses briefly each winter and triumphs in the spring like the Celtic Cailleach-Brighde and the Hopi Blue Corn Maiden’s abduction and escape. Sometimes, like the Persephone/Hades myth, it is an annual agreement struck to allow love to flourish. 

The days start getting shorter in late June, but we don’t notice the “dying of the light,” perhaps until the fall. Then the festivals of light begin. Diwali, celebrated mid-October and mid-November by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs of India, and Newar Buddhists of Nepal, symbolizes spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance."

My first girlfriend, Carolyn, was Jewish and took me to the Kol Nidre service at her reform temple on the eve of Yom Kippur. At fifteen, I don’t know that I grasped the significance of the Day of Atonement, but I was entranced by a thousand candles and the thrice-sung prayer by cantor-congregation call and response, a sotto voce to choral-thunder crescendo. 

Samhain, the Celtic year-end fire-festival that became Halloween was once celebrated dancing around bonfires naked, now we put candles in spookily carved pumpkins.

By the time of the winter solstice, festivals of light are ubiquitous. Soyal, the Hopi winter solstice celebration includes purification rights and firelight prayer. Shaba-e-Yalda, in Iran, is a folk celebration that dates to the celebration of the birth of Mithra an ancient sun god. It is now celebrated by family dinners of fruits and nuts and staying up all night to see the sunrise.

Hannukah, the Jewish festival commemorating the return to Jerusalem and the rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean revolt. One night’s oil lasted for eight days and now one candle is lit each night in the menorah.  There is Jul or Yule in Scandinavia, burning yule logs, now subsumed by St Lucia’s day and those pictures of blond teenage girls with candelabra-crowns of burning white tapers. (That just doesn’t seem like a safe observance choice.)

Christmas is perhaps the ultimate festival of lights. “A star in the East. . . and a light shown round about them. . . the birth of the Savior and the Light.” We may celebrate in December to align with pre-existing winter solstice celebrations, Saturnalia in ancient Rome, Jul in the Germanic world, and Alban Arthuan in the Celtic world, but Christmas is a festival of light.

Some of us in North America and in many places around the world light up evergreen trees in our living rooms, burn candles at dinner and fire up fireplaces even if only a gas flame.

So there are many of different faiths who consecrate light at this time of year. Perhaps we are identifying with our early ancestors trying to drive away the dark when the sun is farthest away. Perhaps we are embracing spiritual light when we gather with family at the darkest time of the year. But it is a time when many strive to see the light in each of us and envision a world where we care for the least advantaged and live in peace. And that ain’t a bad thing.

“Light the candles tonight

Let the fire burn bright

Bring balsam and holly and children’s delight

Love is the magic of Deep Winter’s Night”*

Happy Solstice to All, Light, Joy and Peace to the World

* From song “Deep Winter’s Night” by Alan Cay Culler © 2018