The winter solstice happened at precisely 12.04pm. Today was the shortest day, and tonight will be the longest night of the year. In the next few days it will be possible to discern the slight shift at dawn, where not only will the sun rise earlier, but it will be seen to be moving East along the horizon again, towards the spring equinox!
This indeed is cause for excitement and just as our ancestors, the ancient people of this land, celebrated wildly in much the same way that we do now, with gifts of community and joyful merriment, I think that, more than any other point in our modern calender, this is the time when we feel most acutely, those same urges for celebration that they felt and although our focus is different now, we still share a sense of relief and anticipation, after the long months of darkness. The cold and damp weather will continue for some months to come, but it's not the temperature that is the problem here! At this time of midwinter, we are all still celebrating, in one way or another, the return of light from darkness, or in more primal terms, the birth of the sun. We can start getting on with things soon!
As always, looking deep into nature, when everything around us seems decayed and lifeless, when energy is low, and nothing appears to be growing, the first stirrings of something new are twitching into life beneath the ground. Though we cannot see the new shoots yet, those seeds and bulbs and tubors, which have lain dormant through winter, and which have stored their energy within the darkness, within themselves for all this time, are now being nudged awake in readiness for the new surge of creativity which the sun will bring with the longer days of spring. The sap will start to rise soon.
This is what I celebrate now. An acknowledgment of the creative power of darkness, and an awakening into the start of another cycle and the potential of all that it holds.
Happy Solstice!!
