Winter Solstice
Written on the morning of winter solstice — Thursday, December 21, 2023…
My husband and I will celebrate the shortest day of the year and the incremental return of much missed light with our annual winter solstice fire tonight. We’ll bundle up and head out to our backyard spot and ease our down coat-swaddled selves into our camp chairs by an open fire. As is our custom on our solstice celebration, my husband is responsible for having the fire ready, and I am in charge of a festive hot drink. This year we will have hot cider with butterscotch schnapps in our new insulated holiday mugs. Once we’re settled in, it will be time for star-gazing, sharing our thoughts about the current year, and our tentative hopes for the future. We try to keep any fears at bay and focus on gratitude. As the fire starts to die down, I’ll toss in a few slips of paper on which I’ve written what I’d like to let go of and what I hope to let in.
I have come to love this ritual with my husband. Before he came into my life, I didn’t give much thought to the solstice, other than the calendar’s pronouncement that winter had officially begun. Once we started celebrating, I really leaned into the feelings conjured up by this ritual. The stillness, the reflection, and the anticipation helped me feel more attuned with myself. Once I allowed the rhythms of nature to take center stage, rather than my dread of the long winter, the winter solstice signaled the start of my own personal quest to fully embrace the coming months. I began to view the onset of winter as my own personal time for restful hibernation and spiritual restoration. And with that, winter became a verb.
Since my retirement, I have wintered after the solstice in ways that didn’t occur while I was working. I enjoy checking the sunrise and sunset times to remind myself of the growing light that began the day after our late December backyard fire. I choose books to read that deepen the feelings of winter through their seasonal settings and also by the authors' explorations of both the dark and light sides of characters. I examine my own darkness during cold afternoon walks and do my best through deep reflection to release it. On those solitary walks I can imagine the flocks of winter birds leaving the bare trees and soaring high, carrying all my worries up into the late afternoon sky to dissolve into nothing more than a distant flutter. And as each day grows longer, I let the increasing light travel inside me to illuminate visions of spring and intentions for new beginnings.
As the winter months pass, the days will warm, and I’ll shed my heavy coats and boots. I will also find myself shedding the anxieties of the previous year. Embracing the winter solstice is my preparation to create the space in my life for that. Solstice signals it is time to unburden myself of things about the past year that are just that…the past. And I will know that as I continue wintering, my inner landscape has the potential to become as vast as Vermont’s open fields of powdery snow.
Gazing into our solstice fire on this especially cold December evening, I will be reminded that there are patches of new green growth waiting to reveal themselves underneath the wet ground and islands of snow. Along with the growing light, they will be the symbols of promise and possibility. But just for now, on this still night, the earth and I will prepare to winter together, looking forward to emerging with renewed strength – nourished, restored, and energized after our long winter rest.
TO KNOW THE DARK
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
—Wendell Berry
Do you celebrate the winter solstice? Share your rituals in the Comments. And to all of you, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the days of celebration if you celebrate. Whether you celebrate or not, I wish you all an abundance of peace and joy in The Precious Days.
