Winter Solstice

I am sure this puts me firmly in the pagan camp. Well, maybe. At any rate I am one of those people that looks forward to December 21 or 22 every year as this marks the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. For me, a daylight lover, this is my yearly rebirth. The slow descent into the cold, blue, dark of Winter gives way to the promise of Spring. I know, you're saying that Winter has barely begun and you are looking forward to Spring? Dreaming of April are we? Yes and no. I do not hide my dislike for the taskmaster that Winter is - he punishes me with his dry wind from the north pushing me deeper, still deeper into myself until I barely even recognize who I am.

I celebrate that the days of the instrument of darkness that he envelopes me with, come December 22, are numbered. Slowly, even slowly, a minute is added to the span of light here, a second there, and in despair he hurls even more tumult until his death throes consume him in March. Then, hope firmly laid aside in its fulfillment of the crocus blossom, she emerges and my dream becomes reality.

That is what I celebrate on December 21. Not that there is more darkness, but that the sunrise of the next day is a foretaste of the first new day of the New Jerusalem.

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