Celebrating the solstice

Jill Severn

At dinner a few nights ago, a recent high school graduate asked “What’s the solstice? What’s that all about?” She was a smart, hard-working, Advanced Placement student; now she’s working to save money for college. So I gave her a five-minute Solstice 101, and made no comment about this startling gap in her education.

For anyone else who missed learning about the solstice, here’s the deal: as the earth circles the sun, the northern hemisphere tilts gradually toward the sun for half the year, and then away from the sun for the other half. The summer and winter solstices mark the change from one to the other. Starting with the winter solstice, the days grow longer; after the summer solstice on about June 20, the days get shorter again.

Of course there’s far more to know about this celestial phenomenon, and Auntie Google can tell you all about it.

But before we go further, let’s air some complaints about long dark nights, and only half-lit days when the gray sky is so low it’s resting on the tree tops. Every night is a little longer than the night before — a trend that sends a lot of people into involuntary mental hibernation, aka Seasonal Affective Disorder. It isn’t quite depression; it’s just that rotting leaves piled up in the neighbor’s yard inescapably look like mass death. The finality of fall’s end is a reminder of our own, also inescapable fate. That’s not depression, it’s reality.

The winter solstice is the first tendril of renewed light and life. It’s the first day on the way to another growing season, a new, sun-nourished generation of unfolding leaves, flowers and fruit; another generation of baby ducks and baby everything else — and also another year’s worth of both human wisdom and folly.

Even if the pace of change is a barely perceptible few seconds per day, the trend toward light can feel like a rope thrown to someone in the bottom of a well.

That’s why the solstice is worth celebrating, as humans have been doing for the past 5,000 years that we know of. It’s remarkable how accurate those prehistoric folks were in their calculations. They must have had really good schools.

Fixing the date of Jesus’s birth on Dec. 25 might have been an adaptation of prehistoric traditions marking the winter solstice. Three or four days after the solstice would be enough time to convince the skeptical that the light was, indeed, returning, in more ways than one.

Here in Thurston County, our winter solstice is Saturday, Dec. 21, at 1:20 a.m. That’s the moment when the northern hemisphere’s maximum tilt away from the sun shifts toward its tilt toward the sun.

The solstice can be celebrated whenever the spirit moves you, but in my circle, not on the night when Ohio State has a football game. In fact, we’ll probably celebrate a week later.

Some people have traditions about how it’s celebrated; others wing it. Some choose between celebrating the solstice, Hanukah or Christmas; some do two out of three, and I’m guessing there are complicated families who do all three. And some who celebrate altogether different occasions.

Most common, solstice parties involve each participant saying a few words about something meaningful or reading a poem aloud, and lighting a candle. Some involve doing this while gathered around a bonfire.

One critical element is refreshing our awareness of the vastness of the universe, and the miracle of planet earth, full of life, now tilting toward the sun. Another is saluting our prehistoric, ultra-low-tech ancestors who learned to predict this change.

It’s a holiday that’s not about presents, or a menu, or decorations. It’s about hope and anticipation for a new year of growth. And it’s a time to appreciate the delicate balance of the planet we’re spinning around on.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com