Solstice, a time of new beginnings

Here we are at the dark end of the year, teetering on that fulcrum where we long for light. It’s a profoundly meaningful time when change is coming but not yet here. We wait and it’s black outside. Many of us get sad; my father confessed he was greatly affected by short days and long nights. According to Merriam-Webster, solstice means “when the sun stands still.” The magnificent stone circle at Stonehenge bookends the solstices in stone: Summer Solstice frames the rising sun, Winter Solstice frames the setting sun.

I love my tiny lit tree

I didn’t pay any attention to solstice when I lived in the city. I knew the word, but it was an abstract concept. When my family moved to Vancouver Island, a friend took us to a privately held solstice celebration.

At dinner recently, I told friends about that night, parking on a remote, dead-end road and the fifteen-minute walk across hard-frozen fields to get to the bonfire and the amazing blaze of light overhead. When you live in the city, it comes as a shock to discover how magnificent and overwhelming the stars are in the country where there are no artificial lights to dim what you see. It was so cold that part of me was miserable, but there was this wonderment of stars in the winter sky to keep looking up at. I was with my husband and our daughter who would’ve been about nine, and my mom, who’d come to spend Christmas with us. My friend guided us in.

The flames on the bonfire were twenty feet high. The only person I knew in the crowd of 200 was the friend who’d brought us; we never would have found the spot without her.

I had the feeling this was a serious pagan ceremony for some of those present. Half a dozen masked figures on stilts enacted a mime. The costumes and masks were stunningly beautiful, all hand-made. I looked at them and thought, these are museum quality. I understood vaguely the mummers were telling the story of the struggle between light and dark. I found the towering figures scary.

The bonfire threw off an intense heat. The side of me closest to it roasted. The other side of me froze. Light and dark. I thought of Neolithic peoples, how short of food they would have been, and how cold. I thought of how Christians had appropriated the ancient festival of Yule. In mythology, solstices are powerful times. This celebration tapped into that energy. Standing in the frozen field was about as far away as a person could get from being in a mall with schmaltzy Christmas music playing. I have no affinity with malls. But, and this surprised me, those stilted figures in velvets and spangles were disquieting. I felt no connection with them, either. I didn’t know their story, and I found myself wanting to go home.

With stories, we ask, “And then what happened?” We need to make sense of scary things taking place in the world to try to keep ourselves and our families safe. When I told the tale about that solstice celebration to my friends at dinner, who listened intently in the fire-warm room, I hadn’t expected to choke up as I said, “On the way back, my Mom and I were holding hands.” I’d forgotten. I explained, “We never held hands. It was just so dark and hard to see on that faint trail.” I came near to tears at how much I missed her and the friend who was hosting our dinner leaned forward and gripped my hand.

What came clear to me at that moment was the reaching back and forward in time of love. My Mom and I, and the cherishing between us. The friend who, in that moment, was holding my hand as if I were one of her daughters and doing her best to comfort me. The daylight which gets shorter each year and then leaps forward again to console us.

There’s a reason we think of life as a circle.

Here we are at the dark time of the world, friends. Dark for many reasons. The holidays are filled with promises of fake happiness through consumption and families, bless their hearts, can be prickly or absent. The light is coming, though. It’s swinging toward us.

Blessings on you. May you be well, sparkly and happy. May the island I live on be well and happy, and the countries we each live in and our very dear home of Earth be well. We need healing on so many levels! If you are lonely this season, go outside on a clear night, look up and let the stars reassure you there’s glory and mystery in the universe. Remember the world still has beautiful experiences waiting for you. May each of us do what we can to give back, to live cleanly and lightly on the land, and to be kind, gentle and generous with one another.

Santa Paws isn’t too stoked with the hat

Here’s a fiction version of that solstice night from my fantasy novel Jorrie and the Skyhorse. The “I” is Jorrie, who’s run away from home and gone to stay with her aunt and uncle who run a country inn. Haake and Thor are her cousins. You can see which parts I forgot in my dinner table story and what I exaggerated.

Haake and I didn’t get to go to the celebration until the kitchen was clean. That took a long time. We had to walk since Thor had driven our guests in the carriage. 

It was lovely outside with the fresh snow. I felt the burn of cold just as Haake had warned me I would despite the fact that for once, I was wearing a hat and had borrowed mitts. It took twenty minutes to walk to Karl’s field. We could see the light from the giant bonfire well before we were there, and then, as we got closer, great plumes of sparks shooting up into the sky. The flames were tall as a person.

The fire was so hot you had to keep well away from it. One side of me roasted and the other froze. The only light was from the bonfire and from a few torches. There were maybe three hundred people around the fire. The air smelled of wood smoke. A cart passed out free cups of hot apple cider spiced with cinnamon. We grabbed ourselves cups.

“Happy Solstice,” Ejnar said to us, appearing from the crowd. I was pleased to see him; I didn’t think I would know anyone. He wore a purple jester’s cap with bells and sparkly bits. “Watch yourselves on that cider; it’s smoking hot. I burned my mouth. Did you tell Jorrie about the candles, Haake?”

My cousin shook his bulldog head.

“That’s my favourite part. That comes later. We all take candles. They’re in these brown paper bags to make lanterns, see? Then we light the candles and put them on pieces of wood—everything’s already prepared—and make our Solstice wishes and send them down the river to the sea. There’s this whole little flotilla of lit-up wishes going downstream.”

Ejnar waved at someone and plunged back into the crowd. We saw him put his arm around a girl with long brown hair and kiss her. She wore a black mask with sparkles around it over her eyes.

We saw Thor with one of the blonde twins from the Anchorage. They were intertwined like some kind of plant. “Bletch,” Haake said when we saw them.

Constable Dimthistle, out of uniform, said hello to us very cheerfully. Apparently we were forgiven for our multiple offenses. He was with Dr Shan, who came over and thanked us both. It was so noisy it was hard to hear.

We were late, so the mummers were mostly through the play when we got there, or so Haake said. I wouldn’t have known. The play was about the theft of light. Cimarron didn’t celebrate Solstice like this. This was old. The mummers were masked and moved on stilts way above the crowd.

“Aren’t the costumes gorgeous? Look at all the velvet and spangles,” I said to Haake. He was unimpressed. 

The costumes looked like museum pieces. They were eerie. Some had beak masks. The strange, elongated shapes of the mummers on their stilts made them look like giant herons about to pounce.

“Hey Haake, does Valdi own the Lodge with Auntie Rúna and Uncle Axel?”

Haake made a face. “They’re best friends and business partners. It’s all worked out legally, I know that much.

“Afi told me once it was like marrying someone who had a twin. A very close twin.”

I grabbed another cup of cider. There were no lamb’s tail pastries, sad to say. “Is Valdi in love with her, do you think?”

“Nah. They’re friends. He’s got girlfriends like you wouldn’t believe.” Haake laughed and said, “You know what they say about dwarrows, don’t you?”

I didn’t, but Haake refused to say more. I didn’t press him; probably I didn’t want to know.

Yule was four days away.

Yule, feast of the Winter Queen. I wanted to be home. Pure and simple. Waking up in the morning in my own bed, eating meals with my mom, hanging out with my friends in the day and doing comfortable, familiar things, complaining about having to go back to school after the holi-days.

When I turned around, Haake had disappeared. Standing by the bonfire, I felt like an eight-year-old at a friend’s house, waking up in the night and missing everything familiar. It was embarrassing.

I caught glimpses of our Hidnessvers guests. A couple of the beach-ball Grundewalds appeared from the shadows; I wondered if they were staying at the Anchorage. Many humans in the crowd had dressed up with fancy robes over their coats and put on masks with feathers and sparkles, really getting into the Solstice spirit.

“Jorrie.” It was Haake, jabbing me in the ribs. “The Abbess wants to talk to you.”

Solstice marks a time of new beginnings, an opportunity to let go of the paralyzing quality of night and fear. Do you have a practice for doing that you’d like to share? It can very simple.

setting sun at Stonehenge, WorldAtlas