The turning of the year has been celebrated for centuries in every corner of the world. The day is something we all share and cannot change!
Celebrating the Solstice
It is a dark and chilling time of year. The pace of the holidays can be hectic, but there can also be some comfort in the stillness that comes with early dusk.
Perhaps it was an especially cold January in 1872 that led Christina Rossetti to write of a "bleak mid-winter" when "Earth stood hard as iron/Water like a stone." Â A harsh image, but when softened by the next line, "Snow had fallen, snow on snow on snow," one that speaks as much to the quiet and time for reflection that can be found in being housebound by deep cold and snow.
In our neighborhood, a blizzard with its snow-choked roads and nowhere to go, always seems to bring people out for a short walk in the wild, and a quick return to the comforts of home.
Talk of snow and cold might lead to thinking about how the climate is changing, but today this essay is about things we can't change. For all our domination of the Earth's systems, we can't shift its orbit around the sun. So while subtle and exquisitely predictable changes in that orbit can trigger ice ages or interglacial warmth, we are passive passengers on that journey.
Reflecting this stillness and time for reflection, I'll be taking a solstice break from these essays; skipping the one that would occur on December 26. Thank you for reading these musings - there will be more in the new year.Â
In All Times and Places
For now, a few thoughts on these darkest of days.
The northern winter solstice is the shortest day of the year as the Earth's north pole is tilted at its greatest angle away from the sun. The switch from shorter to longer days that occurs at the solstice has been observed and celebrated, if not always understood, since deep pre-history. The ubiquity of cultural and architectural responses to the winter solstice speaks to a universal quest for understanding and perhaps a longing for some sense of control. Might the right ritual or celebration ensure that the days will indeed get longer?Â
Archeoastronomy is a term I had not heard before beginning this essay, and one that appears to have entered the academic lexicon only in the 1970s, although efforts to assign astronomical meaning to prehistoric sites goes back much farther. Perhaps it is fitting, as we try to look back before the written word or continuous cultural records, that the actual purpose and meaning of many of these sites thought to align with solar events remain obscure and controversial.Â
Were those stones set in place to actually capture the seasonal turning of the solar cycle, or was it just chance? Was this a site for rituals and celebrations, or a place of transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead? So many deeply felt human fears and hopes expressed in stone, and maybe felt most keenly in the short, cold, hungry days of winter.
And like the concept of Gaia, Archeoastronomy seems to live on the edge of academic respectability, subject to the kind of pseudoscience and perhaps wishful thinking that helps some relate to an unpredictable world.
Solstice expressions can be found in widely distant places.  In biology, the evolution of similar traits among different species without any actual exchange of genetic information, but in response to similar selective pressures, is called convergent evolution. The quest for understanding and prediction of the solar cycle could be seen as the cultural equivalent. So many people in so many places with the same yearning have expressed both that yearning and accumulated experience in similar but different ways.
Only a few of the many, many examples of solstice architecture and celebrations can be mentioned in the limited amount of space available here.
Stonehenge is the archetypal prehistoric construct linked to the solar cycle. While the physical evidence that the orientation of the site aligns with the solar cycle is undeniable, how and why this monument was constructed, and the uses to which it was put are still debated.   Thousands continue to visit the site at the solstice each year, expressing perhaps a recurring desire to connect with both the continuity of the human experience and the unchanging solar cycle.
Similar in time of construction (beginning as early as 3,100 BCE, prior to the construction of the pyramids in Egypt) and not far away, is the very different monument known as Newgrange. Not dominated by standing stones, this Irish landmark is a mound with an inner chamber. The entrance to the mound is a long tunnel that aligns with the rising of the sun on the winter solstice.
I had the chance to visit Newgrange once and noted a large stone on which had been chiseled the circular swirling pattern common to many early Irish and Celtic artifacts. Asked for an interpretation of this common pattern, the guide gave an interesting reply. Acknowledging possible religious or astronomical meanings, she concluded with, "or maybe they just liked to carve circles."
The New World also has its astronomical calendars. Two examples cover the wide range of approaches developed by different peoples, none of whom had even been on the continent before 16,000 to 12,000 BCE.
The stone-built observatories and the writings of the Mayan culture in Central America and Mexico evidence an understanding not only of the equinoxes and solstices, but many other astronomical events as well. Their calendar of 365 days was accurate enough to include the extra time added, like our modern leap year, that corrects for the very slight inconsistency between 365 days and the actual timing of the passage of the Earth around the sun.
A very different set of sites reflect the mound building cultures of the indigenous peoples of North America who constructed massive earth works that were unrecognized and frequently obliterated by European settlers.  Earliest sites have been dated to 3,500 BCE and the largest range up to 100 feet tall. Effigy mounds, resembling different animals in shape, were enlarged over periods of centuries, and reached truly monumental proportions. One effigy mound, described as being in the shape of a serpent, is 3 feet tall, 20 feet wide and more than 1,330 feet long. The lobes of some mounds have been found to align with solstice and equinox events.Â
Many modern celebrations of the solstice or the darkest days also have ancient historical roots. Space here does not allow more than a cursory mention of these, but one website lists 8 ranging from The Saturnalia in Roman times to Inti Raymi in Peru, and from Dong Zhi in China to Shab-e Yalda in Iran.Â
Many other celebrations might not be tuned to the actual day of the solstice, but still focus on providing light in the dark days. Diwali, Hanukkah, and Christmas are all described at least in part as festivals of lights and are descended from ancient celebrations. The yule log, the evergreen tree, holly, and mistletoe are only some of the symbols borrowed from the natural world for these celebrations that might also help envision a time when that world will come back to life.
So the year is about to turn. The days will indeed get longer and warmer (here in the north) and we will look for the first signs of spring. But while the deep midwinter lasts, perhaps we can stop for a bit, slow down and sit by the fire and read a poem or two (see suggestions below) or walk in a cold, maybe snowy world, and appreciate the Earth we have been given, and reflect on how we share it with those around us.Â
Happy solstice!
Here are links to two favorite poems that capture the magic and celebrations of the deep midwinter.
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
https://welcomeyule.org/files/3_Shortest_Day.pdf
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening
I would post the full texts here, but copyright will not allow. I hope you have the time to read them
Sources
The lines cited in the first paragraph are from "In The Bleak Midwinter" published by Christina Rossetti in January 1872. Gustav Holst set an edited version of the poem to music in 1906.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53216/in-the-bleak-midwinter
Wikipedia has pages that will lead you into Archeoastronomy, Stonehenge, Newgrange, the Maya calendar, and Mound Builders as well as most other topics mentioned.
Controversy around recognition and preservation of the works of the Mound Builders continues, as seen in this very recent article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/arts/design/octagon-earthworks-ohio-golf-course.html
The post on the 8 solstice celebrations from around the world is here:
https://www.history.com/news/8-winter-solstice-celebrations-around-the-world
What a beautiful essay.