My December has been informed by a book I’ve been working through: Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, edited by Carl Seaburg. I highly recommend it if you are figuring out what Christmas means to you (my love). I (jokingly) belong to the Order of Nostalgics, who tend to marinate in the happy-sad of the “irretrievable past.” We Nostalgics are typically Christmas fans. However, my role as a parent calls me to question the intentionality of just about everything I do.
So, I’ve been on a multi-year quest to understand why, as Unitarian Universalists, my family celebrates Christmas. I’m looking on a deeper and more meaningful level than cultural traditions or “because we always have.” Tracing the origin of Christmas takes you quickly to winter solstice, which this year falls on Saturday, December 21st. The winter solstice celebration is an ancient tradition. I imagine early humans bargaining with someone, anyone, for the light to return during the darkest time of the year. This Earth school is a hard place to be, and there is something precious about imagining early humans begging to be able to have another chance at aliveness, this time maybe realizing life while they live it.
It makes me think of this poem by our Colorado Poet Laureate, Andrea Gibson. They say:
Why did I go on so long believing
I owed this world my disappointment?
“I hate it here,”
writes every other
person online.
But I love it here.
“I love it here,” I whisper
to the sky at 1 am, while
standing on my upstairs porch.
“I love it here,” I whisper
into my doctor’s stethoscope
so she can finally hear my heart.
The quick answer about why we celebrate so much at this time of year is that it’s the turning point. In the northern hemisphere, the days are going to get lighter and longer from here on out and that’s Good News, even though we have invented artificial light. Somewhere inside of us we know we still depend on our natural world, even if we are less attuned to it. Yet part of what I love about winter solstice is that it is the darkest day, the longest night. It doesn’t just herald the light – it is the dark sacred night. The light doesn’t even come back quickly; we have to be patient and pay attention. I don’t want us to skip over this in our rush to the bright blessed day.
There are a million letters I want to send you about how and why we can embrace the dark, about the gifts that not seeing any farther than our headlights allow. But today I want to focus on this invitation from darkness: to let go. I read Gibson’s words and project my own meaning on to them: I know she has cancer, and I project that the cancer has invited her to let go of the cynicism we wrap around ourselves like suits of armor. I know why we are cynical. In short, it’s so that we’re not caught off guard doing something silly like loving the world despite how heartbreaking and terrible it can be. But look how beautiful letting that go can be, Andrea seems to say. You get to finally be here.
When I think about the invitation the longest night might bring, I think about James Taylor’s “You Can Close Your Eyes,” which I sung to my maddeningly non-sleeping babies back in the 2010’s. James Taylor has known darkness in many forms, and in this song he speaks of surrendering to it: “Well the sun is surely sinking down/But the moon is slowly rising/So this old world must still/Be spinning round/And I still love you/So close your eyes/You can close your eyes, it’s all right.” If talk of letting go makes you only cling tighter, know that you practice it every night when going to sleep. You can do this, you are going to be ok.
I also think about my mom visiting my Grammy at the Care Center once a week for years, ending each visit with “It’s ok to let go, Mom. If you are ready, it’s ok to let go.” Inspired by this permission, I wonder what can we let go of at winter solstice time. What are you ready to let go? I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m going to devote a lot of time to think about it over the next few days. Then, on the 21st I’m going to go to the solstice celebration at my church to participate in the group ritual of writing what I’m releasing on a piece of paper. I’ll stick my paper in a wreath made of branches with a hundred other things people are ready to release and then we will watch it burn. If you want to participate in your own ritual, all you need is a pen and paper, a fireproof bowl, and a match. Experiment with the physical ritual of letting what no longer serves you go and go into the new season “with such a clean heart as [you] have never had,” to borrow from poet Annie Lighthart.
Letting things go doesn’t have to mean loss. We can instead be washing away the parts that are not gold, carving away the marble that is not David, whittling away the wood that is not the horse. In our letting go, we can get closer to one of my ideas of God: being alive while we are here. May it be so! Pretty please: email me about what you are letting go, or any other solstice rituals you engage in. Lots of love to you during this holy season.
