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Thoughts for the Longest Night of the Year [1]
['Claire Carlson', 'The Daily Yonder']
Date: 2023-12-20
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.
This is a strange time of year for routine. Depending on your holiday plans, the entire month of December can be lost to a blur of travel, shopping, or hosting (or a combination of all three). The expectation to show up for our friends and family is ever present, and for some, a source of stress. Any semblance of routine is thrown out the window amid the frenzy.
Yet in the Northern hemisphere, this is also the time of year when the days are the shortest: come this Thursday, December 21, we’ll have just around seven hours of daylight before the sun dips below the horizon to make way for the longest night of the year.
This day, called the winter solstice, is chock-full of significance for people around the world (and has been for millenia), but its proximity to Christmas (aka The Most Commercialized Holiday) seems to have diluted its meaning. Many plants and animals reach peak dormancy this time of year to save energy, and I can feel my animal body wanting to do the same amid the madness. My goal for the end of this year is to reclaim the solstice from the surrounding Christmas hullabaloo.
For Indigenous people, the solstice is an opportunity to nurture one’s spiritual and physical self. It’s also a reminder of the natural and cosmological laws that govern us all, from the tides that ebb and flow with the moon’s phases to the stars that helped guide people around the world for thousands of years.
NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization based in Rapid City, South Dakota, encourages its Native members to spend the solstice resting without guilt, paying attention to the movement of the sun throughout the day, and setting intentions for the longer days to come. These practices are a way for Native people to reclaim some of the solstice traditions that were taken from them by white settlers.
With deep respect to the Native leaders who encourage these practices, I think there’s something to slowness, rest, and directing our attention to the natural world that could benefit us all, especially right now when rampant consumerism is pushed at us from all directions.
In Sweden where my family emigrated from, the solstice once overlapped with Lucia Day. This day honors Santa Lucia, the Roman Christian martyr who was killed during the Diocletianic Persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire in 304 AD. Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 1500s (which we still use today), Lucia Day fell on the winter solstice marked by the Julian calendar, December 13. Rather than change the date of Lucia Day to overlap the solstice on the Gregorian calendar, Santa Lucia is still celebrated on December 13 as a symbol of light in the dark Nordic winters.
Much of the modern-day Lucia Day traditions in Sweden revolve around food (as is the case for most Swedish celebrations), with saffron buns called lussekatter and mulled wine called glögg marking the season.
In my neck of the Pacific Northwest woods, the sun will set around 4:30pm this Thursday, and won’t rise until 7:48am on Friday. A night that lasts more than 15 hours will commence, and with it, I hope to incorporate some of the traditions that have been celebrated for millennia,which – surprise, surprise! – don’t involve Christmas shopping. I will likely burrow down like my furry and leafy relatives, leaning into the darkest night of the year.
How will you celebrate the solstice?
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