Christmas 2017 by KimB

Another winter, harbinger of the coming new year, has come and in many parts of the world a Holiday Is Happenin'! For some, that holiday will start Dec 25 ¹ and others it will be 12 days later on Jan 6 ² . Still more will have different dates and meanings to mark this particular time on the planet.

While many in the USA are focused on the bargains to be had at stores both physical and ethereal, there is a lot more to be found besides tomorrow's trash-n-dump that the unceasing barrages of advertising, both subliminal and not too subtle, tell us We Must Have!

If we take a moment to look beyond what's pushed, shoved and splayed across the micro-screens that now capture and occupy our every waking moment, we might find something different in front of us.

• The flitting of a small bird.
• A single snow flake.
• The fracture patterns of frozen water.
• The reflection of light as it bounces from a glass pane.
• The smell of cold air.
• The degrees of wetness in mud.
• The quilting of fallen leaves.
• The warmth of a hand.
• The smile of a stranger.

These cost nothing and yet are everything. They are reminders of what is all around us, every day, every minute of our lives. These are more valuable than any purchased goods. They are enduring and last beyond the moment.

The winter solstice ³ marks the end of one period and the starting a new one. It is the day of least sunlight and the longest night.

An old song ⁴ commemorates this time:

They had not been sailing but a long winter's night,
And part of short winter's day.

The length of daytime depends on where you live on the planet. North of the equator, this day can be less than 4 hours long and gets longer as you move southward. The physical shape of our planet ⁵, it's path through the solar system, the tilt of the axis and it's relationship to the sun are what governs the solstice ⁶.



Solargraph: sun tracks

The solstice is a marker for seasons. Seasons are marked by calendars. In the USA we use the Gregorian calendar ⁷ but this isn't the first or only calendar ⁸. Calendars of all sorts and manners mark seasons and the repetition of days in a season. Clocks ⁹ mark the repetition of the hours for day and night.

But the solstice is not dependent on any of us. It happens regardless of us. We place extra meanings on some days and mark them as special but those are our determinations. The earth has it's own special days, and celebrates them with or without us. The winter solstice is one of them.

The solstice has been celebrated by humans for a very long time ¹⁰. It marks a special time not just for the planet but for us as a species.

It marks a turning point in our joint past, when we noticed the repeating patterns all around us. It marks not just our awareness but our ability to predict that repetition. The moment when our awareness, our consciousness, our sense of self in the environment, our ability to count and our ability to display that count and then to physically pass this information onward to future generations happened.

It marks the end of spoken memory and the beginning of modern memory: the memory of the solstice and what it means.

Take a moment to look around you. Notice anything special?

Something beyond price:

The solstice is happening

Winter Solstice Stonehenge

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_25
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6
3. a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice
   b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_solstice
4. a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Martin_(song)
   b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Barton_(privateer)
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic