Celebrating the Winter Solstice!

Hello everyone –

For the third and final installment in my holiday Quotemail series, I’d like to share with you an article that I penned for the ACES James Scholars eight years ago. The Winter Solstice arrived @ 4:44 AM (CST) this morning, heralding the shortest day and longest night of the year, and this article explores how the stargazers and mythmakers of antiquity understood and celebrated this pivotal event on their “Wheel of the Year.”

“Seasonal Reflections” by Rob Chappell, M.A., Assistant to the Honors Dean

Adapted & Condensed from Ultreia III: 3-4 (Autumn/Holiday 2008)

            As 2016 draws to a close, people in the Northern Hemisphere of our planet are preparing to celebrate a wide variety of December holidays. Although there are vast differences in these celebrations, which vary by culture, nation, and religion, their overarching themes are quite similar, and most of them are derived from a common astronomical source. Each year as the Winter Solstice (December 21-22) approaches, the days grow shorter and colder, and the Sun’s circular journey across the daytime sky is far lower than it was at the Summer Solstice in June. To the skywatchers of the ancient world, it appeared as if the Sun – the source of growth, light, and warmth – was dying. Then, shortly after the longest night of the year, something amazing happened! The Sun began to rejuvenate and started to climb higher in the sky each day. Eventually, more light and warmth returned to the world, and springtime would invariably arrive several weeks later.

            This annual event – the metaphorical “death and rejuvenation” of the Sun at the Winter Solstice – was definitely something worth celebrating. Human life could go on because the Sun came back from oblivion! Light overcame darkness; warmth banished the cold; hope replaced despair; and life defeated death. Decorating with candles and evergreens became a widespread custom in many nations as people celebrated the return of the Sun’s light and the promise of Nature’s renewal that it brought to the wintry world. These are the themes that the major December holidays of the Northern Hemisphere share in common.

            In African, Asian, and European mythologies, the annual rejuvenation of the Sun was expressed in many symbolic ways. One of the most famous legends related to the Winter Solstice is the tale of the phoenix bird. According to the most widespread tradition, there was only one phoenix alive in the world at any given time. The bird was adorned with beautiful crimson, golden, and violet plumage, and it built its next of spices in the Far East. Every 500 years, the elderly phoenix would burst into flames and die – but from its ashes would arise a new, young phoenix to live for another five centuries. The newborn phoenix, as soon as it could fly, would carry the bones and ashes of its former self to the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis, Egypt, where the priests would note in their chronicles that a new “phoenix cycle” had begun. From an astronomical perspective, the death, immolation, and rebirth of the phoenix could have symbolized the annual cycle of the seasons, in which the Sun “dies” of old age at the Winter Solstice, only to rejuvenate and ascend into the heavens once again with the approach of springtime. 

            As the world awaits the beginning of 2017, we would do well to remember these practical yet profound insights from the skywatchers and mythmakers of antiquity. Empires rise and fall; economies wax and wane; and scientific knowledge continues to increase exponentially. Yet the seasons still come and go on time each year; summer and winter, seedtime and harvest return in their predictable order. The Universe is not a haphazard place, but it is governed by natural laws that allow human life to continue from one generation to the next.

            For me, the core message of all the December holidays is best summed up in this poem by one of my favorite authors, George MacDonald (1824-1905):

The Sun is gone down, and the Moon’s in the sky;

But the Sun will come up, and the Moon be laid by.

The flower is asleep, but it is not dead;

When the morning shines, it will lift its head.

When winter comes, it will die – no, no;

It will only hide from the frost and the snow.

Sure is the summer, sure is the Sun;

The night and the winter are shadows that run.

-- George MacDonald: At the Back of the North Wind (1871), Chapter 37

Quotemail will resume its regular publication schedule on Friday, January 6^th, 2017. In the meantime, may the calendar keep bringing Happy Holidays to you! :)

Rob

“Take and read out from the lapis lazuli tablet how Gilgamesh went through every hardship. He walked through darkness and so glimpsed the light.”

-- The Epic of Gilgamesh: Compiled ca. 2000 BCE in Mesopotamia