Shine over white forests

We’re at the Winter Solstice, that point in the calendar where those in the Northern Hemisphere experience the longest night. For millennia, humans have found ways—physical and spiritual—to defend against the darkness; one of them is to celebrate the turning of the cycle. After tonight, night retreats day by day until balance is achieved at the equinox, and then the tide turns again at the Summer Solstice.

Probably since the origins of humanity, people have celebrated this annual event, giving thanks for the return of the sun, gathering around bonfires, singing, banging on things, eating and drinking. Before the domestication of fire to candles, followed by gas lights and then by electricity, knowing that the hours of darkness would not in fact continue to grow was comforting in a world full of perils.

The festival we know as Christmas was overlaid on older traditions; the birth of the Son of God has perhaps more dramatic impact if it’s celebrated around the Solstice rather than sometime in Spring, which makes more meteorological and astronomical sense. The early Church accomplished two goals with the coopting: subsumed pagan sun worship into Christian rites and gave themselves license to feast away the longest nights of the year.

Our Advent song today is “Jul, Jul, Stralande Jul”, which—as you may have guessed, is from Sweden, written a hundred years ago. It expresses the wish that Christmas bring light and peace. It’s performed here by the Kammerchor Wernigerode, which is composed of singers all over Germany. They meet about once a month to rehearse and perform concerts and they’ve been in existence for 20 years.