Snow on snow

It’s the Winter Solstice today—the longest night and shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. 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. It’s not a bad deal, really.

The English poet Christina Rossetti wrote “In the Bleak Midwinter” in 1872, although it wasn’t published until 1904. A couple of years later it was set to music by Gustav Holst and became the carol we now know. It’s an apt piece for marking the Solstice. The imagery of the first stanza just makes you shiver—earth hard as iron; moaning, frosty wind; water like stone; snow piled deep on itself. It’s a frozen world, an absolutely perfect description of the Winter Solstice.

I thought about that last week when we had overnight temperatures in the 20s (Fahrenheit). On my morning walk I came across some of that stony water. It was beautiful, actually.

As Rossetti goes on to describe the mother and child, the stable beasts and the angels, you can just about see their breaths billowing misty into the night air. But then she walks us back, just like the sun does, starting tomorrow.

It seems appropriate for today, and here’s one of my favorite a capella groups, Chanticleer, singing it.

 

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