Today is Annunciation Sunday, the last before Christmas. It focuses on the visit by the archangel Gabriel to Mary, to tell her God had chosen her to give birth to his son, the long-awaited Messiah.
I mean—it’s obviously not the anniversary of the
Annunciation; if Jesus had been born in December, Gabriel would have visited
Mary in March. If the Nativity was in the Spring—as most historians support,
because shepherds and sheep were out in the fields, which they wouldn’t have
been in December—then the angel-woman confab would have been around August.
This is a covering-all-the-bases commemoration, really—using the final Sunday
in Advent to remind ourselves of the Whole Story.
But today is also Winter Solstice— 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.
And as Christianity co-opted the pagan celebrations of the
Solstice of providing artificial light against the very real darkness, they also
incorporated evergreen vines and branches into their traditions: plants that
hold their verdant color even through the worst of freezing weather.
Evergreens—firs, pines and the like—are of course symbols
of eternal life. Pre-Christian Europeans decorated their houses with evergreen
branches to celebrate the winter solstice. Christians go one step further with
adding lights—candles and then electric—to beat back the darkness. The
ornaments help refract the light into the room. We hang wreaths on doors and
windows; often on the grilles of our cars. (And, in the past few years, some of
those have lights on them, too.)
Along with the color, evergreens bring their scent into our
homes, reminding us that life may appear dormant, but it usually comes back.
(Yes—it always has in the past, but I’m getting a little uneasy about the
future. Still, for now…)
In honor of the Solstice, Mary and evergreens, let’s have “The
Sans Day Carol”, which originated in Cornwall. It’s a variant on “The Holly and
the Ivy”, but since ivy is an invasive species here in the Old Dominion, I’m
not giving it electron space. I’m all holly, all the way.
(You have to cut this one some slack—obvs the holly doesn't bear a white berry, or a black one. They're greenish and then they're red, before flocks of robins swoop down and ravage them. Also, there's no way Jesus was ever wrapped in silk, his entire life. It's poetic and metaphoric license.)
Here’s the English early music group Carnival Band performing it. I like this version because it hasn’t been whizzed on by John Rutter, and that’s hard to find these days.
©2025 Bas Bleu
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