Feels like years since it's been here
Happy Solstice! (Yes, yes, I am behind my time. I was making rather merry last night. Yule Bowling might be a new tradition.)
I feel like the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas is just a long hard slog toward the solstice. Every day it's a little darker when I wake up, every day it's a little darker when I leave work, until I'm trying to do both in the pitch dark. My animal nature says that if I had a lick of sense, I'd hibernate. With trying to get through the end of the semester, and all the card sending and gift choosing and decorating and cleaning, I usually get to a point when I'm ready to chuck it all and check out the southern hemisphere.
In a particularly Scroogelike mood, I might argue that we should move the big secular shebang to a nicer time: Easter or Columbus Day or the Fourth of July. Sometime when I don't have to slip on the snow or juggle packages in heavy gloves. Sometime when the cold isn't sneaking in the corners to bite at my joints.
But at the Solstice, I know that the worst is over. That's as dark as it gets. The days get a little longer, and getting everybody together starts to sound more appealing. Set something on fire, whether it's a literal Yule log or the lights on trees and windows, and as Lou Reed put it, set the twilight reeling.
Happy holidays and the blessings of the season to you and yours.
I feel like the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas is just a long hard slog toward the solstice. Every day it's a little darker when I wake up, every day it's a little darker when I leave work, until I'm trying to do both in the pitch dark. My animal nature says that if I had a lick of sense, I'd hibernate. With trying to get through the end of the semester, and all the card sending and gift choosing and decorating and cleaning, I usually get to a point when I'm ready to chuck it all and check out the southern hemisphere.
In a particularly Scroogelike mood, I might argue that we should move the big secular shebang to a nicer time: Easter or Columbus Day or the Fourth of July. Sometime when I don't have to slip on the snow or juggle packages in heavy gloves. Sometime when the cold isn't sneaking in the corners to bite at my joints.
But at the Solstice, I know that the worst is over. That's as dark as it gets. The days get a little longer, and getting everybody together starts to sound more appealing. Set something on fire, whether it's a literal Yule log or the lights on trees and windows, and as Lou Reed put it, set the twilight reeling.
Happy holidays and the blessings of the season to you and yours.
posted by Joe at 8:22 AM
5 Comments:
From about December 1st until sometime late in January, I walk into work while it's pitch dark.
I always love that first day when it's light!
Happy holidays (all of them) to you, Alison, and the greater Gambier and Mount Gambier communities.
Funny, I'm exactly the opposite. I love this cold and dark time of the year! It's very insulating and comforting to me.
My Dad feels the same way, Joe. Every solstice he revels in the growing days to come!
So to you and yours from mine and ours, the Happiest of Christmases and the Merriest of New Years!
I much prefer the end of fall semester to the end of spring semester. I'm less tempted to be outside in winter and no one gives me presents in June.
Well, OK, there was the class that kept annonymously leaving diet cokes on my lecturn one April and May...
january is always the hardest time for me .. it's the coldest and the most miserable (blizzards, high winds, i think i'll never feel warm again) and for that reason alone, seems darkest.
GrrlScientist
Love it when I come out, and it's still dark at 7:30 am, but the temperature is hovering about 40. I know in my mind that it's winter and it should be cold, but, in the half-light, I feel like I've entered a secret world.
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