Tonight we make the transition from fall into winter. The next two nights will be the longest nights of the year, and we will have less daylight than we thought possible. I’ve set the automatic timers on my lights back twice, and it will still be dark before my lights come on. The lights I have are cheery, but they are no match for the darkness outside and inside.
More than anything, as I grow older, I find this is what Christmas is all about. We hang lights to defiantly battle the darkness outside and the cold inside. Sometimes we are successful; sometimes it still feels dark and cold. But the lights of Christmas remind us that it won’t always be this way, and that after the high tide of darkness that is the Winter solstice, the daylight can fight just as indefatigably to reclaim its share of the hours. At some point we will no longer need artificial light.
If the seasons didn’t exist, we would have to invent them, because they provide such wonderful analogs to the events (and the span) of our lives. I feel this most profoundly at this winter solstice. The last week has been one of profound, profound sorrow, like don’t know if I can go on sorrow, but in the midst of that, I was given a candle of new opportunity and possibility. Today those two emotions have been battling within me, as I have felt myself almost torn apart with contradictory impulses, the sadness and the loneliness pulling me down into darkness and the new hope lighting me up like a defiant string of lights sparkling above.
As I look at the lights of my Christmas tree, the lights shine so much brighter when it’s dark outside. They remind me that the darkness will not overcome us. The sadness will pass, and even if this new hope doesn’t pan out, it will have carried me through another winter night.
Be safe, be strong.