I love all the holidays around the turning of the year. But Solstice had particular meaning for me. It’s the root of Christmas, the reason the early Church Fathers chose this time to celebrate the birth of the Christ. But it’s a much older holiday, based on the natural cycles of earth and sky. Solstice is the time when the sun stands still and then begins its journey north. It’s the turning of darkness to light. We go from a 6 plus hour day in December to an 18 hour day in June when it never really gets dark. Today is the shortest day of the year, tomorrow, Dec 22, will be 4 seconds longer in Sitka. And while we have the coldest part of winter ahead of us we receive the promise of light and life. It is the perfect symbolism for death and resurrection, which brings us around to Christmas and Easter. When I lived in suburban New Jersey Solstice didn’t mean much to me, but as a rural Alaskan where we live by the turn of the seasons and tides, it means the world to me. It’s the promise of spring in the dead of winter. “Here Comes the Sun!”
Celebration of another cycle, things completed and things to come.