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atypicalsub -> If we can hold back the darkness (12/22/2009 3:13:10 AM)
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The winter solstice began last night at sunset. I sit here awaiting the dawn of the new day. A day that will be just one minute longer than yesterday. It is my small ritual that I stay awake all night keeping at least one candle burning from sunset until sunrise. This is a celebration of light on the longest night of the year.
Virtually every religion has a celebration of light near this time. This indicates there is something deep within the human spirit that calls us to celebrate now. I think we need to look within, to find what that is calling to truly understand what this holiday is about.
I think that much of why people are now confused about this, about the meaning of this holiday, is that our modern society and all its conveniences has insulated, even isolated, us from the world as our ancestors experienced it. Think for a while about how people lived say a thousand years ago. There was no electricity, no light bulbs or flashlights; at best they had a small number of candles they made themselves from rendering animal fat. They did not live in the type of houses we know. Families huddled together for warmth in a drafty, one room hut. They had a mud floor and the only insulation was the snow on the roof which produced constant drips inside as it melted. The garage where you keep your car would have seemed luxurious by comparison. Any village with more than about a hundred people would have been called a city. So you knew everyone by name and were probably related to them within two or three generations. We also knew it was unlikely that we would all survive the winter. Odds were strong that someone in the village would succumb to the cold and weather and not have the strength to hold on until spring. Even if by some miracle all our people survived how much of our livestock could we keep alive? Would there be enough feed for the cows? Would there be enough food for us that we would not have to eat the last milk cow? A thousand years ago we lived with death as a certainty; it was just a matter of who and how many would perish this winter.
So on the longest night of the year, the time of greatest darkness, we celebrate light and life. For our ancestors this was nothing less than defiance of death. With blazing fires they declared they would not let the darkness take them. Voices raised in song they marched from house to house with torches to drive back the shadows.
I believe this is where the tradition of staying awake all night on New Years came from. If you could stay awake all night on the longer night of the year you could do it anytime. Not just until midnight (they had no clocks to measure the hours at night) but staying awake until you could see the first rays of the sun over the hills. That you had trekked through the longest night. You had faced the worst the darkness could bring. And now you stood victorious in the morning light. If your fire was still burning when the morning came, you had proved to the demons of the night that you could outlast them.
You may not want to think of it;
I know it sounds appalling;
But we must hold back the darkness
Or death may come a calling
If we can hold back the darkness
With just a single candle light
We will make it through the winter
There are greener times in sight
If we can hold back the winter
If we can keep a fire burning
We can make it through the cold
Soon the sun will be returning
If we can hold back the cold
With a fire warm and bright
We can celebrate the snow
On winter's longest night
If we can hold back the snow
And the storms that rage outside
The days start getting longer
The darkness will subside
If we can hold back the darkness
Face all the things we fear
We can make it through the winter
Spring is almost here
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