Midwinter Day
Winter Solstice; here we are, at the darkest and the coldest moment before the world turns. (Apologies to any readers in the Southern Hemisphere, this is a very northern-centric post...)
May we all find comfort and warmth and joy, in our families or our friendships or our favourite stories, to remind us that humanity's great gift is that in the midst of darkness we will always look to kindle light. I know in the last year I have found all those things and more here, for which thank you, all my flist.
merrymaia 's very apt posting of Susan Cooper's Solstice poem prompted me to turn to my very favourite Winter Solstice book, Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, to try to find something which expresses how I feel about the solstice, Yuletide and the wait for Christmas, the holding of our collective breath as we renew our belief that out of darkness shall come forth light; really I would have to quote the entire wonderful book, but put the following three extracts together and it begins to express what Dark is Rising says so much better than I can...
Happy Solstice, Merry Yule, and soon-to-be Merry Christmas, everyone.
"Will went downstairs to pull on his boots, and the old sheepskin jacket that had belonged, before him, to two or three of his brothers in turn. Then he went out of the back door, closing it quietly behind him, and stood looking out through the quick white vapour of his breath.
The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land... Will set out down the white tunnel of the path, slowly, stepping high to keep the snow out of his boots. As soon as he moved away from the house, he felt very much alone, and he made himself go on without looking back over his shoulder, because he knew that when he looked, he would find that the house was gone... A deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming; he was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that. Tomorrow will be beyond imagining... Will came out of the white-arched path into the road, paved smooth with snow and edged everywhere by the great trees, and he looked up between the branches and saw a single black rook flap slowly past, high in the early sky. [...]
Christmas Eve. It was the day when the delight of Christmas really took fire in the Stanton family. Hints and glimmerings and promises of special things, which had flashed in and out of life for weeks before, now suddenly blossomed into a constant glad expectancy. The house was full of wonderful baking smells from the kitchen, in a corner of which Gwen could be found putting the final touches to the icing of the Christmas cake. Her mother had made the cake three weeks before; the Christmas pudding, three months before that. Ageless, familiar Christmas music permeated the house whenever anyone turned on the radio... Straight after breakfast - an even more haphazard affair than usual - there was the double ritual of the Yule log and the Christmas tree [...]
...until he woke, in the dim morning room with a glimmer of light creeping round the dark square of the curtained window, and saw and heard nothing for an enchanted expectant space, because all his senses were concentrated on the weighty feel, over and around his blanketed feet, of strange bumps and corners and shapes that had not been there when he fell asleep. And it was Christmas Day."
- Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising
May we all find comfort and warmth and joy, in our families or our friendships or our favourite stories, to remind us that humanity's great gift is that in the midst of darkness we will always look to kindle light. I know in the last year I have found all those things and more here, for which thank you, all my flist.
merrymaia 's very apt posting of Susan Cooper's Solstice poem prompted me to turn to my very favourite Winter Solstice book, Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, to try to find something which expresses how I feel about the solstice, Yuletide and the wait for Christmas, the holding of our collective breath as we renew our belief that out of darkness shall come forth light; really I would have to quote the entire wonderful book, but put the following three extracts together and it begins to express what Dark is Rising says so much better than I can...
Happy Solstice, Merry Yule, and soon-to-be Merry Christmas, everyone.
"Will went downstairs to pull on his boots, and the old sheepskin jacket that had belonged, before him, to two or three of his brothers in turn. Then he went out of the back door, closing it quietly behind him, and stood looking out through the quick white vapour of his breath.
The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land... Will set out down the white tunnel of the path, slowly, stepping high to keep the snow out of his boots. As soon as he moved away from the house, he felt very much alone, and he made himself go on without looking back over his shoulder, because he knew that when he looked, he would find that the house was gone... A deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming; he was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that. Tomorrow will be beyond imagining... Will came out of the white-arched path into the road, paved smooth with snow and edged everywhere by the great trees, and he looked up between the branches and saw a single black rook flap slowly past, high in the early sky. [...]
Christmas Eve. It was the day when the delight of Christmas really took fire in the Stanton family. Hints and glimmerings and promises of special things, which had flashed in and out of life for weeks before, now suddenly blossomed into a constant glad expectancy. The house was full of wonderful baking smells from the kitchen, in a corner of which Gwen could be found putting the final touches to the icing of the Christmas cake. Her mother had made the cake three weeks before; the Christmas pudding, three months before that. Ageless, familiar Christmas music permeated the house whenever anyone turned on the radio... Straight after breakfast - an even more haphazard affair than usual - there was the double ritual of the Yule log and the Christmas tree [...]
...until he woke, in the dim morning room with a glimmer of light creeping round the dark square of the curtained window, and saw and heard nothing for an enchanted expectant space, because all his senses were concentrated on the weighty feel, over and around his blanketed feet, of strange bumps and corners and shapes that had not been there when he fell asleep. And it was Christmas Day."
- Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising