Winter Solstice 2024

In the Northern Hemisphere where I live, winter clamps down cold and dark. Wet, too, now that I'm in western Washington, and if it isn't actually raining it's cloudy or overcast. But then, that last condition is pretty common from October to June, according to a very detailed description of Olympia's weather.

Winter here is more like a long, gray slog than a magical season. It isn't like what we used to experience in Spokane with icicles hanging from the eaves, snow deep enough to build snow caves and enough on the ground to have a good snowball tussle when our kids were younger. 

And yet, and yet.... We have the turn of the seasons. We have the transition from the heat of summer to autumn's cool temperatures and blazing leaves. We have the closing down, the retreat into waiting and stewarding our energies, that comes when the light grows shorter and the darkness longer, longer, until we reach the longest night. The earth has tilted away from Sol, which rides low in the sky.

My ancestry is primarily from England and northwestern Europe, followed by Scotland, Germanic Europe, Wales, Denmark, and a bit of Ireland. In other words, my ancestors lived even farther north than my current latitude. My genes have survived through many, many long, dark winters. I'm good at this.

This is a quiet season, but not a dead one. As poet M.K. Creel writes in "Before the Longest Night" we can "Take inventory of what is becoming—". Seeds lie underground awaiting the signals of temperature and light to awaken, insects go dormant, trees deepen their root systems because they're not expending energy on leaves, blossoms, fruits and nuts. We human animals can learn from this and take this time to rest and restore.

Taking care of ourselves, taking care of others, matters more now than ever. The winter solstice can serve as a reminder to reflect on time passing, on our lives we live moment by moment, day by day, on tending our interior as well as our exterior selves. It can serve as our personal New Year's Eve, the pause between one season and the next.

How might you care for your body today? You might feed it lovingly with good food. You might move it around, gently or vigorously, indoors in the warmth or outside in the cold. How about a walk or a bike ride? Years ago when we lived in snowy Spokane I wrote A Solstice Post: Gifts I Give Myself by Riding in the Winter. Perhaps this is the day you commit or recommit to trying a practice like yoga. You might give the body you inhabit every day a nice, long nap or a hot bath.

For your brain or your heart, maybe you'd like poetry about the winter solstice that I collected a couple of years ago.

How about your senses? Last year for the winter solstice I compiled a selection of ways you can experience the winter solstice through your senses (and more poems). I'll add the Winter Solstice playlist on Spotify from the All We Can Save Project.

For your spirit, I offer these readings, excerpted here with a link to the complete piece:

"Winter Solstice"

Ray McNeice

Late December grinds on down.

The sky stops, slate on slate,

scatters a cold light of snow

across a field of brittle weeds.

Interview with Ross Gay and reflections from Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer on The Growing Edge newsletter and podcast.

"Thank You"
Ross Gay

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. 

"On the Winter Solstice"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Let’s reach toward each other

with gazes gentle

as midwinter sun—

with a seeing so generous

we can’t help but turn

toward the other

to let ourselves be seen.

"Winter Solstice"

Hilda Morely

It is from

the moon this cold travels

It is

the light of the moon that causes

this night reflecting distance in its own

light so coldly

(from one side of

the earth to the other)

A brief excerpt from a long and wonderful essay, "Burn Something Today"

Nina McLaughlin

"What now? Now it’s now it’s now it’s now and we are burning. Light the fire. We move through flames. We clutch hope in our palm like a tiny burning globe of snow. It’s painful, the flame of the snow of the hope that you will be okay and I will be okay and we will be okay, we will be here to see another season, to see, second by second, the light return to the world."

A beautiful gentle blessing from William Ayot on Philip Carr-Gomm's site, reproduced here in its entirety:

May the stars in their circling comfort and guide you.
May the great oak give you strength in troubled times.
May your hurts be healed and your soul be deepened
And in turning towards toward home, may you know you belong.