Winter Solstice – I Slept Through Most Of It. Am I A Bad Pagan?

Well done Earth! You tilted your axis at just the right moment. Well done Sun! You converted hydrogen to helium and sent the results whizzing through ninety-three million miles of cold space. Another Winter Solstice completed, and the humans and the animals on this lovely little planet can look forward to ever so slightly longer days and ever so slightly shorter nights. In our modern age, at least in places where electricity and heat and food are in plenty of supply, the Winter Solstice doesn’t really mean that much any more to our continued survival. But, there’s something about the light “returning” that does still make a difference, at least to me.

What I Actually Did To Mark The Returning Of The Light.

On the longest night of the year, I made six, golden brown, steaming hot Cornish pasties. I fixed myself a festive drink of cranberry juice, tonic water, and peppermint schnapps and settled in to watch a program tracing the ancient salt roads from Morocco to Timbuktu. After another Cranberry Cane, that’s what I call the little cocktail I created, I switched over to a reality show I’ve been binge watching and promptly fell asleep. An hour passed. A dog jump up on the couch and licked my face. I took that to mean “let me out I need to pee and you need to go to bed.” By eleven o’clock I was snuggled up, under a mountain of blankets, with my beloved next to me.

Now, before you think about flooding the comments sections with “Hey there, you’re a bad pagan and witch for not celebrating the solstice”, I did organize and participate in a Winter Solstice Spiral Dance ritual over the weekend for about 200 people. I’ll be at our shop this evening too, co-facilitating a small celebration and “Winter Solstice” open house.

But on the actual solstice, I slept through it and woke up late the next day. Which, I must say, was quite wonderful.

What The Returning Of The Light Actually Means To Me

There’s a great song by the late Charlie Murphy, no not Eddy’s brother, another Charlie Murphy. I’ve sung this song so many times around Winter Solstice fires and Solstice gatherings.

Light is returning Even though this is the darkest hour

No one can hold back the dawn

Let’s keep it burning

Let’s keep the light of hope alive

Make safe our journey

through the storm

One planet is turning

Circles on her path around the Sun

Earth Mother is calling her children home

This song really captures what the Winter Solstice means to me. The light is returning and so is my resolve. As the day light grows incrementally each day, so does my strength. There’s a lot going on in the world today and much of it is upsetting. Like many people I know, I’m frustrated with a hyper-politicized government clearly out for it’s own gain, while paying lip service to the folk that elected them to serve. There a movements afoot, shining the bright light of a new day on sexual harassment, and rife work place inequity, and a level of apathy and corruption in public agencies never before illuminated.

The promise of the Winter Solstice is that the light gets a little stronger and shines a little longer each day. It’s as if the whole world is joining together in a spell. The Earth and the people of the northern hemisphere, are saying “Look here! Follow the light there! See what is to be seen!”

And now that I’ve had a good rest and slept well and missed the actual Winter Solstice, it is time for me to participate in the magic that’s happening. The Light is, indeed returning, and that’s a spell I can fully participate in. May the light shine. May what needs to be seen get seen.