Today, December 21st, marks the last winter solstice of this decade. The word “solstice” comes from the Latin sol (sun), and sistere (to stand), and is known as “The Day the Sun Stands Still.” In the case of winter, it’s the day that the sun stands still on the other side of the world, banishing the Northern Hemisphere into the longest darkest night of the year. It also marks the time in the cycle where the sun begins to come back to us, and as such, the Winter Solstice has always been a significant day of celebration to almost every culture.
For the vast majority of human history, we have depended on the cycles and seasons of agriculture to run our lives. And so, to mark the very end of Fall (the season of harvest and hard work), and the beginning of the dormant season of Winter, humans the world over have pretty much always held feasts or festivals or celebrations of some kind on the Winter Solstice. From Juul to Saturnalia to Chaomos to Soyal to Yalda to the modern Christmas, humans have seemingly always gathered together on that long dark night to battle the dark with festivities and firelight, and to celebrate the rebirth of the celestial life sustaining light. Interestingly, if we examine these ancient and sustained traditions throughout the world for how to celebrate this rebirth of the light, we can find traces of the familiar.
“[Juul] was a Pagan Scandinavian winter festival when Juul logs were burned and fires were lit to symbolize the heat and life-giving properties of the returning sun. It was believed that the yule log had the magical effect of helping the sun to shine more brightly.
The people who celebrated during this festival drank Meade around the bonfires while minstrel-poets sang of ancient legends.”
Juul logs burned in Scandinavia in winter to help the sun shine brighter, and while they burned, the people drank mead around bonfires, and mistrel poets sang songs and told tales of ancient legends. Sounds pretty familiar. But not just to us and our modern Christmas traditions of Yule logs, drinking, and carol-singing.
“The Festival of Chaomos was a Pakistani celebration in which a small number of Kalasha or Kalash Kafir people observed the ritual of baths as a part of a purification process.
There was also singing and chanting, dancing, bonfires, festive eating and a torchlight procession. This celebration lasted for at least 7 days and it is during this time the demi-god Balomain passed through the Kalash region. He is said to be collecting prayers as he goes and is worshipped during the festival.”
The Festival of Chaomos in Pakistan, the Soyal Ceremonies of the northern Arizona Hopi tribe, the celebration of Gody in Poland, Greece’s Brumalia celebration, the Hindu’s celebration of Makar Sankranti, the Persian festival of Yalda, and even the Roman celebration of Saturnalia are all further examples world wide of festivities that take place on the darkest nights of winter, and center around the celebration of the light returning to the earth and the end of the harvest season. They all feature drinking, dancing, storytelling, bonfires, and feasts. Soyal even features gift giving to children, and Yalda features general acts of merry goodwill, both traditions which are familiar to anyone caught up in the modern Christmas spirit of giving.
During Saturnalia, a festival with all of the modern chaos of Christmas-time, but more intentionally and joyfully than we usually have, they turned the tables on normal life so far as to elect a Lord of Misrule to preside over the wild festivities, in homes and temples decorated with evergreen trees.
“The idea was that he [the Lord of Misrule] ruled over chaos, rather than normal Roman order. During this time homes were decorated with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees, lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of the darkness, and temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life’s continuity.”
Legendary beings, whether spirits, men, goddesses, or monsters, are often celebrated and featured in fireside tales in midwinter as well. From Santa Claus to Jolly Old Saint Nick, to the Scandinavian Nisse, to the sun god Horus in Egypt, to the goddess Beiwe, who travelled across the night sky in a transport made of reindeer bones with her daughter, and brought back the greenery and fertility of the Earth (and thus evokes Persephone and Demeter), many Gods and spirits have been celebrated and talked about around the time of the Winter Solstice. There are many cultural traditions that propagate tales of mythical monsters, too, who play tricks on humans in the darkness, or who steal the sun.
Not all spirits are bad and steal the sun though. A part of Soyal, one of the most important ceremonies to the Arizona Hopi, is that the kachinas (spirits that watch over the tribe) come down from their home in the mountains of San Francisco and bring the sun back to the Hopi. Thus they celebrate this return of the sun and spirits with dancing, feasting, singing, prayers and purification, giving gifts to children, and of course rich storytelling.
From the deserts of Arizona to the sands of Persia, the celebration on the longest night of the year is a celebration of the triumph of the sun and its deities. In Iran, the triumph goes to Mithra, the Persian Sun God, who defeats the darkness. The ancient Persian festival of Shab-e Yalda, meaning “Night of Birth",” is celebrated in the usual human way. People gather together in the darkness, to protect each other from the evils and monsters lurking in the dark, and they burn fires to light their way as they perform acts of charity. They feast on nuts, pomegranates, watermelons, and other local delicacies, saved from summer specifically for this night. They make wishes, read the poetry of their renowned and legendary poet Hafiz, and some even stay awake all night, waiting specifically to rejoice at daybreak, when the sun rises and banishes the darkness of the longest night.
This post recapping this collection of traditions from around the world is one that I initially wrote as a post for inside of the Starlight Collective. One of the beautiful things about the flow and divine feminine aspect of the Collective is that sometimes what I set out to find and share is not at all what I discover. But then, where would be the fun in the discovery if it was? For this past week, the creativity prompt was to write a story or poem to tell around a midwinter fire. So for the curiosity post, I set out to find and share my favorite “tale from midwinter,” expecting to easily find a cache of “stories ancient peoples told around ancient campfires” in their entirety and nicely cataloged, from which I could simply choose my favorite and share. The reality was not that simple. It seems that other than a few stories having to do specifically with winter or snow (The Snow Queen, etc.), “tales from midwinter campfires” is not really a genre from which to select your favorite story or poem. A vast and wondrous collection of descriptions of midwinter traditions (all of which MENTION stories generally but never specifically), however, is readily available. And it is this which I have wound up summarizing. In fact, I liked the final product so well that I decided to share it publicly, as well.
I did, however, find one mention of a very specific poet that was traditionally recited at one of these Solstice festivals: the Persian poet, Hafiz. And so, I would like to end with my favorite poem of his. Imagine it being recited over a warm drink and warmer fire, underneath a blanket of stars peppering the darkest night sky:
All the Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch outLike a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
ChattingWhile stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
