Over the weekend, in Vermont, on a cold night lit only by the thinnest sliver of crescent moon, I was struck by the depth and inky blackness of the night. In a snow-covered world of bone-freezing cold and endless darkness, I was brought back to the idea of how this void of cold and dark must have seemed to people whose world was illuminated only by fire.
That idea is driven home by the fact that in 2009, the Winter Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere will occur on December 21 at approximately 17:47 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) which is 12:47pm on the East Coast of the US. Whether you call it the “shortest day,” or the “first day of winter” or “midwinter,” the Winter Solstice has everything to do with the Christmas season and the importance of the ideas of light and hope coming into the world and a “new year” beginning.
In the ancient world, people understood the solstice. We know that from such ancient sites as Stonehenge and Machu Picchu which clearly were used to mark the solstices and other events in the annual cycle of the Sun. The source of life and light had all but disappeared –especially the further north you are, and with it life itself. But after this day, the Sun gradually began to make its return. The significance of the winter solstice was central to many of the festivals and rituals of the pagan –or pre-Christian — world. And almost every culture told a story to recognize the central importance of this event.
In an earlier blog about the December date of Christmas, I wrote about the significance of an ancient Roman festival celebrating the solstice– the Saturnalia. It was far from unique. The Japanese have a charming story of Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, who had retreated to a cave and was lured out of hiding by the merriment of the other gods who were watching a young goddess dance naked. It is no coincidence that the Jewish “Festival of Lights” coincides with the Christmas season.
But few traditions are more important to western Christmas celebrations than the Norse solstice stories. In the far north land of the Vikings, where the darkness is deeper and lasts even longer, the myth of the Solstice involved the king of the gods, Odin, bringing the Sun back to the world as he rode across the night sky on his eight-legged horse Stepnir. In honor of this event, the Norse lit a burning log to celebrate the return of light to their dark world. It was mean to represent the “Wheel” of the sun –and the Norse word for “wheel” was Yule. The Yule log burned through the Solstice season for as many as twelve days.
It is easy to see how these ancient rituals were transferred to the concept of the birth of Jesus — the miraculous arrival of God on earth, who was bringing Light and Life to the world. It was a lot easier for the early Church Fathers to give these ancient rituals a Christian meaning than get people to surrender ideas they had celebrated for thousands of years.
And that is why, for all the years I was growing up in metropolitan New York City, a television station devoted a commercial free Christmas Eve to playing Christmas carols and an endless loop of a burning log. We were still celebrating the return of the Sun.
So as the Solstice approaches, bring out your inner Viking and light the Yule log. And next time, I’ll tell you some of the other things our Christmas celebration owes to the Vikings.
