Late December.  Shadows stretching long on the ground after 3 pm, when the sun seems to lose all heat.  The tree branches thin, brittle and gray, resembling nothing more than old age and death.  Night settles in over the landscape so full and dark and deep. The moon itself looks pale and frozen, and clouds scuttle across its face in a hurry to reach some warmer corner of the sky. Inside, we’re firing up the woodstove and pulling on extra blankets. On the sofa as I read, cold radiates from the windows, and a wisp of cool air curls down the stairway to brush my nose and cheeks.

 Alongside of Christmas, there is the older, wilder celebration of Winter Solstice.  For many years, it meant nothing special to me, eclipsed by the Christmas lights and the bustle of shopping, baking and cards in the mail. For a long time, I didn’t seem to know that Winter Solstice was the longest stretch of darkness before the return of light.  It took going to a Solstice celebration at my son’s Nature preschool, where we greeted the early nighttime with lanterns and candles to remind me it existed. For the last few years, my friend Claudia has hosted a Solstice drumming and family party to honor this solemn and hopeful time of year.  It’s a part of her Native American heritage that she has built on and shared with friends and family, and like other parties, loud, festive and with lots of good food.  But, it’s also time to reflect about the turning of the Earth, the changing of the seasons, and our part in it.

But part of me has always known, has always felt the significance of the time of the long, dark cold. 

 One year, my brothers and sisters and I went to visit our Vermont aunt and uncle for the week of Christmas break. Normally, we went in summer, but this was something unusual. They had a treat in store for us, something special for this time of year. My aunt Betty knew a farmer with acres of land on the side of a mountain, and a tractor to pull a dozen kids and their sleds to the top of an unplowed farm road.  In the pitch dark late afternoon.  In the frosty cold.  On a snowy mountain side. The little light was the light of the stars and the brightness of snow.  At the top, we mounted our sleds looking into the black abyss, counting on staying the course to the bottom of the hill without landing in the shallow ditches to either side that separated us from the forest.  One by one, we pushed off and slid and dipped and flew down the hill, on and on for a mile, it seemed, until the land flattened and we ended in the field below.  The cold spray, the blindness, the utter unknowing of what lay ahead, it was a terrifying freedom, a sensation like no other—being so alive in the frozen dark.

 Over and over we went, plunging down the hill, to be loaded and dragged back up to the top, moderating ourselves only by the sound of voices and the “feel” of the tracks beneath us.  Finally, we had worn down the snow to gravel, and the last trip of the night was full of fire and sparks as the sled runners met the pebbles underneath, and we made our own stars in the night. It was Solstice, celebration of the long, cold dark.