The Shortest Day
(The observatory at Stonehenge)
Winter blew across Big Pink just after seven this morning. I felt a brief shiver as it went by, and sleet came with it, rattling on the parking lot below.
There is plenty to talk about this morning, but the President Elect is in Hawaii, taking two weeks in Aloha-land over the holidays, and I guess we can do the same. We have all had a hard year, and the next will doubtlessly be more of the same. The islands where he grew up- Hawaiian and Indonesian- are much closer to the equator than the rest of us, and the effect of the great tilt in the earth’s orbit is not as pronounced where the gentle trade winds blow.
Honolulu gets around eleven hours of sunlight in the winter, and thirteen in summer. They avoid the wild drama, which may account for Mr. Obama’s equanimity; in Indonesia, there is no seasonal difference at all. Twelve hours of light, and twelve of dark, year round. Not symmetrical; precisely equal, world without end.
My boys are Hawaiians, by birth, though they have no conscious memory of it. I wonder if there is something about their earliest formative years spent barefoot, with the warmth and regularity of the light. I know the rest of us are nuts, from a purely seasonal perspective, and the more so the further from the equator you get.
Look at the Russians, for goodness sake.
The Boys are traveling today, by car, and I hope that they partied hard enough last night in the aftermath of a wedding that they will not be on the highway until they are forced to check out of their room down in Williamsburg. I also hope to see them here before I throw myself into the winter travel adventure before dawn tomorrow morning, but of course I would rather have them safe.
Human imperatives and plans are not well suited to the movements of the stars in the heavens.
I always think of the shortest day coming as an early sunset, racing the cocktail hour. Of course, it actually happens at both ends. I saw two shortest days last year, one from the balcony and the other from the place they permitted the smokers to stand in front of the bus depot in Canberra, perilously near falling off the bottom of the world. I’ve decided that one winter solstice is plenty for any given year.
The darkness is why we have this festive season, of course. Our ancestors may have been pagans, but not dummies. Humans in the northern latitudes have always considered this the time to answer the night with fire and social contact. Despite the evidence that the waxing and waning of the light was cyclical- witness the ancient astrological instruments that survive from Stonehenge to the Mayan Pyramids- there was magic abroad in those days, and it never hurt to check on what the Gods had in mind. Endless night and cold would be bad, really bad.
Never hurts to check on what the Gods are up to, and the slight rising of the sun on the day after the solstice was confirmation of mercy and rebirth.
The Romans were responsible for hi-jacking Christ’s birth, as they are for most things. Prior to the height on the Empire, it was the day of death that was remembered, not birth. In Hawaii today, it is not the day of birth that is recognized as special, but the successful survival of a full cycle. The One Year Luau is when a child is recognized as being a person.
Earlier than that, it is considered too soon to tell.
There are some zealots out there, as you well know. The only religion that is currently fair game is Christianity, so I will contain my remarks to those who won’t take too violent offense. I apologize in advance, since this painful correctness is as absurd as the pious New York Times observing that the Muslim fanatics who attacked Mumbai “incidentally” chose the Jewish welcome center in which to torture and murder a young pregnant woman and her husband.
All the others, they just slaughtered, matter-of-factly.
Islam has tied itself to the Lunar cycle, anyway, and Ramadan migrates across the months with the passing of the centuries.
There are certainly zealots in Christianity. Some of them note that in the Julian calendar, created by Great Caesar himself in 45 B.C.E, the winter solstice fell on December 25th. The connection is unmistakable, even if some true believers insist that it was Rome that invented the significance of the sun to pre-empt the Christian celebration of the birth of the King of the Jews.
They somewhat apologetically concede that the first recorded celebrations of Christ’s birth did not occur until 336 AD, but insist that there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically. More than one authority cites the birth date of December 25th as a simple by-product of the attempt to determine the timing of the resurrection.
Certainly there is controversy. Major branches of the faith have divergent Christmas days, based on their calendar systems. The Pilgrim Fathers here in North America attempted to ban gaiety on the solstice in the Plymouth Colony as a pagan rite to be heavily proscribed. There are chunks of the evangelical community who agree with that nonsense today.
I’m not much of a biblical scholar, but a simple reading of the Gospel of Luke 2:1-2:8 lays it out pretty well. This is from my trusty King James version, the one Great Aunt Bly presented to me as a child with my name stamped on the leather cover in golf leaf and a zipper around it to keep the good word secured when not in use:
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
3 And everyone went to his own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,
7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
The two plain facts of the story solve the matter in my mind. First, people gathered at the harvest time, when the roads were dry for travel. That would have been the logical time for a census to take place. Secondly, the shepherds, then and now, were no fools. When the winter solstice came, so did the rain. The roads were impassible, and they were hunkered down with their flocks protected from the dark and cold, not out in the fields. The Christ child was probably born in late September or early October.
Now, having demonstrated that, if you think for an instant that I am going to change a thing about the way I celebrate this season, you would be wrong.
It is as good a time as any, and the day is as short as it gets. I'll lift a glass to the dying of the light, and will peek tomorrow to see if the light comes a minute or two earlier. It is hard to tell with that little difference, but by the 25th, we should be able tell with confidence whether the sun is coming back or not. That is an occasion for a celebration all by itself.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com