A Maybe-Too-Honest Solstice Reflection

December is a strange time to celebrate the return of the light.

I mean, I understand that this is when the days start to get longer, technically, but who are we kidding?

If we’re to be really honest with each other, the winter-i-est months are still coming.  January is Christmas bills and broken resolutions, February and March always seem to go on forever, and after that there will be likely be a number of fake springs to get our hopes up before real spring arrives.  It’s going to be a while.

There will still be months of waking in the dark and curling up with coffee by the soft light of a lamp.  Months of opening the house each morning and stepping out into night, the smell and sounds of snow wrapped around us and the air biting sharply on our cheeks. Months of waiting for something, anything, that feels at all like summer.  

It’ll be months before we first feel spring unravelling the knots in our shoulders.  

So, you have to wonder who picked this moment, to celebrate.  Seriously.  Who’s dumb idea was this?  Because there was a choice made, somewhere along the line.  A choice to celebrate at a time when any tangible warmth is still months away.  But… Some very observant person was able notice that the sun had turned a corner. In the middle of what felt indisputably like winter, there was just a little more light.

It’s always that way, I think.  With the actions that start small and grow over time.  With the first few bowls of soup that become an organization that feeds people and changes thousands of lives.  With great discoveries, great art.  These things start with a tiny, mediocre spark, and then there is generally a lot of hanging in there and stumbling about and doing the best you can.

They say it’s always darkest just before the dawn, but it isn’t.  Just before the dawn is when there is a tiny beginning of light, and if you don’t pay attention you might not even see it.

Spring comes slowly. Change seeps in, and it’s never large at first.

And so we sit, knowing that the soft curl of the dark holds us in peace and rest, and sometimes struggle.  We sit, knowing we are lights to one another and to ourselves. We sit knowing that far from extinguishing the candle flame, the darkness makes it’s light more beautiful.  We sit, knowing all of those things… and also knowing that this is going to take time.

It’s supposed to take time.

Which is why, I think, that we celebrate now.

Because it’s a long journey ahead.  And when the journey is long, we go together.