This week is the winter solstice - a time to mark the returning of the light, the lengthening of the days and the shortening of the nights. But you wouldn't think that to look outside; it is 3:45 p.m. and the afternoon light fades by the minute, giving way to that winter dusk-light that blends the earth and sky into one band of white. Still, we trust that after today's shortest period of light, we will have more sun and less darkness from here until mid-summer. Sometimes what you can see with your eyes is not the only truth.
That's an important lesson for me to remember at this time of the year. I am in the last week of holiday preparations, worrying about which gifts haven't arrived, about how lean the budget looks, about how to maintain family peace when difficult relatives visit this weekend, about how to balance my work and family obligations with the added expectations of Christmas. Any woman who "does" Christmas at her house knows the tune I sing; her verses might differ from mine, but we can all chime in on the chorus. This time of year raises more stress and guilt among women than any other that I'm aware of. But, the do-it-all-with-good-cheer stress does not have to be our only reality. Behind the busyness and the anxiety lies the true reason we fret: we love our families and dearly want to bring them joy this season. The packages we wrap and hide are but symbols of the gifts we are really trying to give: love, joy, peace, and wonder. This can be our Reality if we let it.
There is another truth behind this season, another invisibilty that merits remembering. Many of us mourn loved ones who are no longer with us; this time of year can be particularly hard if it is the first Christmas without someone we miss. I personally know three people who have lost parents this year, and tomorrow my daughter and husband will attend a memorial service for a high-school boy who died ten days ago. To experience such sorrow in the midst of twinkiling lights and merry carolers is to experience a true disconnect from reality. Believing that the spirits of the people we have lost are still with us -- that the Incarnation we are celebrating truly means that death no longer can separate us from one another -- requires such a leap of faith. It requires us to have the same belief in a world we cannot see as we have in the solstice and the return of light. We must believe that the truth we see with our eyes is not the only truth.
Of course I know the history about why the early Church decided on this time of year to commemorate the birth of Christ. Of course I know that no actual birth record exists, that Jesus could have easily been born in April or August, not December. Of course I realize that the holy-day that I'm preparing to celebrate was scheduled largely to coincide with the pagan celebration of the solstice, to maintain the familiarity and importance of a mid-winter holiday for early Christian converts.
But I don't care. That the first Christmas is celebrated at this time of the year rings right and true to me, even though I know intellectually that it could be celebrated at any time. That we first notice the returning of the light in the natural world, and then, just a few days later, celebrate the return of spiritual light into our own darkened lives seems the perfect blending of nature and humanity, a blending that, like mid-winter dusk, blurs the boundaries between our visible reality, and our Reality.
