The Winter Solstice, Hardship, Cthulhu, and You

“You know, that for almost the entire history of Western Civilization this month has been a holy time. The Druids, winter solstice, Hanukkah, the Romans converted Saturnalia into Christmas.” – Millennium (TV Series)

Funny, X Wife said that every day with me was the longest day.  Tiebreaker?

December 21^st is the Winter Solstice.  In the Northern Hemisphere (where I keep all my stuff) that means it will be the shortest day of the year, and the longest night.  In the Southern Hemisphere on the Solstice, I believe that means there are fairly reasonable prices on quality, sturdy footwear.  Or maybe the Wiccans sacrifice the town elders to credit card companies.  I’m not sure, the documentary was blurry, I don’t speak Paraguayan and they wouldn’t remove the blindfold all the way.

There seems to be another holiday coming up . . . St. Zeno’s Day on December 26^th!

Just kidding.  I’ll have a Christmas post on Monday.  But St. Zeno’s Day really is on December 26^th.  And not the St. Zeno that was brutally dismembered because he was so popular, the other one, who died peacefully in his sleep.  Focus groups tell me not to use “brutally dismembered” because it doesn’t test well for humor value.  So, the one who wasn’t “brutally dismembered.”

Christmas?  I’m a fan.

But the 21^st is also notable because it’s the (traditional) feast time of the northern peoples of the world, and you can see multiple cultures built physical devices to track the solstice, places like Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge in England and the High Bank Works at Chillicothe in North America.

And, my house.

Yes.  My house.  I didn’t build my house aligned to the solstice, but whoever originally did managed to do so, either intentionally or by dumb luck.  Since my house is parallel to the road, I’m thinking it was just dumb luck.  But on the shortest day of the year, we end up having the most direct sunlight streaming in through our front window, warming the house, and in the summer the opposite result – although well lit, we get little direct sunlight.  The advantages of this are lower heating and cooling bills, all of which (likely) are a result of an accident of geometry.  Or at least that’s what I tell the Druids that start chanting at sunrise every year in my backyard.  Stupid Druids.  Please don’t tell them that Cthulhu is who we bought the place from.

But the solstice doesn’t represent the coldest part of the winter.  The coldest part is yet to come as the Arctic air blasts down from the north in January and February.  And before it gets cold, the choice had to be made:  feed all of your cattle through the winter, or have a really big drunken party and a bonfire after turning a few of the cattle into ribeyes?

Yup.  Party.  And the older name for it is “jul” which eventually became the words “Yule” and “jolly.”  Must have been some pretty legendary parties, like when Teddy Roosevelt partied with Led Zeppelin at Wellesley.  Hillary still talks about that one.

Mmm, eggnog.  Can there be something worse for you?  Yes, regret.  Enjoy your eggnog.

But the grim circumstances remain.  It’s going to get colder soon.  That last feast is the final preparation for the coming hardships of winter.  People who aren’t used to the north (and New York is roughly the same latitude as the south of France, so most of the United States isn’t north at all) think it’s the dark that gets to you.  It isn’t.  It’s the brutally cold days that follow the solstice.  When we lived in Fairbanks we noticed that people did fine during the dark periods of winter.  But when spring was around the corner, that’s when the odd stories of people going a bit nutso would show up in the paper, and the wives who had spent 20 happy years in Fairbanks would look at their husbands and declare, “I’m leaving.  I’m not leaving you, but I’m leaving here.  You can come with me if you want to.”

Winter is about deprivation and hardship, which might just be the greatest teacher:

“They are not spoiled by luxury, soft and weak (relatively speaking, obviously).  They are learned in deprivation and hardship.” – James Dakin at Bison Prepper, 11/9/18 (LINK).

But those hardships were their friend.

• They had to plan. And they had to plan months and years ahead.  There is simply no getting through a winter at -30°F (-651°C) without a plan.  They didn’t have the option of going to a supermarket and getting fresh strawberries in the middle of winter.  Or, well, anything in the middle of winter, except maybe some poor caribou that forgot to duck.
• They had to learn to be nice. There was no getting through winter alone.  There was safety in the group.  So, in order to stay alive through the winter, they’d better be able to create and maintain good relationships with not only their neighbors, but also the people in their family – they were certainly going to be seeing a lot of them during the winter.  Also?  They never knew who they would need to ask for a favor.  As in “Olaf, Sven got lippy at dinner.  Where can we hide the body?”
• They had to be patient. Eat all the food in month one?  Month two would be difficult.  Eat the seeds you were planning on planting in spring?    I guess you just get to starve next winter.  Patience pays – not now, but later.

Outside of having all of that ribeye, and the big fire, why party?

Well, the solstice marks the day that the Sun stops moving south.  There’s even an instant (if you had the proper equipment) that you could observe the Sun standing still in the sky, not moving north nor south, that’s technically the solstice.  But you can see, using relatively simple tools (like Stonehenge), the same thing over the course of a day.  The Sun will move north again, and the days will get longer.  And it is that moment that the celebration of hope begins, not for the winter that has been vanquished, but for the winter that will bring us hardship and make us stronger.

Because what better gift is there than being stronger?

Thankfully, there’ll soon be an app for your iPhone® to tell you when to celebrate the solstice.  Stupid Druids.