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Happy Solstice!

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I have a suggestion: let's just celebrate the solstice. I think that's where it all started anyway. I've read that it's the oldest known holiday in human history, celebrations going back thousands of years, maybe as much as 30,000, an unfathomable length of time. I believe that Stonehenge, that famous arrangement of stone monoliths in England, was laid out so that the first rays of the midwinter sun would strike the stones first. All about Stonehenge is speculation but that first light was so important in ancient times, the explanation seems very plausible. The return of the light still inspires joy. And we should celebrate that. No matter what religious persuasion, no one could be offended by the natural joy that emerges from us as we acknowledge the progress of our planet back toward the light. It is something that all of us share. And the Christmas tree, I believe, has roots in the ancient celebration of the solstice. Christians adapted it much later. So we're covered there.

Here at the farm, I wait for the light to return, every morning, summer and winter, though in summer, I can glimpse those early apricot rays touching the mountain before five, which is when I get up. But now, when I get up, hours elapse before light enters the house. Though it is morning, I work inside the house as if it were night, as do my friends so far away in the darkness that is Iceland. I like to believe that, like Stonehenge, my house, high on its hill, receives those first rays of midwinter sun. I'd like to believe, though I have no way of knowing, that the builder of this house, Benjamin Mason, was thinking of that when he first sited and then built the house here in 1762. And that once he had built the house and settled into it, he knew too that on these cold dark days, the welcome light that marks the very cold pinnacle of our winter calendar is first filtered through the beautifully patterned frost on the windows of the east side of the house.

When (and if) the sun strengthens, I'll go out through that bitter wind and look for a little tree in my woods, just a little one. I'll cut it with a hand saw, bring it inside and put lights on it, a few brightly colored ornaments. After all, it's Christmas, or Solstice, or both.