Welcome to 24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being, a digital Advent calendar for slowing down and making space for presence, creativity, and gratitude. If you missed a day you can catch up here.
Hello friends,
Happy winter solstice.
Today is the shortest day of the year. The crescendo of the darkness before we start moving back towards the light.
We get two of these moments in the year, one in winter, one in summer. They are our extremes, both of them a kind of apex, a peak and a pause.
“Today is tied with its twin in the summer for the most powerful day of the year. Light a fire. Light a fire on this day. Let something burn. That is what the solstices are for,” writes Nina MacLaughlin. “Summer flames say, Keep the light alive (it’s never worked, not once). In winter, a more urgent message: Bring light back to life (it’s worked every time so far).”
Our celebration of light and life is a “universal impulse” as Susan Cooper writes in the afterword of her book The Shortest Day, her poem beautifully illustrated by Carson Ellis1. If you don’t know the poem, it’s worth reading it out loud today, in honor of calling the light back into being.