Solstice – All that is old is new again
When I was a child, on May 1st of each year, at school streamers were hung in many colors from a tall pole and everyone participated in a May Pole dance around the pole. I knew when I came home that day my mother would have taken muffin papers and filled them with nuts, mints, and candy to distribute to our neighbors. Today, very little is done in regards to May Day, a tradition of another time.
Today, Winter Solstice ushered in a period signified by being the shortest day/longest night of the year. In ancient times, Winter Solstice marked a day when the year was concluded, during the time of Winter Solstice people would nurture a new plan of creation into being on the Spring Equinox. A time when ideas/crops were planted and as the ancients understood, allowed to grow corn. Summer Solstice would bring the time of growth, when idea/crops took hold and grew into a harvest. Fall Equinox brought the time of harvesting ideas/corn and storing the abundance/bounty, which had been created. Winter Solstice was a time of celebration before your life fell into another period of becoming introspective in planning the Spring Equinox of another year of bounty and fruition.
Celebration of the Winter Solstice was a time before a period of where people retreated into shelter from the dark of winter, they would gather and be thankful to the Earth/Universe for all that was provided. The earliest of what we celebrate now as Christmas, was the celebration of Winter Solstice. However, not a time of Santa Claus, they did celebrate the unseen force, which guided each through the year.
Today, being the last Saturday before Christmas, in a tradition of my own family I took my grandsons for a day of shopping finished with stopping at a restaurant to eat before going home again. On this Solstice, I spent some time with the two of them discussing Winter Solstice and each cycle of the year in significance. Not a long conversation and each is greater in thought processing and quizzing on not only what is being said, but what is not said as well.
Solstice and Equinox too many are thought of as Pagan in nature for celebration. Then, anything, which was a part of our world longer than 2013 years ago, could be lumped into being Pagan as well. Our history on Earth is to be celebrated rather than shunned for reason of being a lesser than of importance. I believe it was Winston Churchill, and I could be wrong who said something along the lines of being the farther you look back the greater vision you have looking forward.
For each question asked, the answer has already been received. As the mortals we are, we do tend to accept the answer as being around the next corner rather than already known. When traditions of old, are left to a distant memory and felt to be irrelevant now, the answer becomes a process of relearning rather than remembering. Solstice and Equinox points of each year are not of religious preference, each is intact from the point of creation until now in remembering when to rest, when to grow, when to stretch and when to accept the bounty created in our lives. With the knowledge, that when completed it also becomes an opportunity to recreate with each new point for another year. Celebrate the point of creation and growth in your life, each is your never-ending movement from who you were to who you are – timeless.
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