Today is Winter Solstice.
Today, Jupiter and Saturn are aligned, creating the illusion of a multi-pronged star that some call a “Christmas Star.”
Last night was the longest night of the year. Following the shortest day of the year.
To the druids, a spiritual group of Celtic origin, Winter Solstice is a symbol. It was (and is) celebrated as a turning point, a day of renewal, a time of healing. The day that is more dark than light followed by a day of a shorter time of darkness, then another, and another, bringing more light with each passing turn of the Earth.
Winter Solstice is a time of hope.
Last Wednesday, Virginia saw its first snow of the season. Eight inches fell from the sky. The world was blanketed with white, quiet but for the sound of the flakes tinkling lightly as it settled on the ground.
Tonight, Logan’s memorial bear, made with sheets he never got to use and onesies he never got to wear, will be arriving. We ordered it in August. And it arrives tonight, on Winter Solstice. Five months to the day after we came home from the hospital without him.
2020 has taken too much. For many of us, we will live the rest of our lives feeling the stark absence of someone we love. For us, the horrors of 2020 isn’t a joke, and it won’t be a laughable memory we look back on every time we squirt some hand sanitizer into our palms. For us, 2020 is the blackest and longest of nights, and maybe for some that longest and blackest of nights won’t start getting shorter just yet. There is no “silver lining” to 2020 for us. There is no “gratitude” or “positive side.”
But dammit, do we ever need that Christmas Star. That Winter Solstice. That turning point. Renewal.
Hope.
Friends, no matter what you believe, be it science or God or Mother Nature or all of the above, what we need now, as a people, as a society, is hope.
Any time you start to sneer at someone you’ve painted to be an opponent or foe, please think of those of us who will never again have what our life was before 2020. Those of us who are forever changed, and how desperately we need this. Be kinder, be open-hearted if not open-minded. Give renewal, and hope.
Be a Christmas Star.
