This time of year with its short, often gray, muted days and long cold nights can be a challenge to the human spirit. In response, people throughout history have come up with strategies to overcome their doubts concerning re-appearance of the light. We, too, in our new Northern home have had to confront this primal uneasiness.
Coming from different religious backgrounds, and as good Unitarians, Trudi and I gladly make use of all the tools available to us, fending off the darkness with both hannukah candles and Christmas tree lights. This year’s tree came from the Marblehead Boy Scouts. We bought one of three remaining trees from a load of 150 brought down from Nova Scotia. We got a good deal on the oddly-shaped tree, which shed its needles in profuse clouds, but still maintained its lovely scent of spruce forest.
Theater and the participation in ritual performance has long been a bulwark against encroaching dark for us both. We attended the 41rst annual performance of the Christmas Revels solstice celebration at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre this past week. One of our first dates - probably the third or fourth performance back in the early ‘70s - was to go to the Cambridge Revels. Sanders Theatre, opened in 1875 as a monument to Harvard grads who fought for the Union in the Civil War, hasn’t changed over the decades. It is renowned for its superb acoustics,and beautiful woodwork.
In this year’s version, three fools sail off in a ship (the Ship of Fools, of course!) to recover the light of the sun, moon, and stars stolen by a sinister skeleton. The sun is finally revived by a staging of a nativity play by children from the cast. The moon fool was performed by Mark Jaster, an actor who studied mime under Marcel Marceau and whose career we have followed for many years. It was a joy to see him again, and to sing along with the sellout audience, the traditional verses of Dona Nobis Pacem and the Sussex Mummers’ Carol.
On December 22nd, the winter solstice, we joined a group of locals at a small park on a bluff overlooking the Bay in a simple sunrise ceremony to celebrate the return of the sun after the longest night. Generous donors have funded the construction of a sun circle created by a local artist/architect using basalt columns transported from Washington state. The dawn was perfect, cloudless and warm. We’ll be back at the park in March to mark sunrise on the morning of the Spring equinox, Insha'Allah.
When we first talked about moving back north, we had a concern about how much darker winters would be from what we had grown used to in Virginia. Using an internet web site, I found that the difference between Arlington and Swampscott is only 23 minutes of additional darkness on December 22nd for a total of 9 hours and 4 minutes of daylight, which, admittedly, is still a lot of darkness. However, compared to Fairbanks, Alaska, it’s not such a challenge, as this YouTube video demonstrates.
So, now on Christmas Eve we find daylight in the Northern Hemisphere increasing as we prepare to sing with the choir at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn in our neighborhood. We both hope that you, loyal readers, find the light within you to be generous to others and fill the world in the coming year with your creativity and love.
