This is the eighth post in the guest series ChristmaHanaKwanzika. Mouse writes on Souris Mariage and Good Mouse, Bad Mouse and is freaking delightful, obviously. She’s recapping her absolutely beautiful Arizona wedding now on the blog and we’re delighted to have her. Not that I play favorites at all, but Chicago folks tend to warm my heart just a bit. Take me home. Yadda. Take it away, Mouse.
I love Christmas. Stockings and presents and trees and carols and eggnog and tinsel and the Grinch and, well, all of it, really. But as a girl who grew up in an a-religious house, deeply immersed in questions rather than answers and with the holidays thoroughly detached from their spiritual meaning, Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s a season. And no, I don’t mean the commercial season that starts the day after Halloween and takes you right through the February sales. (I’m looking at you, Macy’s in downtown Chicago. Nobody wants to see Santa the day after Halloween. Let us have effing Thanksgiving first, at least!)
This season is about the solstice, the lengthening nights as the moon takes over our lives, the deepening scarcity and barren snowscapes, the single candle burning on a windowsill. This is about drifting snow, the smell of cold on a clear night. It is about offering up plenty, in feast and gift and love, in a moment when the earth is the most silent, the most unyielding. And tonight, as I’m writing this post, tonight we will experience a total lunar eclipse on solstice, on the longest night of the year. The moon, our only natural light on that long, deep night, will vanish in the shadow of our own little planet. It may even turn red as we pass between it and the sun. People used to make sacrifices, to be sure that the moon would return again.
If you watched the eclipse, maybe you set a candle or a walnut, a pomegranate or an orange on your windowsill to bring the light back again. Or maybe you sat in the total dark, unshepherded by either sun or moon, and felt peaceful, and felt alone. In any case, solstice is the turning of the tide, the movement back towards balance between light and dark. We celebrate the deep stillness even as we hope—beyond reason, beyond science, but in the ancient inherited soul we all share—even as we hope for the return of the light.
fisheye of the milky way and a total lunar eclipse from wikimedia
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
This post is amazing. Hands down, one of the most beautiful things I’ve read about the season, and certainly about the solisticlipse.
for sure. i love the way she describes it
So pretty and true. I was disappointed that I missed the lunar eclipse due to heavy clouds and rain, but it was still in my thoughts, in my consciousness as I imagined what was taking place high above my tiny, low-ceilinged world. I love how it marks the end and the beginning of something.
awww…so bummed you had to miss it! isaiah and i drove out deep into the country to see it and i think it’ll be a new yearly tradition for us. i hope you get the chance to see the next one…and i also hope that by the time of the next one, i’ll freaking know how long is in between them. embarrassing.
That was beautiful Mouse. Thank you.
♥
I am loving all your posts in this series! This is really beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing Mouse! Lizzie, wishing you JOY and LOVE for a wonderful Christmas my sweet friend..thank you for all the blessings you have given me this year. Love to you!
thank you so much, jacqueline, you are a sweetheart for sure! thank you so much, glad you liked it
beautiful! thank you for this.
it is a lovely read, eh?
Lovely, and agreed. I valued how the eclipse this year made me really stop and take notice. Usually I complain about the solstice because I miss the sunshine, but this year I just valued the cyclical nature of it.
we felt the same…we drove out to the middle of nowhere and it was completely lovely..