December
I always have the strangest feeling, as the year winds down to the shortest day of the year, that the world is coming to a standstill, is standing still, that everything is slowing and waiting. That the world is possibly dying, even. That this is it; the end-times. Life will never move on again.
It always makes me think back to what it was like for primitive people. In the Stone Age, for instance. Before information was recorded in almost any form at all - except perhaps, rough indentations on boulders. Before people were taught to read and the printed word handed to them to tell them not to fear this standing-still time of the year - the year will move on, the sun will come back, it is all only part of a natural rhythm, a cycle. Before all the things we take for granted: radio waves, television broadcasts, and this massive ethereal thing called ‘The web’ that now supplies us, instantly, at the touch of the button, all the information we could ever need or want. (Of course, some of it is not to relied upon - but that’s another matter…)
Back then, experience could teach them the sun would come back, and knowledge handed down orally, from generation to generation - Don’t despair - it’s not the end of the world - the sun will start coming back, the days growing longer . . . But such reasurrances, without any science behind them, could not completely quell the feeling of panic when those days grew shorter and shorter, when the sun seemed in danger of disappearing for good. Even for me, being acquainted with the science of the passage of the sun and the tilting of the earth’s axis, that makes seasons such as we experience them in our hemisphere an explainable phenomena, there is something at that Winter Solstice time of the year that threatens to overwhelm me. A primitive fear of darkness. A primitive fear of the sun’s disappearance for ever.
No wonder so called primitive societies first made a God of the sun. No wonder they worshipped this great fiery ball in the sky that makes light return to the earth and causes things to grow and ripen. At this darkest time, I could easily worship the sun, as well. Build a bonfire on a high hill and dance around it and call out to the sun to return. Beg it to return. Beseech it. Promise it all manner of renunciations if only it would come back again . . .
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