Large Fierce Mammal

If there is one thing to be learned from history, it’s that from a practical standpoint, people don’t learn anything from history. The winter solstice – the interval of time that surrounds the shortest day, and likewise the longest night of the annual cycle, has held deep spiritual meaning for human societies as long as there have been humans to organize societies worthy of the name.

Winter, in latitudes where sub-freezing temperatures can occur, brings with it harsh realities that only frantic and organized preparation in the months prior can meet with any hope of success, leading to the passing down of parables such as the story of the ant and the grasshopper, and the legend of the Wendigo. This is not hard to grasp, but the significance of the winter solstice is so profound that it has not gone unnoticed even by the inhabitants of lands with much more benign climates, where the season doesn’t ride in sharing a horse with the Angel of Death.

Pre-Christian history is full of spiritual beliefs that personify the sun as a deity who dies and is resurrected, even as the sun that reaches its shortest period of life in the sky is reborn to linger just a little longer each day in the blessed march toward what is hoped to be a new year full of hope and prosperity. With Christianity came a similar legend in the story of Jesus Christ, who gave his name to the festival we call Christmas. And so it continues.

Spiritual observances surrounding the winter solstice, even in such climes of winter dearth as northern Europe and North America, are often characterized by feasting and revelry of a degree that seems logistically ironic to the point of negligence if taken from a purely practical view, but ill befall him who shows lack of trust in his Gods by hoarding instead.

These facts are the launching point for what will be an annual event. Beginning today and running up to include New Year’s Eve, this will be the first in an eleven part series of articles in which I will make personal observations on the season of Yule as I have come, and am still coming, to know it.