The Writing Life Too

Dusk is falling and the winter solstice is hours away. This time of year everything has a silver hue, the sky outlined against bare, silvery branches, stalks in the garden also cast like metal. I don’t know about you, but I always try to imagine the ancient astronomers and wise men and women who first figured out that this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere that the earth was tilted farthest away from the sun. And once they recognized this celestial event, how did the word of it spread? What is known is that a huge number of ancient civilizations built temples, cairns, observatories and such aligned with the solstices and equinox. It was celebrated from Scotland to Tibet, from Pakistan to North America. Solstice means standing still sun and I love the peacefulness of this day, the sense that something magnificent has shifted.

I was home wrapping presents a few nights ago and listening to various radio stations. John Henry Faulk’s Christmas story was broadcast on our local NPR station. If you’ve never heard it or read it the transcript for it is at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5028755

It’s a story best enjoyed listened to in Faulk’s amazing voice. Here are the first two paragraphs: The day after Christmas a number of years ago, I was driving down a country road in Texas. And it was a bitter cold, cold morning. And walking ahead of me on the gravel road was a little bare-footed boy with non-descript ragged overalls and a makeshift sleeved sweater tied around his little ears. I stopped and picked him up. Looked like he was about 12 years old and his little feet were blue with the cold. He was carrying an orange.

And he got in and had the brightest blue eyes one ever saw. And he turned a bright smile on my face and says, "I'm-a going down the road about two miles to my cousins. I want to show him my orange old Santa Claus brought me." But I wasn't going to mention Christmas to him because I figured he came from a family -- the kind that don't have Christmas. But he brought it up himself. He said, "Did old Santa Claus come to see you, Mister?" And I said, "Yes. We had a real nice Christmas at our house and I hope you had the same."

I have a single candle burning in my window these days. Welcome Yule to all!