New beginnings
Bye-Bye Christmas. It’s Time For an Epiphany!
I think I just had one
Christmas is over. Just.
Last night was Twelfth Night and, according to tradition, that means that today we take down our decorations.
Although I have no real religious investment in Christmas traditions — we didn’t even celebrate Christmas when I was a kid since I was born into a Jewish family — I do have a love for traditions, rituals, and the legends behind many of these. And they are often punctuated by the cycles of nature anyway.
I mean, is it any coincidence that the winter solstice falls around the 21st/22nd December — the sun hitting its lowest point in the northern hemisphere, where it remains for around 72 hours before being ‘reborn’ and returning to bless us with its increasing light? A little calculation will show you that happens right around 24th/25th December, when the son (sun?) of God was born.
And then, interestingly, it takes until a few days into January for the sun to start rising earlier in the morning. For some time, while the days do lengthen a little, the movement of the earth means that sunrise continues to be slightly later each day during the Christmas period until it comes to a bit of a standstill. And then, right around now, it begins rising…
