The true meaning of Solstice

I posted this on a thread of Christmas Rants at the Message Board of Love yesterday.

My mom wants everything to be so saptacular and picture-perfect that she sucks all the fun out of it, and gets really bitchy. If she'd ratchet things down a bit, she might discover that it's pretty good!

Except for Christmas carols. I want to shoot speakers all over the city with my crossbow. I bet I could also hit a few singers of Christmas carols.

People who tell me to "just get into the spirit" don't know what they're talkin' about. Um, I take a prescription to deal with this stuff; there's no snapping out of it!

It irritates me how EVERY PLACE has a "gift idea", even the coffee shops! Also the idea that if you don't go into debt, you don't love your people enough.

Red and green have been banned from my home. Sick of 'em.

The only silver lining is that I don't want to see any more sugar for a little while.

I still feel that way. But I thought of something else.

I don't actually celebrate Christmas. What I celebrate is the Winter Solstice, and being with my family.

People asked me what my Winter Solstice decorations are. Well, they look like Christmas decorations, because most traditional Christmas decorations were borrowed from European Pagans, who celebrated the Winter Solstice. Except I still decorate a potted palm tree with lights and ornaments--plastic doesn't seem right, and neither does chopping a tree down. My ornaments and decorations are citrus colored, because citrus fruit soaks up the sun all year, then looks and tastes all nice and sunny in the winter, just as you need it. I have lots of lights, because the Winter Solstice is about the return of the light. It is the shortest day of the year, and so every day afterwards will be lighter.

I didn't appreciate it properly in Florida. There is always light there, even in winter. But in New York City, there isn't much in the way of light. There is snow, and there are clouds, and there is gray. We have to make our own light until the Divine natural light returns.

So we illuminate and decorate until the slush looks like glitter and the gray streets look festive. We shop and we ice skate and we look for the pleasures of winter. We make the best of it, and sometimes we actually see good in this season, too.

And we celebrate the fact that the light and the warmth will return eventually, in all our many ways. We celebrate it because we need to remind ourselves of it, and because it's sometimes easier to celebrate something when it's temporarily gone.