Solstice

Having traversed much of the globe, it never fails to fascinate me the way different people and societies solve essentially human problems and dilemmas. Then, once the differences in their approaches, technologies or philosophies are peeled away, what’s left is how remarkably similar they all are.

Religion is the most obvious example. “Who am I?” “Where do I come from?” “Where am I going?” The simple necessity to make some sense of these quintessentially human questions is universal to Homo Sapiens. A consciousness of past, present and future. Just the fact that we ask these questions could be cited as one of those subtle things that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. The answers we’ve come up with are as diverse as our hair colour. Yet I’ve not encountered even one that lacks a tenet to echo “love thy neighbour as thyself”.

Some years ago, I interviewed an expert on prehistoric cave and rock paintings. He pointed out that wherever you go in the world, shamanistic rock paintings have distinct details in common. According to the Professor, many of these paintings, on whichever continent you care to mention, show evidence of being painted during or just after a period of shamanic trance. While the animals will vary geographically according to the fauna the painter saw or hunted every day, the more abstract forms such as zigzags, whorls and hand outlines are found almost universally.

They questioned several modern-day shamans and discovered that these whorls and zigzags are also, apparently, the first “visions” (called entoptic forms) one sees when entering shamanic trance. As the trance deepens, these abstract shapes are replaced with more distinct hallucinations - objects the shaman relates to and recognises – the first “layer” of his or her culture.

I certainly don’t need more proof than that (although I have experienced plenty) that in essence, all human beings are the same. You need only compare the word for “mother” in any given language. The obvious similarities are more than simply linguistic or dialectal. They are physiological. When a human baby, whether in Boston or Bangkok, makes a humming sound and simply relaxes its jaw twice, the result is inevitably “ma-ma”.

While the shortening of the day and the lengthening of the night must have been matters of awe for the primitives, the motion of the heavenly orbs has long been taught to children in primary school. However, while we might understand perfectly why the days get shorter and the weather colder, it does little to counter the same seasonal depression that must have plagued our cave-dwelling ancestors.

Having grown up in the Southern Hemisphere, where the Earth’s tilt results in far more subtle seasonal variations, I became more acutely aware of them after moving to Europe. Even after nearly two decades in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, I still experience a few weeks of time-disorientation in spring and autumn. It proves to me that whatever my eyes might be seeing and my conscious mind interpreting from my watch or the dashboard clock, my biological rhythms take their time from a deeper-seated instinct which, after almost 50 years, is having to re-learn its perception of what the time is based on the lightness or darkness of the sky.

With the marked contrast between the longest day and the longest night, it’s not surprising that lights and candles feature in nearly all rituals and festivals at least Northern-Hemisphere societies have evolved around the Winter Solstice to explain, study, and worship the Elements. So whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Chanukah, Diwali, Jul or Saturnalia, the emotional aspects: the glow of the candle, the tendency to band together as a family around a warm campfire – instincts, intuitions, traditions and customs that could almost certainly be traced back to the last Ice Age replay themselves in every living room, while the hunter-gatherer instinct runs wild in the retail jungle.

A true cynic might say that, at least in the developed world, with today’s central heating and electric lighting, the only residual practical purpose of the festive season is to give the proletariat time off and just enough joy to motivate them to work for another year. There is undeniably something Huxleyesque in the prevalent culture of end-of-year bonuses (and, as in Holland, gift hampers from employers) all perfectly timed to coincide with a period of unbridled consumerism at a potentially gloomy time. The advertising urging us to spend! spend! spend! in this year of the Euro crisis has been nigh-on hysterical and consumers have (according to the latest reports) dutifully obeyed.

But when the mall lights go out and the manager finally hits the “stop” button on the jingle bells repeater that's quite worn-out as it's been running 24/7 since October (see bah-humbug!), every TV programme has run its holiday special, the radio stations revert to their usual playlists and the paper-recycling bins are overflowing with gratuitous packaging materials, each of us must kick-off those new boots that were far too expensive, savour the last drops of that extravagant Single Malt, and be with themselves. Just like great⁵⁰-grandfather Og must have in his chilly cave in the Urals.

Was it a good year? What will the next one bring? And as it has since our first primordial ancestor oozed out of the primeval soup, the day after the party, the sun rises...  just a few moments earlier. - AMB

For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned it is the season of the harvest. - Talmud

There is not enough darkness in all the world to quench the Light of one candle. – Robert Alden

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