It is a season of slumber, of dormancy, of hibernation. And yet, unlike the animal and plant spirits, perhaps wiser in their evolution than we, we humans do not use this time for rest, choosing instead to create all manner of markers and days. Perhaps it is a distraction from the cold, from scarcity, from the dark that rules many more of our hours at this time of year.
Whatever the reason, we begin our headlong holiday rush in October, what much of the world calls Halloween but is here known by the far more ancient name of All Souls’ Eve. At its end, we cross the threshold of a month into All Souls’ Day, thence in a few short weeks to Thanksgiving, a celebration of the dominant culture that has nonetheless found its way to our own tables. For those who adhere to older versions of the christian calendar, Advent begins in a matter of days thereafter, at which point the racing, pell-mell, toward the winter holidays begins. For the country generally, this is Christmas, with smaller populations observing Chanukah, the Solstice, Kwanzaa (in the days immediately following Christmas), and an array of other celebratory and ceremonial days specific to their own peoples and cultures. But in the final week of the year, it’s difficult to escape the feeling of racing pell-mell toward an end, even if an end of what is not entirely clear. New Year’s Eve is often tinged with melancholy, especially here: It too often marks a time of loss for community members, and this year was no exception; and in the bitter depths of winter, the last night of the year is very often a long dark night of the soul, indeed.
But our stories are stories of emergence: out of the darkness, into the light. They are stories of perseverance, of persistence, of the eventual triumph of existence. Of survival. And so it was with a full heart and a grateful spirit that watched the year’s first gift, at dawn. Father Sun rose past the peaks in all his fiery glory, and cast his reflection southward: a tall column of light, a pillar of flame, rising from the lower peaks straight up into the blue-gray sky. It was a sundog, a reflective spirit of Father Sun himself, seemingly its own living being, heart beating in shimmering pulses of red and orange and gold and white. It lasted for an hour.
It felt like a sign.
Morning prayers completed for on this first day of a new year, I returned indoors to warmth. As I write, the sun is now fully ascended beyond the wall of the peaks, snow-blanketed land now awash in silver and gold. And it occurs to me that Wings captured the feel of this day so many years ago, when he captured this moment on another cold dawn after a winter storm: The whole word covered in white, ropes of shimmering snow hanging from the rungs of the ladder like garlands on spangled garlands on the boughs of a Christmas tree, all lit by Father Sun’s silvery gaze as his path transcends the barrier of the clouds.
Today is not, perhaps, strictly speaking, the first day of the new year as our ancestors reckoned it. Still, it is the one we have now, the one the peoples of the wider world have more or less universally agreed to impose upon the earth as it spins around the sun. The method of calculating dates has become more or less graven in stone, and there is a way in which imposing something, accepting something, gives it reality, tangibility, a life force of its own. And so we accept this day and date as the first day of a new year of sorts, even if it is not quite the same new year as our peoples traditionally observed.
In that spirit, the gift of this dawn holds significance, the same symbolism and meaning Wings caught in the image above: an emergence, from the dark depths of the winter storm, into the light of a new year. It is now our task to bring that new year’s promise to fruition.
Wings and I wish our clients, friends, and family a 2016 of great joy and abundance, a new year filled with health, happiness, peace, prosperity, and every blessing this year has to offer.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
