Are you ready for the longest night of the year?
For centuries, this day has been acknowledged and celebrated. Fires and candles were lit, people gathered together, and stories were told low and close. Not in a bid to banish the dark, but to sit with it. To acknowledge that darkness is not the enemy of light, but its necessary counterpart.
The winter solstice reminds us that stillness is not stagnation. Beneath the frozen ground established roots are stirring, and seeds are dreaming.
What looks like death is often preparation.
In a modern world that insists on constant brightness, productivity and cheer, the solstice offers a quieter truth: it’s okay to rest. To withdraw. To feel heavy, contemplative and unresolved. The dark is not a failure of light. It’s part of the cycle.
So if you mark the solstice at all, let it be gently. A candle lit with intention, perhaps. A walk beneath skeletal branches, observing the winter landscape – how it looks, how it feels. A moment of silence in which you can shut down your thoughts and shun all inner noise. Or, indeed, a reflective moment to consider what you’re ready to leave behind, and what you’re quietly hoping will return with the light.
Tomorrow, the days will lengthen by the tiniest, faintest measure. Not enough to notice, but enough to matter.
Light doesn’t rush back in triumph, it returns the way it always does. Patiently, incrementally and without asking permission.
And so must we.
However you spend this longest night ahead, may you honour the dark that carried you here, and the faint, stubborn light already finding its way back.
R. H. DIXON 