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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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Sing a song of Winter, In ancient days the folk of old So we, whose minds now sense a chill |
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What child is this who brings such light
that all who see Her grow hopefull?
The Solstice candles, this darkest night,
rekindle a flame in our soul.
This, this is the Solstice child,
the Maiden brilliant, the Maiden wild.
Come, sisters, to hold Her near,
the hope and the light of the New Year.
[Variant]
What Child is this, who brings such light
That all who see Him grow hopeful
The Solstice candles, this darkest night
Rekindle a flame in our soul
This, this is the Solstice Child
The Sun God brilliant, the Sun God wild
Come, Pagans, to hold Him near
The hope and the light of the New Year
Lunaea Wetherstone; 'The Solstice Child'; Tune: 'What Child is This?'
Source:
Yule Songs from Pagan Digest
On the first day of Solstice the Goddess sent
to me,
some healing to set me free.
On the second day of Solstice the Goddess sent
to me,
Gifts from my love
and some healing to set me free.
etc.
1. Some healing to set me free
2. Gifts from my love
3. A helping dream
4. A branch of evergreen
5. Joyous song!
6. Greetings from my neighbors
7. Magick for the year
8. Fine conversation
9. Nine pearls of wisdom
10. Candles for the lighting
11. Deep contemplation
12. Showers of abundance
13. A grand celebration
Shekhinah Mountainwater; 'The Thirteen
Days of Solstice' Source:
Yule Songs from Pagan Digest
On the first day of Yuletide my true love gave
to me,
a Circle 'round a Pine Tree.
On the second day of Yuletide my true love
gave to me,
Two pointed Horns
and a Circle 'round a Pine Tree.
etc.
A Circle 'round a Pine Tree
Two pointed Horns
Three Silver Cups
Four Pentagrams
Five Magick Rings
Six critters Fetching
Seven Candles Glowing
Eight Fires Blazing
Nine Herbs a-Brewing
Ten Stones a-Standing
Eleven Brooms a-Flying
Twelve Witches Dancing
Carusone; 'The Twelve Days of Yuletide' Source:
Yule Songs from Pagan Digest
Goddesses of the Solstice are we
Bringers of the Star and the Tree
Maiden, Mother, Crone uncover
Winter's deep mystery
Chorus:
Oh, time of wisdom, time of light
Time of Winter's darkest night
Goddess hold me, Love enfold me
Open me to Your light
Maiden of the darkness, I sing
Underworlds of wisdom, I bring
Seeking, learning, Kore returning
Bearing the light of Spring
Demeter, the slumbering Earth
Dreaming of the Daughter's rebirth
Candles lighted, world united
Knowing our own true worth
Crone of deepest wisdom, I dwell
Deep in Time's mysterious well
Dreaming, daring, teaching, sharing
Hecate's secret spell
Lunaea Weatherstone (words), John H Hopkins (music); 'Triple Solstice
Goddess'; tune: 'We Three Kings' Source:
Yule Songs from Pagan Digest
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everwhere!
Shakespeare,
'Sonnet 97'
The sun that brief December day,
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
John
Greenleaf Whittier
The winter gathered us into one room as it gathered the cattle into the stable and the byre; the sky came closer; the lamps were lit at three or four in the afternoon, and then the great evening lay before us like a world: an evening filled with talk, stories, games music and lamplight.
Edwin Muir
In the depths of winter I finally
learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
Nature chose for a tool, not the
earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or
eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered
centuries.
John Muir
One kind word can warm three winter
months.
Japanese proverb
So, here's my toast:
To lasting peace that starts inside;
To every teacher who has been a good guide;
To every child born in every nation;
To every human congregation
That aspires toward peace and love;
To the glory of the stars above;
To the lasting magic of this time of year
And to everyone, both far and near!
And to darkness that heralds the coming light
Soulful Solstice to all and to all a good night.
Rick Levine;
from the poem 'Solstice
2003'
It was the nineteenth year of
Diocletian's reign [AD 303] and the month Dystrus, called
March by the Romans,
and the festival of the Saviour's Passion was approaching, when an imperial
decree was published everywhere, ordering the churches to be razed to the ground
and the Scriptures destroyed by fire, and giving notice that those in places of
honour would lose their places, and domestic staff, if they continued to profess
Christianity, would be deprived of their liberty. Such was the first edict
against us. Soon afterwards other decrees arrived in rapid succession, ordering
that the presidents of the churches in every place should all be first committed
to prison and then coerced by every possible means into offering sacrifice.
St Eusebius of Caesaria, on Diocletian, Roman Emperor born on December 22, 245; History
of the Church (VIII.2)
And in the plenitude of my mathematical wisdom, I condescended to permit Ramanujan to walk into my presence. A short uncouth figure, stout, unshaved, not
overclean, with one conspicuous feature – shining eyes – walked in with a frayed notebook under his arm. He was miserably poor ...
He ... began to explain some of his discoveries. I saw quite at once that there was something out of the way; but my knowledge did not permit me to judge whether he talked sense or nonsense ...
I asked him to come over again, and he did. And then he gauged my ignorance and showed me some of his simpler results. These transcended existing books and I had no doubt that he was a remarkable man ...
I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted a pittance to live on so that he might pursue his researches.
Ramachandra Rao, Indian government official and amateur mathematician; account of his first meeting with Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Aaiyangar Ramanujan,
born on December 22, 1887
[Some of Ramanujan's discoveries in algebra and analysis (calculus)] defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before. A single look at them is enough to show that they could only be written down by a mathematician of the highest class. They must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them. Finally ... the writer must be completely honest, because great mathematicians are commoner than thieves or humbugs of such incredible skill ...
GH Hardy,
Cambridge mathematician
I have had no university education but I have undergone the ordinary school course. After leaving school I have been employing the spare time at my disposal to work at mathematics. I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a university course, but I am striking out a new path for myself. I have made a special investigation of divergent series in general and the results I get are termed by the local mathematicians as
'startling'.
Srinivasa Aaiyangar Ramanujan; letter to GM Hardy, 1913
I have found a friend in you who views my labours sympathetically. ... I am already a half starving man. To preserve my brains I want food and this is my first consideration. Any sympathetic letter from you will be helpful to me here to get a scholarship either from the university or from the government.
Srinivasa Aaiyangar Ramanujan; another letter to GM Hardy, 1913
An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God.
Srinivasa Aaiyangar Ramanujan
Be thoughtful in the giving of presents. Don't forget that children grow up, and that your gifts must grow up too.
Mother Seigel's Almanac & Home Companion, 1916
Study the likes and dislikes of your friends in your gifts – their hobbies and habits. Don't give presents at Christmas suitable only for summer.
Ibid
The Australian landscapes show best by the red light of the hot-weather sunsets, when the dark feathery foliage of the gum-trees come out in exquisite relief upon the fiery fogs that form the sky ...
Sir Charles Dilke (1843 - 1911)
April is in my mistress's face,
And July in her eyes hath place,
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.
Author unknown; Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, Oxford University Press, 1932
It was in winter that the islanders gathered round the hearth fire to listen to stories. Harvest was gathered in. The ears that had listened only to necessary farming and fishing words all the year of toil and ripening were ready for more ancient images and rhythms.
A tongue here and there was touched to enchantment by starlight and peat flame.
George Mackay Brown; Foreword to Winter Tales
"We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,"
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
Oliver Herford (1863 - 1935); 'I Heard a Bird Sing' (l. 5-8)
When in your middle years
The great comet comes again
Remember me, a child,
Awake in the summer night,
Standing in my crib and
Watching that long-haired star
So many years ago.
Go out in the dark and see
Its plume over water
Dribbling on the liquid night,
And think that life and glory
Flickered on the rushing
Bloodstream for me once, and for
All who have gone before me,
Vessels of the billion-year-long
River that flows now in your veins.
Kenneth Rexroth, American poet, born on December 22, 1905; 'Halley's Comet'
I know that spring again is splendid
As ever, the hidden thrush
As sweetly tongued, the sun as vital —
But these are the forest trails we walked together,
These paths, ten years together.
We thought the years would last forever,
They are all gone now, the days
We thought would not come for us are here.
Kenneth Rexroth; elegy in memory of his first wife, Andrée
When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on
the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news.
If they aren't, that's news too. Things we did as kids and thought nothing of,
the standard capers of all young animals, now make headlines, shake up police
departments and rend the frail hearts of social workers. Partly this is due to
the mythologies of modern civilization.
Kenneth Rexroth; 'The Students Take Over',
Essays, 1961 (this essay is also known by its later name, 'Beginnings
of a New Revolt'; reproduced in The Rexroth Reader, ed.
Eric Mottram,
1972
An academic critic once sarcastically referred to Rexroth, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen as "members of the bear-shit-on-the-trail school of poetry".
Rexroth, of course, took this as a compliment.
Source: The Daily Bleed Anarchist Encyclopedia
Well, what would you like tonight, sex, mysticism or revolution?
Kenneth Rexroth to a poetry audience
What's the difference?
Woman in the audience
More Kenneth Rexroth quotes at Wikiquote
December 22 is the 356th day
of the year in the Gregorian calendar
(357th
in leap years), with 9 days remaining.
Calendar
converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc Almanac
screensavers On
this day Dictionary
I
recommend
IMDB
days IMDB
years Wikipedia
days Wiki
decades Wiki
centuries Timelines
Convert
weights, measures, etc Calendrica
Lunabar
When 'Source' links
on this page move address or
die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Note: The
solstice (Yule) can occur either on December 21 or
22.
In the Book of Days, our information is on this day, December 22.
Are you looking for
more origins and folklore of Yuletide?
Click for the big
Christmas page at the Scriptorium.
Also, this Book of Days has Christmas Eve
folklore from many lands.
Eight Stations of the Year (Sabbats) in the Book of Days
The Eight Stations are the equinoxes, solstices, and the midway points between them
Spring Equinox/Ostara May Day/Beltaine Summer Solstice/Litha Lammas/Lughnasadh
Autumn Equinox/Mabon Halloween/Samhain Winter Solstice/Yule Brigid/Candlemas/Imbolc
Helpful external links
Winter: Quotes, Poems, Sayings, and Links for Gardeners
Wheel of the Year at Mything Links Wheel of the Year at Wikipedia
School of the Seasons Calendars at Wikipedia Almanacs, calendars, time
This almanac follows the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere, where the celebration of the Sabbats originated.
Solstice
"The northern hemisphere summer solstice (approximately June 22) occurs when the sun is farthest north. The northern hemisphere winter solstice (approximately December 22) occurs when the sun is farthest south. (In the southern hemisphere, winter and summer solstices are exchanged since when one hemisphere is pointed towards the Sun, the other is pointed away.) The declinations of the Sun on the summer solstice and winter solstice are known as the tropic of cancer and tropic of capricorn, respectively (± 23° 27')." Source
Yule is one of the eight solar holidays, or sabbats, of Neopaganism. Of course, it is a far older tradition than that, as it was the Winter Solstice celebration of Scandinavian Norse mythology and Germanic pagans. It is celebrated on the solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere, circa December 21 and in the Southern Hemisphere circa June 21. The name is of Germanic origin; it is also called Midwinter.
The holiday is, with Beltaine and Samhain, one of the most popular among Neopagans. In some traditions, it commemorates the death of the Holly King (symbolizing the old year and the shortened sun) at the hands of his son and successor, the Oak King (the new year and the new sun that begins to grow). In other traditions, it is seen as the birthday of the new sun god.
A traditional ritual is a vigil from dusk to dawn, the longest night of the year, to make sure that the sun will rise again.
Yule is a revival of a Germanic festival that was Christianized as Christmas; indeed, many traditional trappings of Christmas, such as the Yule Log, holly, and the Christmas tree are derived from pre-Christian Yule celebrations. In the Scandinavian countries, Jul is the word for Christmas. Yaldā, also known as Shab-e Cheleh, is celebrated on the eve of the first day of the Winter (December 21) in the Iranian calendar, which falls on the Winter Solstice. It celebrates the birth of Sun god Mithra. The festival was considered extremely important in pre-Islamic Iran and continues to be celebrated to this day, for a period of more than 6000 years.
In the order of the sabbats, Yule is preceded by Samhain and followed by Imbolc.
See also Wheel of the Year.
Names for Winter Solstice
Mean Geimredh, mid-winter, in Irish;
Alban
Arthan, the point of roughness, in
Wales;
Deuorius
Riuri, great divine winter feast,
in the Coligny Calendar;
Yule. The word 'Yule' (according to the medieval English monk, author and scholar, the Venerable Bede [c. 672 - 735], and various other authorities) is derived from an archaic Norse word, 'Jol', meaning 'wheel'.
The Winter
Solstice represents the rebirth of the sun, a very important turning
point. The night of Solstice is the longest night of the year. Darkness
triumphs; and yet, gives way and changes into light. And so the Wheel of the Year
turns.
Fourth station of the year
Signifies enlightenment, when the light is reborn within the womb of darkness.
A good Yule page at Mything Links Winter Solstice folklore at Mything Links The Wheel of the Year
Sir James George Frazer (1854 - 1941), The Golden Bough, 1922, Ch. 62. The Fire-Festivals of Europe. Section 7. The Midwinter Fires
Festival
of Isis,
ancient Egypt
These were Winter Solstice celebrations in which worshippers led the goddess in the form of a golden cow, covered by a black veil, seven times round the shrine of the dead Osiris in the temple of Helios in a perambulation called 'the seeking for Osiris'. This represents the wanderings of Isis who journeyed over the world mourning for his death and searching for the scattered parts of his body.
Legend of Osiris and Isis Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days
The birth of the divine child, whether he bears the
name of Horus, Osiris, Helios, Dionysus or Aeon, was celebrated in the
Koreion in Alexandria, in the temple dedicated to Kore, on the day of the
winter solstice.
Neumann,
Erich, The
Great Mother,
Princeton
Univ Press, 1972,
p. 312
Terence
McKenna,
Mayan calendar and Timewave Zero 2012
If you have come to this page
looking for these subjects, they are at December 21 in
the Book of Days, and at the Calendar Convergence
page in the Scriptorium.
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
Sun enters 
Winter Solstice at 