Starting with Halloween and beyond, I love this time of year for reasons that might not make sense given the difference between the holidays. We start with purposefully scaring ourselves and end with revelry. In between, we stuff ourselves in celebration of a harvest.
The time of year is depressing for a fair number of people given the diminishing of the sunlight. But that’s what makes this part of the year so damn special. We have taken the oncoming of lengthy nights and prepared ourselves with stories of the macabre so gruesome that they purge us of the terrors the night held our ancestors. We scare ourselves far worse than the gathering darkness.
Close to midway through that time of year, we celebrate the harvest and cross from more day than night to the deepening shadows and earlier evenings to come. The celebration of life sustained through the long nights and fallow earth slumbering in the cold.
Then the darkness comes. It grows until it feels like it will snuff out all life. It’s the nadir of our year when the world feels as if it’s slipping into that final night. Death feels closer than on All Hallows’ Eve.
And that’s where the mythic becomes manifest. It is in that darkest hour when hope is at it’s lowest point that we gather closer than before and celebrate the relationships we have that the truly wondrous happens. It doesn’t matter what religious observance you use to mark that occasion, the outcome is still the same: no matter how dark, there remains a flicker of life, hope, and the indomitable spirit of humanity.
This is the time of year for reflection not on what it means to be human, but what it means to belong, to have meaningful relationships, and most importantly to know we are not alone. It doesn’t always work out this way, but this is at the core of what the holiday season is about. And with that renewal of hope, the days begin to grow longer, and with it the desire to resolve to be a better human being. The beginning of a new year is the time we carry that torch forward as we climb out of the inner most cave of the seasons.
Whatever your beliefs, may you nurture that light and carry it well into the next year and beyond.