Here at Counselling Connections this week we are looking forward with anticipation to the solstice next Tuesday. The longest night of the year is the culmination of an increasing darkness that has been building for months. When the sun appears on the horizon the following morning it is greeted and celebrated as representing the longer, warmer days to come. Its appearance on this day means we are putting the dark days behind us and looking forward to better, more abundant times ahead.
At least, that is what it used to mean to the people who lived in these parts in ancient times. A small number still gather on the nearby Hill of Tara to celebrate the solstice sunrise and a good deal of attention is focused on Newgrange where the passage and chamber of the megalithic tomb is still illuminated by the solstice sunrise just like it was when it was built over five thousand years ago.
In pre-Christian times there would have been a week of celebrations at this time of the year. To those ancient people, our ancestors, the weather and the seasons mattered greatly. They relied on a bountiful harvest to see them over the lean winter months. Even though this coming week represented the very middle of those dark months, it pointed none the less to brighter days ahead.
We have electric light now and central heating and well insulated homes. We get our food by and large from supermarkets, it is brought to us. We are less tuned in to the turn of the seasons than our ancestors were. They celebrated the promise of more light to come for very practical reasons but they also understood the spiritual aspect of it: the idea of renewal.
As we lift our heads from the daily rush at this time of year we can look to the solstice sunrise in the week ahead and allow ourselves some hope for better times ahead. The dark days may not be finished with completely but there is hope for renewal and brighter times. Just as our ancestors had studied the seasons and the movements of the earth we can look back to previous cycles in the economic life of the country and the world and see that bad times passed and were followed by better ones. We can be sure of that. Maybe what we need to learn then is to store up some of the abundance we create for like the turn of the seasons we can bet that there will be bad times again. And so it goes.
So, here’s to the last of the dark days; to the promise of brighter days ahead and to renewal.
Counselling Connections, Dundalk.