AMHERST - There is something about the dark of the year, on this shortest day, that calls us home.

Like the small child we once were, who never ceases to abide within us all, we fear the dark. So we glitter up the house, the porch, the yard, the street and the town with bright electric lights, fill the calendar with parties and celebrations, saturate the air with jubilant music and frenetically try to assure one another that it is "the most wonderful time of the year!"

Well, if it isn't so easy for you to join whole-heartedly in the cultural prerogative for celebration and consumption, please know there is a good and natural reason for your disinclination to party on. You are surely not alone in this reluctance.

In the natural world, as the outer light pales, this becomes a time for turning inward and seeking there the inner light of deeper being that animates us all. It is a time to respect the urge to be drawn within to a contemplative recognition of the quiet light that may be more difficult to sense when the outer light is brighter.

That is a natural inclination, an opportunity that may be the greatest gift of this season, although our society typically ignores its summons.

It is no coincidence that the holy days of many faiths feature displays of light at the heart of their ceremonial observances. These lights can remind us of the inner light and encourage a refocusing of reverent attention towards it.

Alas, they seldom do. Mostly they distract us from an inward turning.

As the saying goes, "The light is one though the lamps be many." The eternal light that animates us all - the origin of which is beyond imagination and worthy of wonder, awe and perhaps adulation - calls us home to our common source of being at the dark of the year, where we are all welcome, where we are all one.

So much of the depression and curmudgeonliness we may experience this time of the year has to do with a natural resistance to the hyper-celebratory traditions of our culture of excess. More is not necessarily better or more nourishing for the soul at the holiday season.

And if the spirit is not willing for many whose faux merriness conceals a private urge to retreat into a reverent quietude, they'll just add spirits, and plenty of them, the more the merrier! Eggnog, mulled cider, grog, whiskey, wine and bathtubs of champagne!

So here's wishing us all a quiet season of inner peace and rediscovery of the inner light that truly does guide us home.

And with this also the hope that the outer lights of celebration and shared joy reveal to us more than seasonal merriment. Let it reveal that the light that animates us all awaits rediscovery within, reminding us that we are all home, right here, right now.

Jonathan Klate, who lives in Amherst, writes frequently about spirituality and political ideology.