Guest columnist Allen Woods: Enduring the darkness, welcoming the light

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Allen Woods

Allen Woods

By ALLEN WOODS

Published: 12-22-2024 12:44 PM

 

Judging by the number of cultures and religions that celebrate the winter solstice, I guess my yearly November-into-December slump isn’t just about me. Nearly every group has a holiday associated with the pivotal day, although the celebrated event (e.g., Jesus’ birth) doesn’t necessarily match the date.

The transition from the shortest days to longer ones, from less sunlight to more, sparked some of the earliest scientific discoveries. On a Scottish island about 5,000 years ago, Celtic people built a huge structure that was illuminated by the sun for only a few days a year — around the winter solstice. About 900 years ago, in America’s Southwest, the Anasazi people decorated locations that highlight the March and September equinoxes and June and December solstices.

“Solstice” is derived from words meaning “a stopped sun,” the moment in the sun’s reliable route when the nights stop getting longer in December, or shorter in June.

North Americans also endure an abrupt change in timekeeping: goodbye “daylight saving,” hello “daylight deficits.” Each day, sunset seems to plunge off a steeper cliff, bringing a dark blanket of colder weather and the loss of green leaves, green grass, and verdant growth.

For me, the icing on this year’s enervation-cake is November’s election, which will soon be celebrated with multiple punishments: mass deportations; firings; prosecutions; a dull axe shredding education, law enforcement, and social programs; more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy; and pardons for those convicted of violently attacking the Capitol just four years ago.

Celebrating the misfortune and misery of others has come out of the closet, indicated by the new popularity of an old word, “schadenfreude,” which defines the activity. It is now an act of loyalty (ask Tucker Carlson), rather than an expression of bad taste. It’s a natural, knee-jerk reaction for everyone, but I see promoting it as a rejection of our humanity, a dark manifestation incompatible with our “better angels.”

Even if it’s predictable, the road toward the year’s deepest darkness always finds me frantically searching for a spark or glowing ember to light my way, and always, I am rewarded. Through a family suggestion, the Polish film “Forgotten Love” brings me through (spoiler alert) two hours of multiple tragedies, fueled by envy and evil intent, to a fairy-tale ending in which all the main characters end up happy, and deserve to be.

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A vespers service uses hand-lit candles and complex, joyful music to light a path through a darkened church and a cloudy soul. I read our most serious and joyous young poet, Amanda Gordon, who reminds me that “empathy emancipates” and that the “American dream” may actually be “a dare to dream together.” She implores us to be “worthy” of our earliest democratic ideals.

In searching my brain’s file system under “quotations using the word ‘light,’” one appears which I previously disregarded. In 1988, George H.W. Bush described his view of community: “a brilliant diversity spreads like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”

I dismissed it then because Bush, in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps, proposed that these “points of light” (individuals and non-governmental organizations) should take over many social responsibilities which the federal government wanted to shed. His was a naïve belief that good individuals and local organizations could address large-scale social problems like homelessness (first becoming an intractable problem in the 1980s under Reagan’s housing and banking policies) and poverty without help from the government.

It’s a premise I still reject, believing that systemic changes are necessary along with good-hearted individuals and small organizations. In my dreamy image of “a thousand points of light,” I see people in the streets fighting for human rights and dignity while also welcoming and assisting people in our local communities. I see united groups of middle-class and poor people confronting policies that have created an America where the top 1% hold as much wealth as the bottom 90%, and performing local acts of charity that bring a bit of joy to one person or one family.

I see women taking back their reproductive rights through protest and dissent while using their immense talents and energy to nurture and empower their daughters and other young people. I see those points of light leading the way to a more peaceful world in the Mideast and Ukraine, as well as feeding our hungry neighbors in a world of plentiful food.

Today is the shortest, and darkest, day of the year. But we are blessed with more sunlight starting … tomorrow!

Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.