Tomorrow morning, at 8.47 am, we here in eastern Australia reach the crest of the year. The earth tilts its face fully towards the sun, the shadows that day will be at their shortest, the day the longest.
I am impressed that so many cultures, worldwide, figured out ways to identify the exact moment of the solstice. It isn’t visible to the naked eye – the days either side of it are only parts of a second shorter, the shadows only millimetres shorter. It will be the beginning of February before we really turn the corner and the days start to shorten at a rate you can notice without any help. But if you depended on the success of food plants for your survival, there would be a lot of incentive to figure it out.
Many food plants are day length sensitive. They decide whether it is heading into summer or out of it not by the temperature – that can vary enormously even within a single day – but by counting the hours and minutes and seconds of night, and comparing it with yesterday. The name for this very sophisticated ability is photoperiodism, and I find it quite mind-blowing that plants can do it. It makes me feel quite humble as a human.
But while humans might not be as good as plants at directly perceiving the solstice, we are very good at science, which involves measuring and recording. Cultures all over the world have independently figured out how to do what plants do. And we are very good at art, which involves designing rituals and traditions to remember and celebrate the meaning of the measuring.
Though, we white Australians are very late to the party. We’re only just now starting to work out ways to transmute the rituals and traditions of Yule – the northern hemisphere midwinter solstice – to something that makes sense as we all wind down for the start of the summer holidays. The upside though is that we can let go of any pressure to do Christmas “right”. Plum pudding and ham and snow covered pine trees, gifts lovingly crafted in the long evenings and dashing through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh all belong to the other solstice, at the other extreme of the year. So feel free to reinvent, to create your own traditions that feel right for the season, joy-filled, numinous. And have a wonder-filled solstice, however you celebrate it.
