Winter Solstice and The Holiday Season: Endings and New Beginnings

Winter solstice ceremony afterward

I recently attended a winter solstice candle ceremony at a local Unitarian Universalist church, the second time I’ve been to an event like this and certainly not the last time. It’s a silent moment to respect the returning of the sunlight on the darkest/longest night of the year.

A spiral was created with donated evergreens from backyards in the community, and New Age music played in the background . Each guest was given an unlit candle, and they walked through the spiral to the center lit candle, using that time to reflect and shed the past year. Then they lit their candle from the center one, traveled back through the spiral, imagining intentions for their year to come, and placed their candle somewhere along the way to illuminate the path. During which time, the other guests sat around the spiral as witnesses.

As I witnessed others walk silently through the spiral, an emotional wave hit me as I recognized the subtle differences in each of their journeys. The saunter of pride, the kindness as someone helped another through the spiral, others getting caught up in daydreaming and losing their sense of direction halfway through, the love between couples patiently traveling in tandem and lighting each other’s candles, the curious kid with a battery lit candle following their parent’s guidance, the gentleness of middle age and the grace of belonging to one’s self, the care to prevent a branch or long skirt from catching aflame, the pain of grief with each deliberate step as heavy as their year.

There was something profound in being a silent witness of each person’s journey without judgment. I wasn’t the only one in the audience who shed a tear.

After witnessing an hour of guests on their journeys, I was one of the last to walk through. I wondered what they saw when I entered the spiral. I had a trying year of personal and family change, but this year I finally understood just how deeply resilient I’ve become. I had known this about myself, but it has been attached to so much shame as well. This year, that residual shame has turned to inner respect for my own journey.

After lighting my candle in the center of the spiral, it was hard for me not to put it down immediately and rush through the exiting process. Instead, I held space for myself as I had held space for others.

As I returned back through the spiral, I told myself that this is a year I want to hold on to my light. I am happy, joyful, but private, and as I’ve written in another post before, I have a hard time celebrating. To shine feels embarrassing to me, so I’m going to use SHINE as my focus word of 2024 to force myself into the light more. (FYI—my 2023 focus word was REKINDLE, and it really was a great theme for me.)

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I’m finally on Christmas vacation from teaching high school English, and it’s nice, but I find vacations are extra quiet these days. Even with my youngest home for the holidays, there’s no more big lead up to Santa, no toys everywhere, and very few guests. I have the gift of time and space, and to be honest, it’s a little echo-y.

Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash

Not that I’d rather be at school, either. My 140 students are great this year, but I’ve been teaching for over two decades, and I’m bored and frustrated with education itself. So much time and money are wasted on the wrong things. My favorite part of the job is trying to get teenagers to care again. That’s it. That’s my only real goal as a veteran teacher right now. Can I get students to care about reading, care about writing, care about themselves, care about the past, care about creativity, care about other people, care about the world? If I can get them to laugh, I’m happy, too.

But I am so burnt out from all the meaningless educational jargon and acronyms, all the new initiatives that are only old initiatives that failed ten years ago repackaged and sold back to schools again. Why do we keep treating students like data storage units? And we wonder why teenager want to put in earbuds and tune us out… (we don’t listen to them enough, either.)

*shakes off the teaching rant and remembers I’m on vacation*

my writing office

I’ve reached this odd period in my creative life that I’ve been wanting for decades. I’ve earned it. How often in our lives do we have the time and space for creativity? It feels…good. Maybe too good? I don’t know. I have the strangest feeling that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be, at exactly the right time, and I’ve worked my butt off to be here.

I feel like I’m ready for anything as I’m at looking at the threshold of my new life.

And it’s a blank slate, full of potential. It just comes with a nagging, empty feeling every once in a while that even writing can’t fulfill. There’s only so much silence one can take in a day. (I never realized how little my husband speaks! LOL)

Anyway, I finished editing my YA Christmas romance and sent it to my agent. With that project off my plate, my agent would like me to work on a new sci-fi dystopian idea, so I reread the beginning of a dystopian short story I had started years ago, and it sparked my creativity. I’m trying a fast draft technique this time—-every day I’ve been writing nonstop for 500 word sessions. No going back and editing, just full steam ahead, jumping around, getting whatever pops into my mind on paper. I don’t stop typing until I hit 500 words per session. I don’t even bother putting quotation marks or tag phrases on dialogue. It’s freeing after being in editing stage of my last draft for so long and picking at every scene and every sentence.

This early draft already feels like something special. I forgot what this is like, the beginning, when you first enter the journey as the creator, when the characters take shape and begin to take charge. It’s transcendent as the words form and the story opens before your eyes, just out of reach, but with so much potential, and you wonder if it’s too big to capture.

And you try anyway.

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I wish you all a wonderful holiday season.

Do you have a focus word for 2024? Share in the comments.