The Son and the Sun

Newgrange, Ireland

My patient wife, Ruth, smiles every year as a I count down the days until the Winter Solstice, which marks the shortest daylight hours in the Northern Hemisphere, but also the beginning of lengthening days. I find I am affected by the lack of daylight, as are so many others. I want to eat too much and go into hibernation! It doesn't work out that way for those of us in ministry.

I have mentioned other years that while the celebration of the solstice is associated with pagan worship, it has a Christian connection. In the old Julian calendar the solstice was celebrated on December 25th each year, and it's thought that in the days when Christianity was still illegal believers celebrated Christ's birth at the same time so that other revellers and authorities wouldn't notice.

One of the truly remarkable monuments to the solstice is at Newgrange, Ireland. At dawn on Winter Solstice every year, just after 9am, the sun begins to rise across the Boyne Valley from Newgrange, over a hill known locally as Red Mountain. Given the right weather conditions, the event is spectacular. At four and a half minutes past nine, the light from the rising sun strikes the front of Newgrange, and enters into the passage through the roofbox which was specially designed to capture the rays of the sun. For the following fourteen minutes, the beam of light stretches into the passage of Newgrange and on into the central chamber, where, in Neolithic times, it illuminated the rear stone of the central recess of the chamber. This homage to the solstice was created in 3200 BCE, long before the pyramids or Stonehenge were erected.

Any comments on the Winter Solstice? Do you look forward to the lengthening daylight hours. Any solstice parties out there?