“I just hate this time of year,” she told me on the phone last night. “It’s so cold and it gets dark so early.” Like so many, she is a woman with places to go and things to do in these hectic holidays. Rain, icy roads, driving in the dark. This season just isn’t cooperating.

It never does. And for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere we might have figured out by now that it never will. For the whole point, the lesson, of this season is not about it cooperating with us…but rather our cooperating with it. This season call us home to the hearth to spend time around a warm fire. And as we wait for the return of the Sun’s Light, to attend our own Light. A great gift of the dark is that we are able to see our own Light most clearly.

Our ancestors knew this.

They would step away from the busy seasons of planting and harvesting to spend time sharing stories, playing music, singing songs, and re-membering who they were as people and as a people. It was a time to reconnect with the great dreams and visions of their lives. Their fires and candles were a powerful reminder of the power, promise, and purpose of this season. A bright beckoning in the dark.

Today we have electricity and our lives are filled with light. But are they filled with Light? I imagine Earth Mother shaking her shaggy head as we rail against this season. When will we learn? When will we slow down to find the gift of Light within the darkness? I imagine Spirit looking at our frantic activity and sighing. Maybe next year, maybe next Solstice Season. For it will return. It always does.