Welcome

Prelude

Words to light the chalice

May the blessings of light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunshine shine on you and warm your heart till it glows like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may come for warmth at it, and also a friend. An Irish blessing (adapted)

Unison Words

Special music

Festival of Lights

Welcome to this year’s Festival of Lights. Today we recognize the holidays and holy days that have as their commonality the wonder of winter light and winter darkness, just as we know that each has its own particular overlay of meaning, connected to its own culture and religious beliefs.

The winter solstice is upon us, when the night is longest just before it begins to give way to the day. Ancient peoples believed that this was the time of the sun's birthday. We have filled our houses with evergreens and burned yule logs to welcome and call forth the sun “from the womb of night.” (Jane Bramadat) The peoples of the earth are glad and celebrate, each in their own way.

In Nordic lands the custom was to race across the countryside with a chariot carrying a replica of the sun, often made of beaten gold. The belief was that this would bring the sun back again and return the earth to the longer days of spring. In Persia, people built great bonfires and the rulers sent birds aloft bearing torches of dried grass. Among Native Americans of the Plains tribes, the December moon was known as the story-telling moon, because it brought long, dark nights for people to gather around lodge fires and retell the ancient legends.

What does this dance of dark and light mean to you? For me it’s an awesome experience. At this time of year I feel most in touch with nature, most close to the cycles and seasons. There’s a calm about this darkness, a peace, and a beauty. I love to sit in the dark, with just the lights of candles burning. I love to look at a Christmas tree, all colors or one color, against the backdrop of night. I love the contrast of sun on snow against the deep green of the pine tree. Two years ago I went to Iceland just after the solstice and I ventured onto the top of a mountain, hours after the sun had disappeared from the sky. I was looking for the Northern Lights. Solar wind particles are funneled along the earth’s magnetic field and collide with nitrogen atoms, causing them to emit photons of light. We can explain them, yes. The wonder comes when we experience them. You look up into the black sky and all of a sudden, like smoke or floating mist, this light appears in circles and thin strips and wide curves. It’s blue, or green, or even red. It shape shifts a while and then it’s gone. It’s a wonder, this dance of light and dark. It’s a wonder, this yearly tilt of the earth, turning its face once more toward the sun.

From "What To Do the First Morning the Sun Comes Back" by Roseann Lloyd:

It will be a short day.

Sit in the kitchen as long as you can, reading and writing.

At sundown, rub a smidgen of butter

on the western windowsill

to ask the sun:

Come back again tomorrow. 

May we all experience the wonder of the dark and the light of the season.

Special music --

Meditation

Close your eyes and open your imaginations

    experience the wonder of the season.




    Notice the colors of winter--

        the gleaming pure whites, the dependable browns and

            the deep, deep vibrant greens




    Breathe the smells of winter, take them in--

        healthful pine, sweet cinnamon, dusky fireplace




    Feel the cold of a February day,

        when the air gleams with clearness and the sky is the

            most perfect shade of blue




    Feel the warmth of woolen mittens

        and cider so hot it steams your glasses




    Taste the airy wetness of snow

        the thickness of chocolate

        the dryness of roasted nuts




    And listen, listen for the sounds of winter

        below the surface

        find its silence.

Joys and Sorrows

Song #55 Dark of Winter

Offering and Offertory

Festival of Lights The RE kids

Special Music

Festival of Lights

The dark and the light of winter, with its reflective, quiet peace, has another face to it -- one of noisy fun and merrymaking, eating, gift giving and visiting. Much of this aspect of our festivals of lights, particularly solstice and Christmas, comes from the Roman festival Saturnalia, which in its turn was influenced by Persian customs surrounding their god of the sun, Mithra, whose birthday is December 25. The Roman god Saturn was the god of the seed-time. By the beginning of December a farmer must have completed the autumn planting. At the time of the winter solstice, the Romans dedicated a festival to the agricultural god Saturn in celebration of the return of the sun and eventually, of the growing season. For the Romans, Saturnalia began in the middle of December and continued through January 1. In its midst was December 25, the day that the sun was at its lowest ebb, by Roman calculations. It was a time when people needed good fortune. Thus they gave each other good luck gifts of green tree boughs and laurel, fruits and fruitcake. (Yes, that fruitcake you have goes all the way back to ancient Rome.) They decorated their houses with lamps and candles, for the hovering spirits of darkness feared the light. They partied and declared national holidays. People flaunted the usual customs of decorum. It was a wild time, kind of like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, I would imagine.

Lights, greenery, gifts, merrymaking, resolutions, burning logs all bespeak our recognition that something important is passing away, something important is coming. It’s a time of new year. Let’s sing the song perfectly suited to these thoughts:

Song #235 Deck the Hall

Closing words by May Sarton December Moon

Before going to bed

After a fall of snow

I look out on the field

Shining there in the moonlight

So calm, untouched and white

Snow silence fills my head

After I leave the window.




Hours later near dawn

When I look down again

The whole landscape has changed

The perfect surface gone

Criss-crossed and written on

Where the wild creatures ranged

While the moon rose and shown.




Why did my dog not bark?

Why did I hear no sound

There on the snow-locked ground

In the tumultuous dark?




How much can come, how much can go

When the December moon is bright,

What worlds of play we’ll never know

Sleeping away the cold white night

After a fall of snow.

May this time of dark and light fill us with awe as we look out on the silence of snow. May it also fill us with cheer as we heed the message of our yule, and once again we turn, turn, toward the lingering, life giving light. May we sing in joyous measure. In the dark of winter, it can be very wonderful to be alive.