Dec 21

Dec 21 Holiday Lights | Day 21

For many holiday lights are just a beautiful twinkling decoration for a house, the tree or a busy street. They remind us that it's the Christmas season and get us into a festive mood. Lights are more than just festive to me. Throughout the fall I am acutely aware that the days are getting shorter and we are getting less and less glorious sunshine each day. It's a very depressing thing. When we put up holiday lights I feel like we are fighting back against the darkness, which is very heartening to me.

Light itself is a very symbolic thing for me at this time of year and particularly this day, the Winter Solstice. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, so this is day we need those little twinkling lights, those bringers of hope, the most! From this day on it only gets better, as the light slowly returns to our life.

In reading about the Solstice and the significance of light, I found that the ancient tradition of the Yule Log played a huge role in Celtic and Nordic societies at this time of year. Similar to our lights, the Yule Log was used to banish the darkness of this time of year and persuade the sun to come back and usher in a new season of warmth. As Christianity became integrated into these cultures, the Yule Log's original traditions became a little bit murky, and evolved as part of the Christmas tradition. I'm sure I'm not doing the true meaning of the Yule Log justice, so take a look at this website to read more if you are interested.

So I will leave you with a quote that always resonates with me at this time of year. And hopefully it offers you a little bit of cheer on this darkest and coldest of nights.