CHASING DOWN THE MUSE:Winter solstice: A day of stillness and reflection

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been one of my favorite times. Not because of the frenzied holiday shopping, the wonderful celebratory parties or the thought of Santa’s magic approach, although all of those are wonderful.

What I love most about this time of the year are the gestures of thoughtfulness that motivate everyone’s actions. It’s as if the air is permeated with kindness that floats from home to home, transaction to transaction.

For me, it is the season of gratefulness. After 12 months of hard work and personal growth, it’s an appropriate time to take stock of the bounty in my life.

The approach of the winter solstice and the first day of winter provides the perfect framework for that reflection. The nights are progressively longer — the days progressively shorter. Evening comes early with the glow of candles and scents of soup simmering on the stove.

Solstice will occur this year on the Dec. 21 at 4:22 p.m. It is at this time that we will experience the shortest day of the year and the longest night. The sun slides to its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation will appear to be the same several days before and after the event. Hence, the origin of the word from the Latin solstitium: to stand still.

From my hilltop vantage, this is the season when the sun stops hiding from the silhouette of Catalina Island and slips, unhindered, into the horizontal marking of the pacific. In the blink of less than two weeks, the sun will shift her setting again to the north.

Following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter. No one is quite sure when humans first recognized the solstice and began to herald it as a turning point, but an astounding array of ancient cultures built their greatest architecture with reference to the solstices and equinoxes.

Temples, tombs, cairns and sacred observatories on nearly every continent are aligned with the shifting arc of the sun. One of the more famous, Stonehenge, is a perfect marker of both solstices.

Ancient cultures did more than merely mark the changing direction of the sun, they created celebrations and rituals that coincided with the shift. The Mesopotamians were the first, with a festival of renewal to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for one more year.

Several Anasazi sites contain examples of archeo-astronomy, or a solar observatory. One such location, at Chaco Canyon, is Fajada Butte. Artist Anna Soffer rediscovered this remarkable construct in 1977.

Three large stone slabs sit on top of the steep and difficult to access butte. Sunlight, passing through the cracks between these slabs, sends a narrow dagger of light across a spiral carved in an adjacent rock wall. At the precise moment of solstice or equinox, the dagger cuts through the exact center of the spiral.

It is likely that early agrarian cultures used the solstice and equinox as guides for planting and harvesting. Each sun marker, which can be considered an early form of calendar, provided a framework for agricultural planning.

Our own coastal Californian Native Americans, the Chumash, painted sun markers on rock walls. For them, the winter solstice marked a time of renewal and their celebration lasted several days, thousands of years before the arrival of the first Europeans.

In the spiritual sense, the winter solstice is a reminder that in order for a new path to begin, and old path must end. It is a time of feasting and of celebration, which certainly coincides with the season of Christmas.

As the day of solstice approaches, I watch the sun carefully, noting her position in rise and in her set. Through cloudy skies and clear, the arc shifts ever so slightly — and noticeably — to the south. Each day, a little less light. Each day, a little more night.

Like the Chumash and the Mesopotamians, I will to celebrate a time of renewal. At 4:22 p.m. on the 21st, I intend to stop whatever I am doing and look toward that changing sun. In a tradition of my own, I will light a candle and pay homage to the return of light, and celebrate that turning of the sun’s arc from south to north.