Not only Celts have reverence for the Winter Solstice

 Dancers are naturally attracted to the Solstice. Celtic dancers are drawn to the Solstice even more strongly.

IN PRAISE OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE  by William Rivers Pitt

The kindergarten teachers I know each tell the same story: Roundabout the middle of December, all the kids who celebrate Christmas transform into voracious little three-foot monsters bereft of morality or self-control. All the behaviors parents worked so diligently to instill in them collapse under the long duress of waiting for Santa.

Alas, my own daughter fell victim to the phenomenon this year. It was a jarring revelation to watch my sweet, caring, sharing, loving little girl decompensate into this ruthless feral capitalist, a frothing cauldron of I want who sees herself as the only being in all of existence. Matters did not improve at school; as it turned out, putting 15 feral capitalists in a room where they could spend all day rubbing their I want woes together exacerbated the situation dramatically. My wife and I eventually got her past this crisis of materialism, but it was remarkable nonetheless. It was as if a virus got passed from kid to kid to kid until they were all infected with an insatiable lust for more stuff.

Neither of us blamed our daughter for her behavior. In retrospect, it was thoroughly unsurprising: Here is this wee child, possessed of a moral code still in formation, gripping the live wire of Maximum Capitalism that was engineered specifically for people in her age group.

The Roman Emperor Constantine co-opted a wide variety of ancient pagan holidays in the name of Christianity in order to cement his rule, and the winter solstice celebration was foremost among them.

Today is Christmas and the solstice has passed, but amid the consumerist Christmas that corporations are pushing upon us, we can still step back and reach for the spiritual renewal at the center of the ancient solstice holiday. The wonder of the turning Earth and the life-giving sun is still with us today. Christmas consumerism may have paved it over and smothered it in advertisements, but the solstice is still there, bright green and gold, waiting to be bathed in the coming dawn.

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THIS BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN PIECE is extracted (with permission) from a longer article by Truthout senior editor William Rivers Pitt, called BEFORE CHRISTMAS THERE WAS THE SOLSTICE AND HOPE, published on Christmas Day 2018.  If you enjoyed his eloquent writing, please read more at https://truthout.org/articles/before-there-was-christmas-there-was-the-solstice-and-hope/

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