Winifred Hodge Rose
I have some thoughts to share here, relating to something that some people in our culture experience during Yuletide: negative moods, depression, loneliness, a ‘bah-humbug’ attitude, grumpiness, alienation, inner pain and sadness. I think this especially happens with people who are not deeply engaged with any religious or cultural traditions, and who feel alienated from their kin and from others around them. But from what I hear, this can happen to anyone.
Here, I want to talk about Yuletide as an Earth-mystery, something that reflects the dance of energies within the Earth and between the Earth and Sun, and influences us at deep, energetic levels of our Being. Depending on how we—usually subconsciously—experience and interpret these energies, they can feel reinforcing and uplifting, or they can lower our energy and make us feel depressed. These Earth-energies are powerful, and since ancient times humans have developed religious and cultural rituals and customs to channel and make use of the energies at this time of year.
In the northern hemisphere, approaching Yuletide is the lowest ebb of the Earth-energies as we lead up to the winter solstice or Sun-wending and the turning of the tide of light. For many religions, including ours, it is a sacred time. Various religions and customs celebrate the turning of the wheel of the year from darker to brighter, the births of saviors or heroes, the enfolding together of the beloved living and the spirits of the dead in ongoing kinship and connection. This is a time of transcendent mystery, and it is celebrated now because it is the dark time of the year, the low ebb of the northern hemisphere’s Earth-tides.
Depth and darkness are integral aspects of the energetic tides of Earth during this time, and it is no surprise that, for some people, these energies can be experienced as sadness, depression, loss, feeling lonely, grumpy and out of sorts. The energies of frenzied consumerism and artificial jolliness that our culture plasters onto this season add a very jarring mismatch to the mix, distracting us from the deep energies we might otherwise be tuning into and thus benefiting from their meaningfulness.
I think it is the mismatch of these energies in our current culture, and the lack of attention and appreciation for the deep mysteries of this tide—which blend dark and light, emptiness and fullness, depth and height, immanence and transcendence—that subconsciously pull people into negative states during this time.
Not that I fail to honor the appropriateness of festive celebration of holy Yuletide, the joyful coming together with those we love; it’s just that the joy goes deeper when we honor the deep, dark roots that underlie the powerful, shifting Earth-tides of Yule. This is especially true during the time leading up to the Sun-wending, which modern Heathens have begun celebrating as Sunwait, and some Christians celebrate with the stillness, inwardness, and austerity of Advent. The day itself, Yule, the winter Sun-wending, signals a shift of those energies toward outwardness, light, uprising energies, which are appropriately celebrated by gatherings, feasts, and gift-giving.
But the pattern, the flow, of these energies of the Earth-tides is not experienced or honored if we fail to acknowledge the need for the dark, still time leading up to Yule day itself, and this is where the jarring energetic mismatch is felt so strongly in our modern culture. Even before Thanksgiving, even before Halloween or Hallows-tide and the other celebrations of the waning tide of the year, we are flooded with the commercialism and vacuity of the so-called ‘Christmas spirit,’ which as presented this way bears no spiritual meaning either for Heathens, Pagans, Christians, or even agnostic people. Just the opposite: it floods, exhausts, and threatens to overpower the true meaning of the season in any religion.
I believe that this true meaning depends upon attunement with the Earth-tides during this time: tides which lead through—not around—depth, darkness, stillness, inwardness, solitude, and all that these mean in our hearts and in the world around us. In Christianity, this depth is acknowledged during Advent, personified in Mary’s patient waiting for the birth, knowing and coming to terms with the prophecy that her dear child will eventually be tormented and crucified on his path as savior: experiencing the dark and the light together, immanence and transcendence.
For Heathens, it’s also appropriate, I believe, to honor a time of stillness, darkness, depth: to go inward, acknowledge the hard and difficult and lonely aspects of life, acknowledge where we and the world around us are found wanting, not living up to what we could be, that life is tough and that the burdens are best shared in community and kinship in whatever form it takes, working together for the common good. It is only after facing and acknowledging the darkness that we can truly celebrate the returning of the light.
Commercialism will not lead us there! Nor will forced and artificial expectations of ‘joy’ and ‘love’ and so forth. These things can very well lead to depression, disappointment, cynicism, loneliness, emotional exhaustion, and grumpy Scrooge-like behavior. For those who feel dark emotions during this deep ebb-tide of the Earth’s energies, I suggest that acknowledgement and acceptance of these feelings and the reasons for them could be of more help than forcibly denying them under pressure from the social environment. So often, in all religions, it is when people are struggling in the dark that they attain or receive enlightening experiences.
We need to respect the times of darkness as well as the times of light; both can offer spiritual riches and growth, and offer the energy and insight we need to live well-balanced, satisfying Heathen lives. I believe that attuning to the ebb and flow of Earth-energies throughout the year helps us achieve this healthy rhythm between inward and outward, solitude and engagement, silence and celebration, receiving and giving, and the other polarities that together create balance and fulfillment in our lives and in the world around us.
A note on Summer and the Southern Hemisphere
In Heathen and modern Pagan cultures, we celebrate Yule as the Midwinter Sun-wending, which occurs in December in the northern hemisphere, and in June in the southern hemisphere. It is useful and spiritually sound to switch our celebration of the Winter and Summer Sun-wendings according to our geographic location rather than by the calendar, so that we can tune in to the relevant Earth- and Sun-energies where we live.
But for those who celebrate the Christmas holiday season, whether for religious, cultural, or commercial reasons, that option is not available: one has to stick with the calendar and thus deny the influence of Earth-energies. In my perception, this adds even more confusion to people’s emotional experiences of the Christmas season in southern latitudes. I don’t have a solution to this, not being a Christian, but it might be useful to consider how one can use the Earth-energies to work with, rather than against, this phenomenon.
If we really have to have a consumerist holiday, it seems to me that would comport better with the energies of the summer Sun-wending, attuning to the bounty of midsummer, rather than winter’s austere call toward the silent, holy nights, as Christmas is called in German: Weih-nachten, the holy nights.
And think about this: in the USA we celebrate our Independence Day on the 4th of July. As far as I know, even though this is a big holiday it is not generally considered a time when people suddenly feel depressed, anti-social, Scroogey, etc., as some people do six months later around Christmas, even though the 4th is also a time to gather family and friends for feasting and celebration. I think that the Earth-tides, still near their peak from Midsummer, offer their buoyant, energetic influences on the 4th of July spirit, in contrast to the deep, dark energies leading up to Midwinter and Yule, and that this helps to account for the difference in mood for some people between the summer and the winter holidays. These Earth-tides do have a real influence on people’s moods, and the influence can be very positive if we work with, rather than against, their natural energies.