The Shortest Day

Saturday was the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year.

It's a significant day, but I've neglected it up until now. To me it's always seemed to be a depressing thing, you know? You wake up, it's dark. You get a few scant hours of sunlight, and then it's dark again. The only thing redeeming it is the anticipation of Christmas.

But I'm coming around to the idea that it's a beautiful thing. The shortest day; this means longer days are coming. It is the very first signal, a signpost towards spring. Towards warmer weather. Towards the future.

I played Neva recently. I don't want to talk about it too much, because I reviewed it for Debug (and you can read it, and many other reviews by lovely writers, if you buy issue 8 when it comes out, which I think is a very smooth and not at all obvious plug). It's obviously a stunning game. I couldn't get enough of the world. I took way more screenshots than I needed to, just because I wanted to capture it.

Neva takes place over all four seasons: starting in luscious summer, sinking into autumn, and then falling deep into the bleak and desolate winter. The winter section is haunting, not just because of the story, but because of the darkness, and quiet it is.

I've always suffered a bit in the winter with my mental health, and now that I have trigeminal neuralgia and my main pain trigger is the cold, it's even worse. The only thing that is exciting about the winter is December; the run-up to Christmas is nice, and my son was born in December, arriving slowly and then all of a sudden in a quiet hospital, like an early present.

The beginning of January is okay. You're mostly tucked up inside anyway, and you have the optimism of a new year, which is annoyingly infectious. But then January drags on. And on. And on. And when you finally get to the end of it? Boom, it's February, which is undisputably the shittest month of the year. Name me a month more shit than February. You can't! Because it's terrible. It's dark, it's freezing cold, and there's nothing good about it.

Right. Sorry. What was I even talking about?

Neva! I was talking about Neva. This is a game that knows how to celebrate the seasons, including the winter. I have bad associations with the winter months because I spend a lot of it in pain. But there is a beauty to winter, and I am trying to work out how to appreciate it, even if it's from afar.

I have a surprising amount of pictures of trees in my Google Photos account. I love trees. The first thing we did when lockdown restrictions were lifted back in 2020 and we were allowed to drive to go for walks was to go to the woods; I remember distinctly putting my palm on a tree and taking deep breaths. (In my defence, we were all doing mad things back then.)

Anyway, I don't have many pictures of trees in the winter for obvious reasons. This is the season for me to be tucked up indoors. This is the season of me cancelling plans to protect my health. I would like to work out a way of safely touching base with nature in the coldest weather.

Until then, I'm admiring it from afar. On the Solstice, we watched a live stream of the sun rising over Stonehenge. It was strangely joyful, watching people cheering in the drizzle as the sun barely rose. I'd love to do that in real life one day. I'd love to join the crowd of people standing and watching as the sun rises, knowing it won't be long before it sets again.

I bought a book, The Shortest Day. It's a beautifully illustrated book of the poem by Susan Cooper. And I keep thinking about this part:

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing, behind us - listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight
The shortest day
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.

The shortest day is a promise. Brighter days are coming. Better things are ahead. That's why people gather to celebrate it. That's why it's important.

I keep thinking about how all things are cyclical. I live in England, and the seasons are prominent here. And yet, if you're not careful, you can completely lose touch with these subtle shifts of the earth. A lot of us spend our days on computers. We spend our evenings at home, or in the car, rushing around as we take our kids from place to place. At the weekends, we're desperately trying to catch up on all the housework we didn't do during the week. And we're trying to see all those people we deeply care about but we don't get to spend much time with. Your situation may be different, obviously, but I think a lot of us can relate to the never-ending activity. It just doesn't seem to stop. Weeks slide into months, and these slip into years. Suddenly, you're a decade older, and it hits you like a sudden shock: how did this happen?

Our ancestors were, of course, much more in touch with the passing of the seasons. They had to be: their livelihoods (and their actual lives) depended on the weather doing what it should be doing. And so they kept close watch. They knew the importance of the winter. They knew how necessary it is, to have death, so that you can have new life again afterwards.

And so rituals developed on the shortest day. People swept their houses clean, not only to remove grime, but to remove any lingering remnants of negative energy from the previous year. They brought logs into their homes and burned them, to represent the returning sun. And they celebrated their blessings.

Eventually, in Neva, spring returns. As it will for us.

But I think sometimes we dash ahead to the new without properly celebrating - or letting go of - the old. There's something important about closing a chapter of your life properly. Any time I haven't done this, I've felt it, that strange feeling of something being slightly wonky and wrong. This year, I plan to get together with my best friends and burn the stuff I want to leave behind this year. (Just paper, but you know, it's symbolic). We're supposed to do it today, technically, but with us being busy and my TN, it's difficult. But we'll do it. Out with the old, in with the new. Start again.

The word solstice comes from the Latin 'sol', meaning sun, and 'sistere', meaning stand. 'The day the sun stands still'. That's what I want to do. To stand still. To take this moment in - even if I'm in pain - and be thankful for it. Because God knows, I have so much to be thankful for. The blessings in my life are as abundant as the blossom in the spring.

Back to the poem again:

They carol, feast, and give thanks,
and dearly love their friends,
and hope for peace.

If I've learned anything over the past five years, it's that nothing is permanent. And nothing in life is guaranteed. That - and I know this is depressing, but you and I both know it's true - includes tomorrow. All I can guarantee having are these two things:

• Love
• The present moment

That's it. That's all I really own, you know? That's all we can really take ownership of. And even this moment, on these dark days, as I reflect on a very up-and-down year, that's all I have. And I'm not trying to be all Pollyanna here; I don't think happiness in every moment is something we should strive for, necessarily. But contentment? That's the goal. The people I know who have really cracked it are the ones who can find contentment in what they have, even if they're not quite where they want to be. The people who feel the shitty times but deeply appreciate and love the people surrounding them. The people who have a basic, underlying understanding that there is no such thing as permanence, and that they are lucky to have this day. Those people have got it made.

It's twee, isn't it? But one of the things I plan to let go of next year is 'the fear of being sincere'. I sincerely mean this: life can be so, so crap sometimes. But it is also a gift. Two things can be true at once, and all that. Case in point: I'm sad because my nerve pain has kicked off and I've had to miss out on a Christmas celebration with my friends. And yet, on the flip side, I have friends who are patient and caring and who will enthusiastically agree to burn shit with me sometimes. You know? I have a husband who wordlessly takes over with the kids when he sees the pain on my face. No words required - he just knows what I need. In the actual moment, I'm feeling the pain more urgently, but I have the underlying knowledge that the good bit exists, and that's enough to keep me going.

Anyway. Merry Christmas, you lot. Thanks for sticking with me, especially during my weeks of silence. Next week I'll be back with a list of my favourite things of the year. Until then, feast, be with your loved ones, and hope for peace. ❤️