Praise be to the distant sister sun

Thoughts on the winter solstice: As someone who spends a lot of time awake and moving between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. on most weekday mornings, the sheer volume of darkness and cold that surrounds us this time of year is stark. I mean, it’s the same every year, and yet we speak about it as though what we are feeling in 2019 is somehow unique to this year; kind of funny how that works. Yesterday was the winter solstice, the “shortest day of the year,” in terms of hours of daylight. The truth is, while the next six months will incrementally feature more and more seconds and minutes of daylight, for the next several weeks, we are locked into a whole lot of darkness. We won’t start noticing a difference until late January/early February, and even then, it’s not much. This lack of daylight is sometimes associated with more somber moods, even around the holidays. There’s even an acronym for it – SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Our bodies and minds crave daylight and the great outdoors.

But while this darkness can seem gloomy, there’s something peaceful about it, and about the persistent cold weather we’ve had for the balance of November and December. When I landed at Westchester County Airport on Thursday night after several days in sunny and warm Orlando for the USTFCCCA Convention, the 14-degree air felt like a sudden blast. But even for me, a cold hater, there was something refreshing about that intensely cold midnight air, which was a full 70 degrees chillier than the warmth of Monday afternoon when I went for a long walk/jog around the convention center hotel. That few days in the warm weather sure felt nice, but I’m happy to be home, even in the single-digit mornings, the icy driveways and the too-soon darkness in the late afternoon.

And each year around these dates, I find myself humming the festive, holiday Jethro Tull song, “Ring Out Solstice Bells,” about the winter solstice. The summer solstice may be a lot sunnier, but there is joy to be found in the darkness as well, as these song lyrics attest:

Praise be to the distant sister sun,
Joyful as the silver planets run

As my old coach used to say? Merry Fitness!