It's Old Man Winter's Favorite Season

Today is the first day of Winter and the shortest day - less than twelve hours of sunshine -  of the year in the Northern hemispere That event as well as the coot evening temperatures will be more than enough to awaken thoughts of sub-freezing temperatures, howling winds and depths of drifting snow measured in feet. 

In Henry Purcell's 1671 semi-opera, King Arthur, the spirit of Winter is depicted as Cold Genius, a frozen old man who much prefers dormancy under snowdrifts to an invitation to celebrate the coming of Spring.

What power art thou Who from below Hast made me rise Unwillingly and slow From beds of everlasting snow See'st thou not how stiff And wondrous old Far unfit to bear the bitter cold I can scarcely move Or draw my breath I can scarcely move Or draw my breath Let me, let me, Let me freeze again Let me, let me Freeze again to death Let me, let me, let me Freeze again to death...

Much of the nation won't have long to wait Cold Genius's favoite weather. Personally I don't look forward to cold temperatures, ice, assorted freezing slop, and black snow lining city streets for the next three months. On the other hand, the thought of lengthening days that arrived with today's solstice brings a big smile to my face. This rebirth of the sun has brought happiness to humans for quite a long time.

The Newgrange Tumulus in County Meath, Ireland, is a nice illustration of this long-standing respect for the rebirth of light and warmth to a culture. The burial mound has a passage that aligns perfectly with the winter solstice sunrise. People have observed the illumination of the keystone at Newgrange for over 4500 years. That's long before Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids existed.

The winter solstice is also know as Midwinter is some circles. Here is unquestionably the song of the day, In the Bleak Midwinter, a perfect blend of nature and the "coming of the light" in the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter

Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him

Nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When He comes to reign:

In the bleak mid-winter

A stable-place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty,

Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim

Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk,

And a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels

Fall down before,

The ox and ass and camel

Which adore.

Angels and archangels

May have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim

Thronged the air -

But only His mother

In her maiden bliss

Worshipped the Beloved

With a kiss.

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man

I would do my part;

Yet what I can, I give Him -

Give my heart.

For the next six months the sun will climb a bit higher every day in the Northern Hemisphere. We won't notice heat from the "rebirth" of the sun until a month or so into this cycle. While the lengthening days can give us hope that the "dead season" will soon come to an end, we can still enjoy the experience of a world at quiet rest.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

Newgrange aerial photo, gaia.com
Newgrange plan and section, public domain illustration, William Frederick Wakeman, Wakeman's Handbook of Irish Heritage (1903), archives.org

C. S. Lewis: Aim At Heaven And You Will Get Earth Thrown In. Aim At Earth And You Get Neither

 

Some day you will be old enough to read fairy tales

                                                                            C.S. Lewis

I was introduced to the mind of C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis through a gift from a close friend. He gave me a copy of The Four Loves as medication for some conflicting developments in a relationship with Marti, the girl of my dreams at the time. Eventually, Marti revealed her affection for a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. She moved on and I was left with a life-long literary relationship with Lewis and can only trust that Marti found equal tenure with the prof.

C.S. Lewis, one of the last century's leading scholars, novelists, and Christian apologists, was born on this day in 1898. Many readers likely know his name and even more know some of his work - The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, Mere Christianity, Surprised By Joy - but many may not be familiar with the depth and breadth of his literary accomplishments.

C.S. Lewis                                National Portrait Gallery, London

Immersed the the world of the university scholar where he was a friend and colleague of J. R.R. Tolkein, Lewis enjoyed the community but also appreciated his privacy. For that reason, very few interviews and recordings of the man survive. One tape still with us is a fifteen-minute talk he gave over BBC Radio during a three part series of presentations between 1942 and 1944. The recording reveals the great warmth, friendliness, and integrity of the man.

The talks soon appeared as three separate books shortly after World War II. In 1952, the series was edited into a single book, Mere Christianity. It's now considered a masterpiece in Christian apologetics.

If you cannot enjoy a Lewis book you simply haven't read enough of his work. And there is enough to accommodate readers as his Wikipedia bibliography has almost eighty entries of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. One or more of those entries will speak to you for a long time.