THE LONGEST NIGHT

Everyone has their own idea of what their longest night is.

Ask any parent of a teenager with a fresh new driver’s license out on their first excursion how long the night was.

Actually, turn the parenting clock back a bit further – ask a woman who spends a longest night in labour.  You know, to be rewarded with colic induced longest nights, and teething longest nights, and fevered longest nights, and first-day-of-school-jitters longest nights, and first-broken-hearts longest nights ... all marching towards the afore mentioned first-driver’s-license-night-out longest night.

Of course, this time of year we have the annual too-excited-to-sleep-because-Santa-is-coming string of sleepless nights.  It’s a good thing that kids are cute.

Obviously these are perceived realities.  Just because you are awake to watch the minutes tick by in slow motion on all of these occasions doesn’t mean time is actually moving slower, it just feels like it is.

On the other hand, they do say “perception is the reality”.

I was inspired to look up the word ‘Yalda’ this morning.  Despite my multi-faceted nerdiness in the fields of languages, and traditions, and celebrations, and the seasons of the sun (to name a few) I had never come across this one before.  Not that it hasn’t been around for a while; like maybe 8,000 years, or so Google says.

Here’s another word from the history books: Persia. For those of you not into historical nerdiness this is an ancient Empire that encompassed most of what is Iran today, and the religion they practiced was Zoroastrian, which if I’m not mistaken, was the one cited in the original Ghost Buster’s movie as the source of the evil entity trying to take over New York ... but, I digress.  We nerds do a lot of that.

According to facts that Hollywood hasn’t tampered with, the people of ancient Persia were the first to formally recognize the winter solstice with a ceremony to celebrate the Earth’s wobble back toward longer days.  Not that they would have understood the mechanics of planetary motion, but appreciated that this meant that the gods were giving them another growing season – something they were pretty relieved and happy about.

What caught my attention was that this eastern religious custom was to celebrate getting through the longest night, whereas in western culture we focus on getting past the shortest day.  Well, at least that’s what we do in this household.  I guarantee that by the morning of December 22^nd my resident wise man will announce that he has already noticed a difference in the rising of the sun.  Pretty good for someone who isn’t even up yet when that happens.

I know it’s the same thing ... both are customs acknowledging the winter solstice ... but somehow the idea of staying up all night to welcome the sun on that first day of lengthening light seems more optimistic  than the approach of putting the darkness behind us.  The first feels positive, the second seems negative.  I guess I’m just a ‘cup is half full’ kind of gal.

No matter, it doesn’t change a single thing. Tonight, December 20, will be the longest night, and tomorrow will be the shortest day.  From here on in the sun will climb in the skies and everyone (in the Northern Hemisphere) will rejoice.  It bears saying again ... perception is the reality ... and I perceive that maybe the Persians had it right.

(Note to self – I need to ask Google what ancient civilizations south of the Equator did with the summer and winter solstice ...)