“So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
(from “The Shortest Day” a poem by Susan Cooper)
As I consider Susan Cooper’s poem and the illustrations of Carson Ellis that picture her thoughts, I am drawn to the description of Winter Solstice being the day that the year dies. Our modern sense of the death of the year is mostly something we associate with the calendar and clock and the coming and going of December 31st. We celebrate it with a maudlin song (Auld Lang Syne) that is sung while under the influence of fermented beverages. The death march of the Grim Reaper and birth of the infant wearing a sash emblazed with the number of the new year are both experienced within the span of a few seconds. Yet dying and birth are seldom quick experiences. Both can be quite laborious. Thus the encroaching darkness that foreshadows the Winter Solstice and the breaking dawn that forecasts the Summer Solstice, the gradual going and the coming of light, speak more accurately to me about the experience of the death of one year and the birth of another.
If ever there was a year of which it can be said that I am anxiously awaiting its death, it would be 2020. To paraphrase the Psalmist, this year has “sated my soul” with the “scorn of those who are at ease” and the “contempt of the proud” (Psalm 123). We have clearly had more than enough of the arrogance and rancor surrounding electoral politics and the management of a world pandemic. It would be nice if it would pass quickly at midnight December 31st and move into oblivion as we wake up on January 1, 2021. But we all know that won’t happen. The move into darkness and the coming of the dawn are more gradual than that. And what gets us through the wait is something called hope.
Hope in this context is not merely a wish for things to get better. It is the confidence that the darkness will not have the last word. Hope is living in the confidence of the dawn. And the dawn is something that God brings about in a span of time that we do not control. Hope is what is behind the Advent Wreath. It is that almost foolish expectation of the coming of light as we watch the sun skirt the edge of the horizon and give us less and less light. Each week as we move toward the day where the year dies, we light an additional candle. At the end of the observance we have short, dark days and five dimly burning wicks that give witness to the truth that darkness cannot extinguish the dawn of God’s light.
Advent turns encroaching darkness into an invitation to hope.So light a candle. Look toward the now dark horizon, and live into the expectation of the dawn of God’s light.
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1:78-79
David Rohrer
11/12/2020