Winter Solstice : Mummer’s Day

“Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer’s hearth, when the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his preparedness for winter…” ~ Henry David Thoreau ~ “A Winter Walk,” published posthumously, 1863

In the northern latitudes, midwinter’s day has been an important time for celebration throughout the ages. On this shortest day of the year, the sun is at its lowest and weakest, a pivot point from which the light will grow stronger and brighter. This is the turning point of the year. The romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.

The Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia, was both a gigantic fair and a festival of the home. Riotous merry-making took place, and the halls of houses were decked with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees. Lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another, bringing good-luck gifts of fruit, cakes, candles, dolls, jewellery, and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life’s continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces and fantastic hats danced through the streets.

The custom of mummers visiting their neighbours in costume, which is still alive in Newfoundland, is descended from these masked processions. — From Winter Solstice: The Unconquered Sun

Slaves wore the robes of their nobles, and the nobles, wearing fantastic costumes and blackened faces, roamed the streets with their slaves in a grand parade. Reciting poems and receiving in return cakes and ale, groups of five to twenty, their faces blackened, would march from home to home, shouting and singing. Age and rank were forgotten for the festival and all persons were free for the day. There was music and dancing and gifts for the children.

images/newgrange_wintersolstice.gif” width=”200″ height=”282″ border=”0″ />No one’s really sure how long ago humans recognized the Winter Solstice and began heralding it as a turning point — the day that marks the return of the sun. Many, many cultures the world over performed solstice ceremonies. At their root: an ancient fear that the failing light would never return unless humans intervened. An utterly astounding array of ancient cultures built their greatest architectures (tombs, temples, cairns and sacred observatories) so that they aligned with the solstices and equinoxes. Stonehenge is a perfect marker of both solstices. Newgrange, in Ireland, is estimated to be 5,000 years old (though it may be a bit older than that); it’s older by centuries than Stonehenge, and older than the Egyptian pyramids, too. Twelve Standing Stones survive of what may have been an arc at the front of the mound or possibly a complete circle of about 35 stones surrounding the mound. Newgrange was much more than simply a place of burial. It housed the spirits of the ancestors, providing a link for the living to the world of deities and serving as a focal point for ritual and celebration. In Celtic mythology, Newgrange (or S� An Bhru as it was once known) was the home of the greatest of the Celtic gods, the Dagda M�r and his son Aongus, the god of love. Although Newgrange in time became overgrown and obscured, the memory of the monument appears to have survived in legend as the Br� na B�inne. Throughout most of history, Newgrange was revered as a sacred place, and it was built to allow a single shaft of sunlight to penetrate deep into its central chamber to shine on a set of carved stone bowls at dawn on Winter Solstice. This dramatic event lasts for about 17 minutes each day at dawn from around the 21st to the 23rd of December, the rest of the year the chamber is in complete darkness.

“Newgrange”
Rogha: The Best of Clannad

There is a place on the east
Mysterious ring, a Magical Ring of Stones
The druids have lived there once they said,
forgotten is the race that no-one knows.

Chorus:
Rum de rum ‘rud a derimo
Rum de rum ‘rud a derimo

The circled tomb of a different age
Secret lines carved on ancient stone.
Heroic Kings laid down to rest
Forgotten is the race that no-one knows.

Wait for the sun on a winter’s day
and a beam of light shines across the floor.
Mysterious ring, a Magical Ring.
But forgotten is the race that no-one knows.

Winter Solstice 2003 - 22nd December - 02:04 Eastern Time (US)