Mankind has celebrated the heart of winter for 5,012 years.
I know this because at the first rationalist solstice, in a crowded New York apartment, Raymond Arnold stood metaphorically where I am speaking now and said we’d been celebrating since Stonehenge was built, five thousand years ago. And since then it’s been twelve years.
For five thousand and twelve years, the world has been faking us out with sham apocalypses. The days grow colder. The nights longer. Plants die. Animals disappear. Plagues ravage the land. The leaves turn the color of blood, then fall from heaven like ash. And then, every year, it says “Sike!”, and the sun starts brightening again, and the diseases go away, and the plants bloom and we get another spring.
The winter solstice celebrates the exact moment the world calls “Sike!”, when the telescopes and star charts and giant stone circles confirm that it was just a prank again, after all. Every year we celebrate another doom averted, another twelve months alive. Tonight we come together to continue this custom of celebration, both the five thousand year old tradition of our ancestors, and the twelve year old version we made up ourselves.
I’m glad to be here with you again tonight. No, really, I’m glad. The thing where the world fakes us out with sham apocalypses has been getting a little more intense lately, I’m not really sure it’s funny any more. This past winter we got a spike in a deadly pandemic. This spring and summer, a war involving a nuclear power. The less said about this autumn, the better. We’ve made it through, only a little worse for wear. Still, we all wonder if one time it won’t be fake. At the first rationalist solstice, Raymond asked us to think about whether the world would make it another five thousand years. Now some of us wonder if it will make it another twelve.
But whatever happens, tonight we know we’ve made it through the darkest night of 2022. We may still die of other things, but we will not die of this!
There’s a joke that all Jewish holidays have the same three parts: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat. Solstice is like this too. The world tried to kill us. It failed. Let’s sing!
edit