Imagine yourself centuries ago in a climate zone not unlike that of Europe. Harvest time is long past; the winter is upon you. The temperature turns progressively colder, the days grow steadily shorter, and the nights last longer and longer. It will likely be many months before the shoots of young plants come forth from the earth again. You are dependent upon what food you have stored from the fertile time of the year and upon which animals can be spared for slaughtered. With luck, you have enough fuel or tallow to provide light to brighten even part of the long, cold night. Travel, which is never good, is now worse than ever. You remain inside your home, attempt to keep warm, and wait for the sun to return. While you do, you sit around the hearth and tell stories, reflect, dream, or simply rest from the labors of the rest of the year.
Now imagine yourself moving forward in time to March 31, 1880. You are one of a crowd of thousands of people gathered in Wabash, Indiana, which is about to become the first American municipality to be lit by electric lights. Bands are playing, salutes are fired from guns, and then — at exactly 8:00 PM — the city’s brilliant new lights spring to life. A deep hush falls over the crowd. Some people cry out and fall to their knees. While oil lamps and gas jets had been a marked improvement over hearth fires and candles in dealing with winter’s long darkness, nothing could have prepared the citizens of Wabash for the changes that were about to alter their world — and their experience of the darkness of winter.
While the first scenario is largely conjectured from what we know about conditions in the world at that time, we have actual newspaper account of the scene that transpired in Wabash more than a century and a quarter ago. The wonder and awe these people felt as they moved from darkness to light with the flip of a switch can never be fully obscured by our jaded modern expectations. For we too, whether consciously or subliminally, even in the midst of our wildly digital lives, keep that same vigil with the rising dark each year. Even so, to really feel the archetypal power of the rebirth of the light at the Winter Solstice, we need to imagine a time much further back, back into the mists of prehistory.
The time I ask us imagine is around 3,200 BCE — over five millennia ago. The place we are standing is a primeval forest near the Boyne River on the island that will be known as Ireland in later ages. On the neighboring island, later known as Britain, the great monument called Stonehenge won’t be erected for more than 500 years. Similarly, in the far more distant land of Egypt, the Pyramids won’t be begun for nearly as long. As for the Celtic peoples who would later dominate this island, they won’t arrive at this sacred place for another 2,500 years.
Were we standing here in this deep forest more than 5,000 years before our own day, we would observe a massive construction project in progress in the middle of a clearing at the top of a tall hill that would later be called Newgrange. Our modern selves would fairly tower over the short and short-lived people building in this place. The average life-span of these people is estimated at only 34 years, and yet they are engaged in the midst of a building project that will take about 80 years to reach completion. So it will be the grandchildren — perhaps even the great-grandchildren — of the people who began this monument who will finish and use it.
As we watch this construction project unfold, we find ourselves asking a range of questions. First there is the overarching mystery of how these ancient people engaged in a project this immense when they had no writing system to record their plans and no way to direct the generations that would complete the project. Then there is the practical mystery of how the huge stones, boulders as big as a large car, were moved by stone-age people from quarries more than 50 miles away, over rough terrain, through deep forests, and finally up this hill. And why set those stones into this hilltop and then cover it over with earth to create a final mound more than an acre in diameter. And, of course, the largest question of all: What was it built for?
To answer that last question, I ask us to imagine coming back to this place a generation or two later, after the mound has been completed. We arrive on the eve of the Winter Solstice and find ourselves gathered together with chieftains, shamans, storytellers, midwives, and other members of the tribe. Chanting, we slowly process up the mound to the east-facing entrance of the shrine and continue down a long, dark passage into the center, to the chamber at the heart of the mound. There we wait in deathly silence as, outside — invisible to us entombed in the deep darkness of the earth — the sky slowly begins to brighten as the sun reaches the edge of the horizon.
Then slowly, as if by magic, a slender shaft of sunlight no thicker than a pencil begins to dispel the darkness of this earthen tomb. Gradually, over the course of about 20 minutes, the slender shaft of light broadens to a beam of brilliant sunshine bright enough to light up the entire central chamber. We can only imagine the gasps of awe and the prayers of gratitude with which these primordial people experienced this miracle of nature. At this magical season of the year, may we, too, feel the reverence with which our ancestors greeted this morning, the dawn of day when the Sun would once again begin to rise higher and higher in the sky. And with it, the miracle of life renewing itself for yet another year!