“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.
Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol

The energies of wintersolstice

Remember what happened to  Scrooge,  in Charles Dickens’  Christmas Carol? How his night time visions lead him through his Past, Present and Future by  Christmas Spirits transforming him from a stingy grumpy human being  to someone who understood the deeper meaning of joY?

How come,  amidst all the season’s feel good films made in this day and age, this story is still told over and over again every Christmas on screens and stages all over the world, 181 years since it was first published?  What is it about the narrative audiences still relate to? Do the energies of this time of year hold a natural invitation to turn within, to transform and heal by looking back on what came about and connect the present to the greater good of what is to come?

Even today in our hasty modern lives; we still have the rituals of  looking back at the year that was and wishing each other happiness for the new year. Is it the inclination to look within that has gone missing a bit?

Winter solstice contemplation: the 12 ‘missing’ days.

Interestingly enough the ritual to contemplate on the year that was and look ahead at the year to come, evaluating one’s role in what came about and setting intention for what has yet to unfold,  goes way back to pre-Christmas days. The last days of the year, were in fact seen as a portal to insight.

A cosmic phenomenon, the 354 day moon calendar the ancients lived by being 12 days shorter than the 365 days of a solar year, left 12 days unaccounted for. This started at the shortest day of the year, winter solstice and ended at the beginning of the new year, the ‘rebirth of the sun’ as people called it then, as another solar year was to begin.

It was believed the veil between the material and spiritual world  was thinner during these 12 days before the earth started its new round round the sun,  the long nights  and relatively restful days, making it easier to tap into the inner wisdom each and every one of us comes to earth with as a birthright from the heavens.
So with nothing much to hunt and gather anyway and the natural world hibernating as it was, people would follow the natural rhythm of winter and spend their days in moderation using the light of their inner world to illuminate their lives.

The benefits of a winter solstice contemplation. 

A winter solstice contemplation may sound like something you have absolutely no time and space for during our modern day world of lush celebrations of  the seasons holiday. Or maybe the season even fails to be the merriest time of the year for you and you actually want to get it over with. The thing with the unspoken deeper layers of existence at play however,  is that you keep carrying them with you either way, whether they are ignored or stay hidden underneath the layer of  exuberance. Either way  we tend to forget about ourselves, our potential, our freedom of choice and our own creative powers.
Would Scrooge have neglected to change his ways, his future would have been a whole lot more gloomy. In the words of Dickens:

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.

The 12 days in December with their days short their nights long, are a perfect time of the year to count your blessings and contemplate on what changes you want to create in your life and therewith bring to the greater good.

Portals to contemplation

Although I’d be curious to experience an adventure like that of Scrooge, fortunately there are other ways of practising the winter solstice contemplation ritual. A relatively simple one, I learned from Dutch minister Bastiaan Baan, who practices the ritual himself every year for over 40 years now.

This is how it goes:

  • On a piece of paper drawa vertical line
  • On the left side of the line describe a memory of an experience that befell you in the year that  past
  • On the right side describe the effect the experience had on you/ the position you took in it.
  • Once it’s time to go to sleep, take your notes with you, put them next to your bed with a pen and before going to sleep take a moment to contemplate on how you intent to remember your dreams in the night to come
  • After waking up, as one of the first things you do, record anything you remember from the dreams you had during sleep, perhaps in keywords  or a rough sketch, adding it to your previous notes. Look  for the relationship between the three subjects. Is there a pattern? Would you respond differently now? Was there a message in your dreams related to your notes? 
  • When nothing comes to mind immediately, happenings during the day that follows might remind you of a detail from your dream. Whichever it is, everything counts and is valuable to self-insight.

Instead of using a separate piece of paper each day of contemplation, you can also create your very own ‘winter solstice contemplation diary’,  a special booklet  to record your thoughts, drawings and dreams, perhaps even making a new one every winter solstice, creating a sort of summary of the year that was.

When creating such a diary it’s always nice to add your personal creative skills and ideas by giving it a title on a theme you want to explore and /or add  a cover drawing  mentioning the year you created the dairy. You could in fact create a winter solstice diary every year, to leaf through in later days, or leave a record of thoughts and memories for posterity.

 A Nan Yar who Am I card every day from december 22nd till  January 2nd

Starting Sunday December 22nd,  I wil publish underneath  this blog a Nan Yar Who Am I card of my own for inspiration.

Ofcourse you may also  draw your own card on the right side of this blog

Whether it is the inspiration card I will publish or the card your draw yourself, in both cases you have total freedom to explore what its meaning reminds you of in view of past-year experiences, how you related to those experiences and if your dreams made you aware of something in relation of your notes.

So maybe see you here again Sunday 22 nd of December when the first card of the 12 holy nights is drawn and published

For now wishing you all, where ever you are, what ever you do, a content and insightful seasons holiday.

Ingrid Schippers

 

de maan