It’s interesting isn’t it, how we live our lives from the Christmas holidays to the summer holidays and then from the summer to Christmas, following a little more slowly the change in position of our Northern Hemisphere in relation to the sun?
Isn’t there something about those autumn days, where the leaves begin to fall and the daylight hours become fewer and are brightened by streetlights, Halloween fun, Guy Fawkes, Thanksgiving and eventually Advent? Would we actually survive the misery of the increasing dark if there wasn’t that festival to look forward to at the dullest part of the year and all those leading up top it?
The two weeks around Christmas and New Year are for many not in essential services or the retail industry now a complete holiday. Most of the time is spent indoors and often this time is accompanied by indulgent bouts of eating and drinking. It seems almost to be a stocking up against the cold which is usually sharper after Christmas as the days get longer. The weather always seems to take a while to catch up with the sun.
But humans don’t actually hibernate. We have the technology to get round seasonal changes. So, we may leave our cosy nest to take bracing walk if the weather does become cold, to actually indulge the cold and go on a skiing holiday, or set off to other cosy indoor venues: a good restaurant, a theatre or a cinema, or fantastic shops selling off their last-minute goods or in the New Year trying to recuperate from lack of profits in the run up to the big festival.
Yet the human uses this time to withdraw from normal life and stock up on nourishment in other ways. It is a time for renewing and strengthening ties with friends and families.
Whatever you religion, it is a time of hope. That’s very clear to the Christians amongst us, and even the most cynical, the most agnostic and pragmatic admit to rejoicing at the lengthening of the days which is caused by our angle to the sun.
Most importantly, it is a time of story. There is the greatest story of all time, of course, in the account of Christ’s birth and even if you don’t believe it, you have to admit it is a fantastic story. We are surrounded by other stories too – all those books released especially for Christmas and then in the January sales, all those stories we now have more time for reading and telling our children, and all those films, TV and radio dramas, old and new, broadcast at this time of year.
We need stories so that we can explain life to ourselves. So this holiday period also represents a time when we can take stock. It is a time for collecting spiritual insights which will bolster us up through the coming year.
Where would we be without our human form of hibernation?
