by Jeremy Freeman
According to BACA director Sara Pasti, last year’s Main Street decorations were a wee bit anticlimactic, “There were beautiful wreaths (donated by the Tioronda Garden Club) hung along the street, but they weren’t lit and you couldn’t see them at night.” She mentioned things might be different this year and suggested calling up Alan Paiva owner of “Finder’s Keepers” who had hatched a plan eight months prior to improve on Beacon’s decorative Winter turn-out. Alan, perhaps like a few others, wondered why a town with such a creative and artistic contingent and a Main Street lined with friendly and enthusiastic merchants wouldn’t want to seriously deck the halls, light up restored buildings and reintroduce the decorative symbols of the winter season.
The nights darken our town a little earlier each day and surely all our inner Scrooges will need a bit of a thaw at some point this season.Shortly after opening his shop, Alan embarked on the commendable task of approaching all 110 shops in town for donations to lift off a “Christmas in July” celebration, which looks to become an annual event. In conjunction with BACA, Sara Pasti, and lots of help from Linda Hubbard (River Winds Gallery), Alan convinced 90 shops to put up donations for the raffle prize and to sell a bundle of raffle tickets (a pledge of 100 at least). Gathering together all these resources delivered a downtown party complete with Jazz and BBQ. The grand raffle prize awarded a fat $2000 Main Street shopping spree to be spent exclusively at any of the participating ninety shops. Alan, a detail minded and stick-to-the-rules kind of guy, regrettably had to re-award the grand prize because the first winner was in violation of the “written rules”—he or she (sources wouldn’t say) was a store employee and therefore ineligible.
All told “Christmas in July” generated a chunk of money for Main Street decorations 2006 ($5,000), two months of radio air advertising Beacon’s “Candlelight Shopping” until 9pm Fridays, a prize to be awarded to this year’s best decorated storefront ($250), and a prize to be awarded to the best lit store front ($150). The Judging panel is not quite solidified but there will definitely be a contest. The North Pole planning board, which vigorously reviews the judging applicants, is currently tied up in a heated debate over increased sleigh traffic. However the elves did manage, amidst all the chaos, to build and ship Beacon’s new pole decorations, multiple strings of white lights, and clusters of three-foot snowflakes to be hung above the streets, a fine collection, which will continue to grow over the years. Along with the radio ads and the “Candlelight Shopping” hours Alan hopes “Christmas in July” will attract bus tours and more shopping. Not to mention the $2,000 raffle prize that made its way back to Beacon’s shops.
Alan’s take-the-bull-by-the-horns approach seemed impressive, and as he explains, a plan that just might bring a lucrative Holiday boost to the town, I couldn’t help but admire the idea’s economic symmetry which seemed almost like a snowflake, the center of Beacon being the center of the ice crystal that radiates commerce, cooperation, and seasonal vitality throughout the community.
I remarked on Alan’s dedication to Christmas decorations and his efforts to give something back to the town. Shifting gears a bit I asked, “Why lights, stars, trees, snowflakes, wreaths, reindeer? What is it that people like about these things?”
“What do you mean?” he said and a spell of silence or hesitation settled over our exchange as if the answer were obvious. I thought a minute about my next question. What was I trying to ask him? We were treading on different territory, emotional places where language gets slippery.
“I mean what is it that makes you feel good about Christmas decorations?”
“I guess because it just makes me happy, not as much as when I was a kid, but I think it reminds me of being a kid and what I felt then. . . Children love it the most.”
Later while reviewing my notes I pondered Alan’s last words. I wanted to understand more of the why of the Christmas or Holiday spirit. Why do the symbols of winter, Christian or other evoke such vital responses, like the transformation of Dickens’ Scrooge in A Christmas Carol? What triggers that heart-warming sensation upon the first whiff of an evergreen wreath? Why are snowflake patterns and radiant stars such charged emblems? What energies are at work when, as we sink into the dark and cold winter days, we feel the urge to give, to celebrate a mysterious life generating force?
I suspect there are many layers of truth to harvest from Alan’s thoughts on children and their Christmas-time feelings. Children are definitely in touch with things that adults are not, as if they retain more of a primordial receptivity. I think William Wordsworth conveys this sentiment in his Ode: Intimations of Immortality when he fancies children playing on the sands of the ocean of human experience:
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither
Can in a moment travel thither
And see the children sport on the shore
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
If the miraculously connected infant plays in such proximity to our ancestral waters, maybe the same could be said of our early ancestors, the infants of our human experience? What can we learn from the symbols and myths generated by their experience of Winter solstice, the shortest day of the year which will occur this year on December 23? Do our children see the world the way the ancients see the world? I’d like to pretend they do (just for fun) and investigate the meanings of old Winter Solstice symbols with the sincere hopes that a deeper awareness of them might enhance our receptivity to this special (magical?) time of year and enhance (rather than detract from) the sanctity of the many religious rituals that coexist in our community this Season.
There are many rich examples to draw from all of which reveal that our human ancestors were very concerned about the time of year when the sun’s arc across the sky sunk lower and lower in the horizon. Like a fearful child who wants to keep the door cracked at bedtime, certainly “primitive” man dealt with anxieties about whether the sun might just disappear altogether. And as farming techniques developed certainly agricultural peoples who relied on spring’s return and a rejuvenation of the earth’s fertility paid close attention to the solar cycle.
The word solstice stems from the Latin—sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). During the shortest days of winter the sun’s arc does in fact stall low on the southern horizon before resuming its higher course toward Spring. For the ancients this annually precise event unveiled a peak at a special cosmic force at work, which they thought had something to do with the magic of the earth’s fertility. Such early Winter Solstice festivals immersed their participants in these chthonic energies and ushered a deeper awareness of a life generating principle. Anthropologists and mythologists have recorded much congruent data spanning many cultures to support these claims.
Many familiar modern decorations echo ancient solstice related symbols. The Wintertime celebration of the “tree of life” which occurred throughout Europe easily predates the Christmas tree. In 350 AD Pope Julius settled on December 25 as the official birth date of Christ as a way of replacing the Pagan Winter solstice celebration. Biblical historians speculate Christ’s birthday to have been in February or April. (And all this time I thought Jesus was a Capricorn.) A natural grafting of pagan symbols onto Christian celebrations was bound to occur. The pagan solstice tree, thought to embody the axis mundi, or the cosmic center-point connecting the lower and upper worlds, harmonizes nicely with related Tree symbols in Christianity and Judaism, like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the burning bush, the Olive branch after the Great Flood, the remnant tree stump of the Israelite Captivity, and the tree or cross of the crucifixion. The decorative wreath is also a pre-Christian symbol, celebrating the cyclical and timeless workings of nature. Holly was thought to be powerful because of its red berries, which mysteriously appear during the winter months, an apt and colorful expression of the presence of a hidden life-force. In Eastern Europe early caroling traditions included the participants tossing grain on the doorsteps of the homes they visited as a way of beckoning prosperity in the coming spring.
Such symbols and symbolic gestures honor the paradox that death and re-birth are intertwined, that nature’s cycles include a magical balance of opposing energies. Do these cross-cultural symbols come from our observances of the cosmos or do they come from within? Or both? Could it be true that these harmonic symbols are evidence of a “world soul” or a “collective unconscious” or “Great Spirit” that binds together all beings?
If then these Winter solstice symbols are so deeply engrained in the human experience might their forms appear in, say, Native American contexts, or is this asking too much? Let the reader decide.
A series of Native American petroglyphs discovered on a remote (very remote) sandstone bluff on a Mississippi flood plane baffled naturalist Jim Jung and his colleagues. Evidence of ancient Mississippian tribes abounded in the area and in similar more easily accessible bluff dwellings but these sites were barren of any petroglyphs. Why did the early Mississippian tribes take such pains to carve their symbols in such a remote spot when they could have easily left their mark in more heavily trafficked dwelling areas? A dramatic answer to this question occurred when a group of investigators made the strenuous climb up the bluff on cold and clear Winter Solstice evening. As the sun set, it lit up the man-carved sandstone cleft in its entirety (a phenomena only possible during Winter solstice!) “making it glow a warm, pastel red. The reason for all the labor lavished on carving petroglyphs here was explained: it was a solar observatory!” (The 2005 Waterman & Hill-Traveller's Companion) Moreover the Native Peoples had intended for this site and its symbols to be experienced in their fullest on the night of the Winter Solstice.
I was surprised when Jim Jung himself picked up the phone when I called the number for the folks at www.naturealmanac.com to ask for permission to use his photos. I was met with friendliness when I anxiously described what I was up to and how I wanted to include the symbols he photographed at this Winter Solstice site. My tongue twisted up with an overflow of ideas and connections all pouring out at once and I failed miserably at making a cogent summary of my plans.
“I mean come on,” I pleaded, “Those quartered circles could be snowflakes or Christmas stars, and the deer in the sky may as well be Rudolph and Dasher. And the figures with their mouths open and hands up might be carolers, right? ”
I knew I was on thin ice and breaking a lot of “academic” rules. Jim chuckled good naturedly, without a trace of pomposity, and warned, “We can never know what they intended with these symbols. We can’t put ourselves in their mind-set, it was too long ago and they saw the world in a completely different way. Personally I think they were some form of text, a kind of writing, but that’s my own speculation. The images are very complex and have to be studied in relation to one another.”
“Yes, but an anthropological comparison of cross-cultural symbols. . . uh you know, some notion of a universal soul or a Great Spirit in all things?” Here I cringed hoping I hadn’t just solidified his possible hunch that I was in fact some New Age whack-job. “Could it help us interpret these symbols by putting them in a larger symbolic context?” I held my breath.
“Well again, that’s venturing into the unknowable,” Jim replied patiently and then delivered his coup de gras, “and when you use those psychological models you risk projecting your own neuroses onto the interpretation.”
I admitted that he was right. Even Quantum Psychics experiments (the study of the tiniest pieces of matter—sub-atomic) have to contend with these variables realizing how the “observer” affects or interferes with the “observed” influencing his or her data in a way unique to that very situation in time. Sure I was maybe stretching things a little, and after all he was the expert and I valued his work.
But after all I did say earlier that I was “pretending,” and it has been fun asking questions with unknowable answers. Maybe then this playfulness, similar maybe to the mindset of a child, illuminates a tiny glimpse at the mysteries. Alan’s observation about children’s love of Christmas time in its full splendor makes me conclude that we adults just might have something to learn from our little ones and their talent for experiencing wonder and awe. What would it hurt? Maybe such a playfully focused intent on the symbols of Nature’s life generating force just might beckon some prosperity for all Beaconites this Spring? Who knows? It might help us pay our taxes in April.
1. See quartered circle detail “Native American snowflake?”
2. See deer in sky detail with quartered circle. “Rudolph and Dasher in night sky?”
3. See hands raised to sky and open-mouthed people. “Good tidings we bring?”
4. See “Angela Mandela” created by seven year old at a summer art camp.
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