Welcome Yule - Then On Towards Spring
Sunday 21 December 2025
And now, as winter begins in earnest, the days will begin to lengthen once more … thank you for being here, as we gradually turn towards the spring that we know is coming.
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!
The verse and illustrations come from “The Shortest Day” by Susan Cooper … The Winter Solstice is an important celebration for everyone, all the more so in that is far older than Christmas etc and entirely without commercial trappings so everyone can celebrate it together.
I am looking forward to sharing more things noticed “Whilst Out Walking” in the year ahead. I have some good subjects lined up … though it is beginning to seem that, barring miracles and the arrival of a flock of Evening Grosbeaks, the 2025 Garden Bird List is going to be stuck at 97 species, and won’t quite make the full century that I had hoped for.
If you do “do” Christmas in the traditional way with midnight mass and Santa, here is glorious piece of choral music that we, non-Christmassy people that we are, have listened to every Christmas morning for decades. “Missa in Gallicantu” sung by the Tallis Singers. Wait for the part with the bells - quite something. It would have been sung/listened to at cockcrow, as dawn breaks on the 25th, though we find it goes very well at breakfast time.
I am taking a brief break now - I expect to be back again on New Year’s Eve
May the windy day blow three more species your way for a century on this solstice! Your essays are always thoughtful and instructive, much appreciated.
Joyous winter solstice appreciation. Thank you!