Sharing thoughts on hope and growth that will resume after winter

Percy Bysshe Shelly’s beautiful poem, ‘Ode to the West Wind’, which opens with the line: “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,” has been one of my favourite poems from school days.

Sometimes I wonder what was going on in the head of a 15-year-old so taken with that line, and the whole poem, but it came to mind again as the respite for Palestinians came to an abrupt end, and Israel recommenced its genocidal attack on Gaza.

Switching one’s thoughts for even a short while from the sharp ‘thorns of life’ provides its own respite.

In that spirit, I share with you this week the minor but repetitive irritation that the onset of December brings me as we face into the crescendo of the hype-fest of Christmas, which mercifully ends on December 26.

Last Friday being December 1, the woman on the Six O’Clock ‘National’ News and Weather announced the death of autumn, and declared Friday as the first day of winter.

She would not have heard me join in the chorus of dissenting voices across the ‘news where we are’ calling back to her: “Oh, no, it isn’t!”

Everybody watching the news from ‘where we are’ knew we were already a month into the winter which started on November 1.

At least, it did for people in these parts, on the whole island of Ireland, in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and surrounding islands, and – for all we know – in England as well.

However, the ‘Meteorological Winter’, according to our ‘meteorological betters’, runs from the beginning of December through to the end of February.

When did that nonsense start; on whose authority, and for what reason?

People don’t ask those three questions often enough about absolutely everything. If they did, more of the information lurking in academic bookcases and files would be in their possession.

They would know as much as the people who ‘tell nobody nothing’ in order to stay ahead of the class or, if they are hiding something, a gallop ahead of the posse.

People would also discover that very few things in life are as fixed in the ‘always was and always will be’ category, and that change is the only thing that remains constant, if not regular, over time.

That is a whole philosophy of its own for another day!

But for now, a couple of millennia of lived experience can produce solid evidence for December being the time of the deep midwinter.

The Harvest moon, Harvest festivals, Samhain re-invented by Christians as All Hallows’ Eve (Hallowe’en), all happen at the end of October, while Christmas celebrating the birth of Christ and/or the return of the lengthening days both testify to a celebration of survival, renewal and hope for the future.

So, why can the weathermen and women not make do with the same winter as the rest of us, and allow us all to reach spring in perfect harmony on the first day of February?

That’s when, along with the Goddesses of Fertility – also co-opted into Roman and Celtic Christendom, reappearing as Saints’ Days – we celebrate the birth of spring, and people make their tokens of gratitude for surviving the winter, and good luck charms for a fruitful spring.

These are the ancient traditions which are the fabric of our shared heritage across these islands.

Formalising the year into four seasons happened several hundred years before Christianity.

So maybe Thales, Aristotle, Plato or some if had a hand December being But no!

Astronomers formalised the four seasons, setting them out in line with the cyclical occasions when daylight was shortest, longest and the same length.

So the astronomical winter, which also exists, has long-standing credentials.

It also has a flexible start date which varies each year by a few days. It doesn’t start this year until December 22, which is the shortest day in the year for those of us living North of the Equator – localised to the December/winter solstice falling in London at 3.27am – and the longest day for those in the Southern Hemisphere.

Julius Caesar was responsible for basically inventing the calendar. His calendar lasted until 1752, until a fundamental flaw was discovered in the maths.

I have no idea how a pope got in on the act, but it was Pope Gregory who introduced the Gregorian calendar, giving authority to the removal of a chunk of days from September/October to correct the error, and realigning the 12-month calendar to start with January 1, instead of March 25.

The decision to give the start of the seasons fixed dated in line with the new calendar was only taken in 1780.

The organisation responsible was a sort of guild of European meteorologists (people trying to predict the weather in real time).

The group only lasted about 15 years after realigning the astronomical seasons, just to make matters more convenient for themselves.

I have no idea if their demise was brought about by messing with the making of corn dollies, Brigid’s Crosses, or Samhain, in the same way no good appears to come of turning your educated or rational nose up at folklore about fairy trees and cutting down thorn bushes from the middle of fields.

But, you never know!

The moral of the story is that through whichever winter you find yourself struggling to survive, we are but a fat fortnight from the ‘turn of the day’.

Hope and love survive all winters, or as Shelley put it in his closing line: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind”.

The daylight will begin to inch forward a little earlier each morning, and by New Year’s Day, we will feel its growing strength as the darkness retreats.

The snowdrops will surface, testifying to the inner strength and endurance within the most seemingly frail living things.

The cheerful crocus will follow soon with the early lambs, and the spring will come on February 1, and twice again in March.