This year has felt like something pulled from a weary novel — part dystopia, part Greek tragedy, part sprawling epic — where the chapters drift and drag and leave us wondering when the plot will finally turn. A year of conflict, clashing stories, opinions sharpened to points. A year when the collective heart felt scraped thin, and even the most resilient among us longed for a gentler page.
And now we arrive at the winter solstice — the shortest day, the longest night. That ancient hinge in the wheel of the year when even the Sun seems tired enough to stop and rest.
Sunrise on the Winter Solstice over Monk’s Mound, Collinsville, Illinois, December 21 2025 [E. Scott]
The solstice has always been a threshold moment, something the poets understood instinctively. T.S. Eliot wrote “the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing,” and I’ve always felt he was speaking to this night, this small pause, this soft decrescendo before the returning crescendo of the Sun. Mary Oliver might remind us to stand still and “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” even when the world feels too sharp to touch.
And Starhawk, in The Spiral Dance, gives us the line that feels most apt this year: “Where there’s fear, there’s power.” We swam in fear this year, drank it, tried to outpace it or dissect it — and still it shimmered with the possibility of transformation.
This is the solstice’s quiet gift. Its power isn’t in revelation, but in the small, stubborn persistence of light. The sun returns not with fanfare, but with a flicker — a single flame that dares to whisper not yet done.
This year, perhaps more than any I can remember, the darkness feels familiar. Not frightening—just honest. A companion sitting beside us without pretending anything is fine.
And yet this is precisely where magic tends to slip through.
Not when we’re prepared.
Not when we’re noble or focused or spiritually immaculate.
Magic arrives when we’re exhausted. Tender. Half-wild with grief or hope. When the world is too heavy and we are too human.
It’s almost rude that way.
But for the Pagan and polytheist, this is no surprise: the liminal opens when we’re not looking. The invitation arrives when our defenses have finally dropped. The solstice doesn’t ask for perfection; it asks for presence. It asks us to notice the thin line between our breath and the silence around it.
A year like this teaches the oldest truth: light returns anyway.
Despite conflict. Despite mistakes. Despite despair.
Light does not ask our permission to be reborn.
Maybe that’s the lesson we carry forward: we don’t have to be radiant to be worthy of dawn. We don’t need to understand the entire year to step into the next chapter. We only need to tend the small flame — our own or someone else’s — and trust that even the faintest glow is enough to guide us.
So on this shortest day, after this longest year, may you find yourself held in the dark—not trapped by it. May you feel the quiet shift of the Earth beneath your feet. May you notice the first returning thread of light weaving its way back into the world.
“To work magic is to weave the unseen forces into form.”
Even now.
Even after everything.
Even here, at the turning of the year.
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