Turning Toward the Light ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
December 22, 2024

It was a clear day yesterday in Newgrange, in Ireland. And so, when people gathered before dawn, as they always do on the Winter Solstice, they were able to witness an age-old phenomenon: the winter sun penetrating all the way into the center of the ancient temple. As people have done for over 5,000 years, watchers gathered to wait for the Longest Night to come to an end.

Newgrange is a temple and tomb, a Stone Age monument that is older than Stonehenge, and the Pyramids in Egypt. It was believed for many years to have been constructed as a tomb, but more recently understood to have been a temple where rituals and other religious observances would have taken place. And the temple is designed so that, on the Winter Solstice, when the sun rises, it shines all the way into the central chamber. And there, for 17 minutes on the Solstice, the room becomes illuminated.

We can understand, intellectually, the critical importance of watching for the sun to return. We can imagine ancient people of the Northern Hemisphere growing fearful each year as the days grew colder and shorter. The sun stood lower in the sky each day. People feared that the sun was dying. Rituals developed; bringing evergreens into homes, lighting fires to drive the dark away; rituals born of necessity to stay warm and provide necessary light, but which gave rise to stories and myths. Lighting fires outdoors became seen as a way to remind the sun that the people were still here, beseeching the sun to stay alive, to return.

Over time, the period around the solstice, roughly from December 20 to January 1, became known as Yuletide. It partly overlaps Christmas, but Yule is born of different traditions and a different emphasis: the rhythms of the natural world, and the return of hope and life symbolized by the strengthening sun. And it was obviously critically important to people. We know this because of the sheer number of stories we encounter, and the number of cultures and religions that share such similar themes. It’s perhaps one of the things I love the most about this season: it’s complicated – nuanced, and layered.

The more stories we hear, the more connections we see with other myths. And we begin to see the layers of stories that accumulate over the years. Back in seminary my Bible professor used to describe the Bible as a snowball. Basically, he would tell us, the Bible is the result of thousands of years of oral traditions. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill, because as it rolls, it picks up more and more layers of snow, or additional stories layered on top of the original ones. Stories were collected, in oral traditions, but never discarded. They just evolve. And we see this with events such as Solstice, when mythical personas emerge, and develop different attributes, and different names, and rituals and traditions evolve to fit new understandings of the ancient tales.

So today feels like a great day to dig a little deeper into some of these old myths and stories – not because we need the facts of Yuletide, or of the Christmas story, but to gain understanding about how vitally important these tales have been, and how they persist, and the layers that get piled up around them.

I mentioned earlier the frequent theme of conflict between the forces of warmth and light and cold and darkness. Every story seems bound up with conquest. When I heard the story of the Oak King and the Holly King, I was reminded of Greek mythology, and the myth of Demeter and Persephone. You may remember that Demeter was the Ancient Greek goddess of the harvest. She had a beautiful daughter named Persephone, with whom Hades, the god of the underworld, was very much in love. One day, while Persephone was strolling through a field, picking flowers, a hole opened, and up emerged Hades, who snatched Persephone, and took her back to the underworld with him.

Now, Demeter was crushed by Persephone’s disappearance, and sank into a deep depression. It grew cold. And the crops suddenly failed, and the people grew hungry. Demeter implored Zeus to intervene with Hades, and bring Persephone back.

To bind Persephone to him, Hades had tricked her into eating some pomegranate seeds. When Zeus arrived to ask Hades to release her, he replied that she could only leave if she hadn’t eaten anything. Sadly, Persephone had eaten six pomegranate arils. But Zeus and Hades were able to reach a compromise: since Persephone had eaten six seeds, she could leave for six months of the year, and then would have to spend six months in the underworld as Hades’ wife. And so, the story goes, for six months Persephone lived on the earth and Demeter was happy. The sun was warm, and the crops grew. And at the end of six months, Persephone left again for the underworld, and Demeter withdrew. Plants stopped growing, and the earth grew cold.

In both of our stories, we see conflict, but also balance. Time was divided into half – into growing seasons and fallow seasons. And the people came to understand what to expect, and to accept the balance.

I enjoy the similarities of stories across very different cultures, as humans sought to explain what they didn’t understand. But I also thoroughly enjoy discovering how myths and traditions evolve, and mythological people take on different names and personas over the centuries.

In learning about the Oak King, I soon found that he had been closely tied with another deity, known as the Green Man. Were they one and the same? Perhaps one region of the British Isles called this forest deity by one name, and other places called him by another? It’s almost impossible to sort out. Either way, both the Oak King and the Green Man were regarded as godlike figures vital to fertility and growth, and the cyclical nature of life.

The Green Man is often depicted as a man’s face completely adorned with foliage, often with vines emerging from his mouth. One of the most fascinating reasons that we still know of the Green Man is that there are carvings of such heads in churches and cathedrals in Northern Europe, especially in the British Isles. They are also known as ‘foliate heads’. Were they carved in churches to frighten away evil spirits? Well, maybe, or maybe not. Did their presence mean that medieval Christians still worshipped the Green Man? Or that pagan stonecarvers added subversive messages when building the churches? Maybe, or maybe not. But I did stumble upon one clue that might explain why these foliate heads were used as Christian symbolism.

It turns out that in the 13th century, a scholarly priest wrote a very popular volume of myths and legends called The Golden Legend. And in this book he told a legend about the death of Adam, the first man, at the age of 930 years. According to the legend, upon Adam’s death his son placed three seeds from the Tree of Life in Adam’s mouth before he was buried in the Hebron Valley. And so descendants of the Tree of Life sprouted and grew, and Adam became associated with trees and greenery. Could this have been why carvings of Green Men proliferated in medieval churches? We’ll never know, but the legend itself was widely known. (Green Men in the Church: The Old Lore of the Green Man, by Josh Robinson, October 27, 2023, www.thesymbolicworld.com)

In addition to medieval Christianity, the Green Man also has connections to the Egyptian god Osiris, the god of fertility, the afterlife, and resurrection. Osiris was also green-skinned. He became associated with the cycles in nature, that granted new life, and was referred to as “He who is permanently benign and youthful.” (Wikipedia)

So many legends, so much connection across cultures. It feels important to lift up some of these ancient tales. They illustrate how vitally important the movement of the sun and the change of the seasons were to ancient people as well as we modern ones. Even today, people visit sites such as Newgrange and Stonehenge, light bonfires, and keep stories alive through Mummer’s plays and performances such as The Revels. Maybe some of us had a Yule log, or lit candles this past Friday evening. Solstice still matters to us. We feel a pull, a compulsion to pause and give thanks for the return of the sun.

And perhaps the Solstice matters for another reason as well. We’ve seen today how the old stories tell of balance between the seasons. Warmth and cold, light and dark.

Perhaps we need to remember the stories of the Oak King and the Holly King, and the Green Man as cautionary tales. Once upon a time, the earth maintained a natural balance between light and dark, between warmth and cold. But we humans have sought more and more light and warmth, and have sacrificed the natural balance for the sake of our comfort. We can have light all night if we wish. We can heat our houses, or cool them. And we can see the balance shifting, as our human actions are making the world warmer. Summers will grow longer, and winters shorter. Will the Holly King survive? Will the Oak King and the Green Man be able to sustain the growing cycles, and keep the earth fertile?

As the light returns, let us give thanks for having made it through the succession of short days. Spring is a long way off, but we will be able to see progress toward it. But as we move forward now, I hope we can remember the ancient tales about balance, and to remember to protect our earth.

Bright Solstice, Blessed Be, and Amen.