Winter Solstice: The Darkest Day of the Year


In the Northern hemisphere, today has the shortest number of hours of daylight. The further north you are, the less light you will see. I'm writing this in mid afternoon light, but today it is nearly sunset time. Where I am, the sky is heavy with rain clouds and it's raining, so there's even less light than usual. I'm longing to see evidence of the nights getting shorter and the days longer, a process that begins after today.

After sunset today, it may be possible to see a 'Christmas Star', a bright light in the sky when the planets Jupiter and Saturn will appear close together, although in reality will still be 400 million miles away from each other. This is a very rare event. In the UK it may be possible for some people to see it by looking south-west from about an hour after sunset. But, given the current weather, I'm not expecting to see it.

It is a dark time for the world in so many ways today. We are in the middle of a pandemic, which where I live is spreading fast and our lives our restricted in attempts to keep safe. We long for light at the end of the tunnel, or at least see more glimmers of hope. I am looking forward to celebrating Christmas, but not as usual. Our family will not be getting together to exchange presents or share food. It is still possible to celebrate with thankfulness the coming of Christ as the true light of the world, even if I can't see that rare bright 'Christmas Star' of the conjunction of planets tonight.

We are now in the last few days of Advent. In many places where choirs sing or chant, there is a tradition on each of these last days to sing an antiphon as an addition to 'Mary's Song' (Magnificat) at Evening Prayer of Vespers. In Christian music an antiphon is a sung response to a religious text. The sequence of 7 antiphons sung during the 7 evenings before Christmas Eve are known as the 'O Antiphons' because they all begin with O. The well known Advent carol, 'O come, o come, Emmanuel' is based on the Advent sequence of antiphons. On this shortest day of the year, it is particularly fitting that today's 'O Antiphon' is 'O Oriens' meaning 'O Dayspring'. It is based on Isaiah 9:2
"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; 
those who live in a land of deep darkness - on them has light shined."
In one English translation, the words of the 'O Oriens' antiphon are;

"O Dawn of the East,
Brightness of the Light Eternal and Sun of Justice, come and enlighten them that sit in darkness

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