Things to do today
a short list for the longest night
I’m writing to you on the darkest day of the year. It’s winter solstice, the turning point of the seasons, when the sun rises late and begins its return trip almost before you notice.
Today is a good day to…
Read:
Sunrise by Louise Glück:
“And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn’t matter,
the hills weren’t going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit—”This excerpt from Winter Solstice by Nina McLaughlin:
“The year is fading. Light is fading. Solstice means sun-stilled. We light candles and raise toasts, we smooch in doorways under strung-up plants, we hang lights along the roofline peaks, give gifts, make wishes, laugh and pray and fear. We bring the light into the earth and try to harness the great forces. It’s a wild sort of stilling, a thrashing frenzied sort of stilling, a stopping of time, a de-metering, a holding of the breath as the tension builds, as the dark expands, until it cracks and light drives in. That’s the hope. The far-off tinkling of bells you hear could be the harness of the reindeer or the bells around the neck of a goat. Hoofbeats on the roof, hoofbeats thudding in the warm and living hollow of your chest. Here in the wild quiet, something in the shadows whispers and you can’t tell if it means you good or ill. Pomegranate, holly branch, birch switch, mistletoe. We’ll leaf with life and pass below the secret places of this earth.”
Listen:
In the Bleak Midwinter (the whole album!) by John Van Deusen
Or the coziest podcast episode, complete with vintage family recipes.
Make:
A warm and spicy drink: gluhwein (literally “glow-wine,” my family’s Christmas beverage of choice) or mulled apple cider.
Look:
Write:
I loved Amy Peterson’s take on a favorite things list: a compilation of memories from the year, zero shopping links included. This kind of list makes a great writing prompt. What was the most striking change in you? The most common kind of photo on your camera roll? Strangest time markers? Quotations you wrote down? I’m going to steal this idea for my end-of-year reflecting—maybe you will, too.
New work:
I have two new essays out this month. If you’d like some reading to accompany you during this last week of Advent, may I suggest…
Incarnation is Not Gentle (for Inkwell): In Spanish, dar a luz means “to give birth.” The literal translation for this phrase is “give to light.” I love this linguistic image of giving a child over to the light. But there’s nothing cozy or Thomas Kinkade–esque about the kind of light that we are born into. It’s searing at first. An infant cries and closes her eyes against it.
The Divine, Creative Work of the Incarnation (for Common Good): Of the many biological facts that shocked my imagination during pregnancy, here’s a showstopper: While womb-bound, a fetus’s cells migrate across the placenta and into the mother’s bloodstream. They tumble through rivers of plasma to different sites of her body, taking up residence in the thyroid or the brain or the site of an injury. Some fetal cells remain in her body for decades, some for as long as she lives. Years after birth, the mother is still a chimera—multiple beings in one.
Wishing you warm drinks and good company in the dark,
Annie
Love this list. And I also love that prompt to reflect on the end of the year!
I’m reading this on the other side of the world, but like you I’m also tempted to use those list prompts for end of year reflections.