Time and season are an endless circle, a great wheel that circles and spins with a natural rhythm as old as the cosmos.

This precise, timeless waltz amid the star-spattered darkness of a heavenly ballroom incomprehensibly vast, remains largely ignored. Most of us will pay no attention whatsoever to tomorrow’s passing solstice. At most, a few more seasonally-attuned souls might note that autumn was now officially over while winter had formally begun.

Yet to the ancients, the winter solstice was a time of both great fear and subsequent celebration. For six long months, they’d made their marks in sand and stone, watching in ever-increasing dread as the sun drew farther and farther south, taking with it their vital light and heat and thereby decreasing their prospects of continued life.

Rites were performed. Pleas implored. Sacrifices offered.

Still, no manner of anguished beseeching worked. Each successive day shortened a bit, while the dark and fearful nights grew.

Their fear—like the cutting winds moaning across the sere and icy landscape—must have been palpable, a constant accompaniment to their gnawing hunger.

Would the end arrive amid freezing darkness?

Enter science. Our enlightened perspective has removed both worry and mystery. We realize the solstice is just a phenomenon of planetary tilt and whirl, an immutable event prescribed by the laws of astrophysics.

And yet, for some of us, the wonder remains. The solstice is more than a beat in time’s pulse—it is a throb in the natural rhythm that extends from beyond the farthest reaches of unknown space to the familiar interior of the human heart.

Man is now, and always has been, a creature of rhythms. It’s a rhythm we experience from birth to death. A life beat that’s everywhere, in everything—from the flash of a birthing star to the sub-atomic particles of an atom.

It’s the rhythm of the seasons. A rhythm in the patter of rain upon the leaves and the hymn of wind across grass. We reflect these rhythms in music and word, in experience and deed. And we do our level best to explain away the mystery.

We study and catalog, formulate and quantify. Yet something remains, something which cannot be fathomed. The mystery is not physical. No amount of science will ever explain things like love and hope and faith.

The ancients knew something we’ve apparently forgotten…that the pulse of life is the pulse of spirit.

In this holiday season, it’s all too easy to forget the source of the term is grounded in the term “holy days.” Days which dealt with the spirit.

The word’s roots go all the way back to pagan times. “Holy” had to do with completeness, with being fulfilled or whole. Holy implied a reverence for life. Holy recognized a sacredness in the natural. Holy called attention to the basic mystery.

In changing the name and pronunciation, we also lost the former meaning. We have forgotten that the hollyhock was once the holy mallow. Or that our shiny green holly was once a holy plant.

Did you know that a once-holy fish, the holi brutte in Middle English terms, is today’s halibut?

Holidays, when we understand the word’s derivation, are implicitly holy, a recognition and celebration of the spirit. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to feel their pulse, to get in touch with the spiritual side. We’ve reduced and explained so much scientifically that we think we know it all. Anything that can’t be diagramed as a mathematical equation, viewed under a microscope, or quantified on a ream of computer printouts simply doesn’t exist.

We’ve gained knowledge but lost wisdom.

Yet, those of us who look and listen more carefully know better. The mystery still prevails. While beyond the tinsel and glitter, beyond the gaily decorated malls and the plastic festivities—the sweet, ancient spirit still pulses.

You’ll find it in the wonder of a night sky a’glitter with myriad stars. You’ll hear it in the chorus of an ancient carol being sung by a ragtag group of neighborhood kids. You can see it in the eyes of a parent and the smile of a child.

You can read it in the Gospels and the Biblical account of the Nativity.

The solstice will come and go. The seasons will pass. But we’ll always need faith and hope—which is why we still have a need for holy days.

While the details of the world may rest on science, the aspirations of the world depend on spirit…and on love personified by a baby boy born in a lowly Bethlehem stable on a night when the very stars rejoiced.

I wish you peace and love, and much wonder and joy during these holy days.

Merry Christmas!

Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].