Shortest Day Shadow Play

What a wonderful gift today -- sunshine!

I played with several possibilities, but liked this one the best, as it shows off the dark blue wall in our kitchen (the other walls are a pale creamy yellow) and some flowers from my week-old bouquet. The shadow seemed to me like a view into an alternate universe.

My Solstice gift to you is a poem by the English author Susan Cooper. Her children's fantasy novel The Dark Is Rising is one of my top 10 favorite books and a superb evocation of a classic English Christmas season. (You'll hear about another of my favorite books soon...)

THE SHORTEST DAY

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us -- listen!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!