Imagine you are a tiny speck attached to a giant rotating space ship, not spinning too fast for you to fall off, but enough so that you notice that things change in your environment. Sometimes, there is a nearby furnace with plenty of light and heat but you can’t get close to it all the time because of the spinning, so you have to plan your energy use carefully. Also, some time ago, way before you were born, the space ship was hit by a big rock, so hard that it tilted sideways, so now the whole thing is tilted and wobbly. Although it’s so big and you’re so small, you don’t really notice. EXCEPT! that when you’re on the side tilted toward the orb, it’s plenty warm but when you’re on the side tilted and wobbling away, it’s not always warm enough. You kind of count the hours until you start tilting toward the orb again.
That’s the Solstice. Happy Solstice.
We carbon-based lifeforms like our solar radiation, that light and warmth that’s much better when we’re tilted TOWARD and not away. We’ve been tilting away, but now, starting yesterday we started TOWARD again. Our ancestors liked this so much that culture after culture dragged giant stones up mountains, across logs, along ramps, just to put together towers big enough so that everybody knew when the space ship would start spinning toward the orb again.
I thought it was about time to update the annual Solstice/Christmas etc. post. Mostly, this will be pretty pictures, but let’s talk about the big time-measuring devices (so we know when the light is coming back), about the symbols of light when it’s dark, and about the actual millions of lights that get turned on this time of year.
Really Big Clocks
The stones at Stonehenge are 25 tons and came from Wales. That’s a really big public works project to drag those blue megaliths over rolling logs–so the archaeologists think– so many miles to the Salisbury Plain. Just so they could create a calendar, since the sun passes ever so carefully among those standing stones. By the way, the technical term for those passionate priests, who talked their fellow laborers into pulling on those ropes, is Neolithic Britons. Not Druids, who were Celts and came from France and Germany. The Celts once were spread all over Europe, not just hanging out in the U.K. Anyway. Big stones.
There is also an organized group of stones at Newgrange in Ireland, a couple hours outside of Dublin. Older than Stonehenge, this giant mound has a little door that leads into a claustrophobic cave which, on the right time on the right day, that once-a-year-day for the tilted spaceship, the orb throws a shared of solar radiation through that pocket on to the back of the cave wall.
I have a friend in Ireland is an expert and author of several books about these ideas of Newgrange, so you can only imagine her nerdy grin of glee yesterday during the solstice ceremony up in Ireland. The space is tiny, so there’s an annual lottery to let a dozen lucky people in to see the light come back. That’s a lottery I would love to win!
My favorite lesser known version of “landscape timekeeping,” as one archaeologist called it, is the Chankillo Towers in Peru. Chankillo dates back to around 400 B.C.E. and was built by the folks before the Incas. They were excavated and visited as neatly placed towers, thought to be watchtowers for protect though they’re in the middle of this coastal desert. There are hills with a couple of other mounds. GPS technology helped the smart guys finally figure out that if you stood on one of the other hills, you would see the sun shuttle back and forth across the “teeth” during the year, from the solstice on one end to the other.
Everybody Loves Lights
Given that all these people put together timepieces to track when the light was coming back, it probably is no surprise that so many cultures had light or sun gods and created rituals built around lights. Of course, this is a northern/southern hemisphere thing, so apologies to my friends in the S.H. that we’re talking about darkness now, when I know it’s light for you. But, no matter where on earth it is, the people who started there wanted the light to come back, even if that was “June” for some of us and “December” for others.
Multiple religions put together lighting ceremonies as part of their observances. Hanukkah started last week. Hanukkah commemorates reconsecrating the Temple after the Hebrews kicked out the Greek Seleucids (those are the guys installed byAlexander the Great). They were amazed that the oil lasted enough to keep it lit for a week. It was one more “miracle of lights.” The world’s largest menorah at 5th Avenue in New York is 36 feet high. Last night (Sunday) was the final lighting.
When I was researching the world’s largest lit Christmas tree, I found several answers. There’s a tree-shape constructed down the side of Mount Ingino in Gubbio, in the “midwest” of Italy. This seems like cheating to me, but it is a tree and it certainly is lit!
The Germans and Eastern Europeans brought trees into their homes for Yule. Wikipedia tells me Martin Luther put candles on it. Sounds like an urban myth to me. He was much too stingy. Scholars think it was a practice that began about 150 years later.
There’s also another type of Christmas tree we could consider. Over in my neck of the woods, in Northern California, they decorate one of the redwoods for tourists. At 222 feet tall, it was the tallest decorated tree for Christmas, advertised as a big sight to see on the Skunk Train. Imagine the ladder!
However, there’s competition in the giant Christmas tree biz. Apparently just recently a “bedded” redwood tree in England set a new Guinness World Record. Let’s translate that. Since redwood trees are native to here and not native to England, I think it was tree transplanted into England in the 19th century which managed to survive. Technically it is now the world’s tallest “bedded” tree at 147 feet, smaller than our big California trees, but now trending might big in social media.
Meanwhile, another holiday approacheth! Kwanzaa starts the day after Christmas and, like Hanukkah, involves lighting as a key part of the ceremonies. Seven candles are lit each day for a week to represent the Nguzo Saba, the seven principles: Unity, Self-determination, Creativity, and so on. The biggest kinara or candle holder for Kwanzaa is 30-feet tall and was put up in Detroit just a few years ago. Who paid for it? Same group that paid for the big menorah and big Christmas tree in town as well: the Downtown Detroit Partnership. Hm, wonder how far from there to the nearest Lafayette Coney Island? (Why lookee there, about six blocks… walking distance!)
The More Lights, the Better!
Mo’ Christmas, Mo’ Lights! We started with teeny little doorways where the light peered in on the last day and moved to giant rocks that the sun might slide between. Eventually, we figured out how to put up our own lights, so that our spaceship can seem lit up all day and night long. This is especially cheery when the night is long. It ain’t great for looking at stars anymore, since light pollution makes that impossible in urban areas where I live. But now there are tons of holiday lights everywhere you look.
My spouse was in Denver last week and this was neighbor’s house. I’m noticing these days how these lights are incorporating so many of the mythologies and stories that have been created, from Rudolph to Elf to Frosty and so on.
The record holder for Christmas lights, for the past 30 years, is in a small town in upstate New York. The Erdajt holiday display run by the Gay family has 745,994 lights as of 2025 (he keeps an Excel spreadsheet on it!!!!) This started as a small family project that goes more and more ornate. They take donations and have raised over $750,000 for children’s charities. Their FAQ says that they’ve figured out how to use LED and power-saving ideas so that their electric bill is less than $400 for this.
Here we are spinning through space in the dark, but hardly noticing that dark because we’ve given ourselves so much else to look at. Twenty thousand years ago (maybe more), we were painting suns on the rocks. Now we have rocks that bring new sunlight in the millions.
If you’re running down your Christmas checklist, don’t forget to go out and look at the lights–you might need a map, a search box, and a car. The big yellow orb will be back soon enough, but there should be plenty to see in the meantime. Look, this one’s just over in the city in Golden Gate Park…
