“And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
— Dylan Thomas
A library will host a winter’s evening of activities like storytelling and crafting paper lanterns. Local Native tribes and a community farm will host a gathering to give thanks and honor winter’s slower rhythms that foster renewal for the coming seasons. A temple will hold its annual community lighting of the Hanukkah menorah. A Kwanzaa festival will feature the lighting of the kinara symbolizing the seven principles. A parishioner at a church will light an Advent candle for the new week as Christmas draws near.
These celebrations will all take place in Ulster County about a month from now. Right here we’ll tell you when and where.
Make no mistake. It’s the time of winter solstice and the December holy days and festivals. While each celebration is different, all highlight what is so precious, powerful and sustaining at this time of year. During mankind’s dark, challenging times, people in the Hudson Valley are going to gather at solstice ceremonies and events.
December’s holy days and festivals of varied spiritual and cultural traditions will incorporate lighting rituals for healing, rebirth, resilience, and community.
The essence of taking notice, calling upon, honoring, and celebrating light, is embedded in the winter solstice, the day of shortest daylight that humans have observed since ancient times. Daylight in mid- to late December lasts just over nine hours daily, while June days give those of us in the northeastern United States some 15 hours of daylight.
Amid December’s days of tingling cold, snowflakes that promise more to come, and long nights with stunning moon shadows shaped by tree silhouettes, a day arrives when darkness reaches its pinnacle, after which the planetary cycle for the northern hemisphere will head toward gaining daylight. After the winter solstice, the hours of daylight begin to lengthen, by minutes per day.
The winter solstice, like the summer solstice and the fall and spring equinoxes, connects us to the natural world and its rhythms. The Earth is alive. In times of mankind’s strife, turbulence, wars, and a sense among many that we are living in dark days, the winter solstice represents a simple, profound comfort, peace and solidity. We take note of cycles that are around us in the natural world.
Our ancestors in ancient times were acutely aware of the days of shortest daylight. People may have observed the winter solstice as early as the last part of the Stone Age, about 10,200 B.C. Indigenous peoples held ceremonies that lasted for weeks and honored deities of death and rebirth. Various societies had their own ways of paying homage to it. In Scandinavia, the Norse had a pagan festival for weeks to months. They brought home long oak logs, which they set afire on one end, the Yule log, at times feasting until it burned to the other end.
This year, the winter solstice occurs on Thursday, December 21, at 10:27 p.m. EST. Pagan festivals and indigenous ceremonies In the northern hemisphere will mark the event. In Ulster County, a Native American ceremony will take place at Seed Song Farm in Kingston on December 21 at 4:30 p.m.
“We celebrate the solstice and the equinox. It’s important to connect with the changing of the seasons and what those seasons mean,” said the Rev. Nick Miles, Tecumseh Red Cloud, Pamunkey Tribe. “While it is still being finalized, the winter-solstice ceremony will begin with the Haudenosaunee nations’ Thanksgiving prayer, referred to as words spoken before all others. In a tobacco offering, those participating will be invited to think about what they want to discard from their lives, and as the tobacco is set afire, the smoke conveys this to the Creator.”
Coming after the autumn harvest, the beginning of the winter season represents a quieter time – one to go inside oneself, to reflect, listen, watch, and think about planting the seeds not just in the Earth but in one’s being, according to Miles. If we liken this to the progression of the seasons and how the ground rests during the winter, the slower rhythms offer a time of feeding the spirit and renewing the soul.
The longest night of the year surely beckons many of us – as do many December days when the sun sets so early – to want to stay indoors and not head out into a dark night. Esopus Library is holding an event for people to do just that: The longest night of the year will be celebrated there on December 21 from 6 to 8 p.m. The library is inviting people to join in a program of reading stories, making an “enlightening” craft – paper lanterns – and closing out the evening “by creating our own perfect hot cocoas.” (Talk about a delicious reward for braving the longest night.)
Shannon Powell, the children’s program coordinator, explained that the winter solstice is something that everyone could enjoy together. She is fascinated by how people feel the effects of the change from Daylight Savings Time. By gathering on the date of shortest daylight, she said, “You’re creating your own light and coming together as a community.”
December’s spiritual services and cultural festivities in Ulster County vary, but have in common the expression of values and community through candle-lighting ceremonies. On December 30 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Center will hold the its third annual Kwanzaa celebration at Redeemer Lutheran Church in New Paltz.
The lighting of the candles on the kinara, the candleholder, is an important component of this secular holiday. The seven candles, one of black and three each of red and green, represent Kwanzaa’s seven foundational principles of Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility, Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose and resolve), Kuumba (creativity), and Imani (faith). The candle-lighting provides an opportunity to share lessons and inspirations about the principles. There will also be drumming, dance, and refreshments.
This year, Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, occurs from sundown on December 7 until sundown on December 15. Those observing this holiday place and light another candle on the hanukkiah (the Hanukkah menorah) each evening. Congregation Emanuel of the Hudson Valley in Kingston is holding two candle-lighting events.
On December 8, the lighting of the hanukkiah occurs before the Shabbat candles. The teaching that evening will incorporate the theme of bringing light to the Ugandan Jewish community, specifically the LGBTQ individuals who are enduring the targeting of that country’s harsh anti-gay legislation.
On December 10 from 4 to 5 p.m., Congregation Emanuel will hold its annual community candle-lighting. The program will include a short play, storytelling with rabbi Yael Romer, congregational lighting for those who bring their hanukiahs, and gathering in the social hall for donuts. It will conclude at 5 p.m. with the lighting of the outdoor hanukiah.
Said rabbi Romer said, “We all need light, especially when the daylight is shorter. In the world today, there is so much pain and darkness, to increase the light – bringing light, awareness, and healing – is so important…. In light we see, in light we are seen.”
Throughout my life, I have held a special place for the winter solstice. I have honored it by sharing a meal with my dearest ones before a fireplace, reading stories and essays, saying prayers of gratitude, and taking long walks to watch the sunset that day. (I am an avid reader of sunrise and sunset charts.) The sun’s arc, at its lowest of the year around the days of this solstice, causes incredibly long, beautiful shadows in the landscape. This year, I plan to make a wreath of evergreen boughs, twigs, pine cones, dried grasses, berries, and other natural elements, inspired in part by Mari Silva’s book Yule.
Here’s to the winter solstice! The December holidays feature the precious hours of sunlight that the heavens provide and that we fashion in our lives and communities. Just as the day of longest night comes, there is the sureness of daylight’s return in coming days.
Join the family! 
