The Solstice celebration, or the Christmas festival, is the richest of our human traditions, bringing a great store of human treasures down through many centuries and many lands. Much of the stuff and the decorations we surround ourselves with that seem so necessary are an ancient weave of myth and fancy and belong to the realm of imagination. It is now well accepted that some of the greatest values of life DO belong to this realm, and they are rightfully there to nourish our need for tradition, pageantry, and jubilation, not to mention anticipation, surprise, singing, color, and tempting aromas. We mostly keep separate the realms of magic and myth from fact, but, after all this time, it is practically in our nature to have an absolutely divine Christmas.

Some of our Christmas treasures produce a deep satisfaction we are scarcely conscious of. The holly, the evergreen, and mistletoe speak of a time long ago when the earth would die back and humans cherished the few remaining plants. Despite the perishing cold, these retained their green. It was comforting proof that life would survive, would grow again. The Yule log, too, suggests a time long before the birth of Jesus when humans were poignantly aware of their dependence on light as the days grew ever darker and shorter, threatening to kill the sun altogether. Then, fire kindled warmth and comfort, and was also thought by early people to help the sun gain back strength. In these symbols--the evergreen and fire light--we share fellowship with untold generations who have had a vivid awareness of our dependence on the great order of nature.

Also at the core of the solstice and Christmas festivals is one of our most sacred but commonly occurring realities, which is also probably the supreme mystery--the miracle of birth and parenthood. Although the special sacredness of the family predates the birth of Jesus, it is unimaginable that an event of such significance would not be clothed in religion. But the value of the Christmas pageant and the gospel stories lies not in the recital of the birth of one, marvelous child, but in the timeless, shared experience of all parents, rendered almost helpless by the awe and tender love for their child, who wish and dream for its future. It is a time when the whole, exalted world kneels before the cradle. The stories of the birth of Jesus are part of the poetry of Christmas, not history, but expressions of reverence Jesus inspired in his early followers. As poetry, they express an inherent sacredness of family, of nurturing, of giving, of doing all we can to prepare our offspring for life.

And alas, Christmas is not always a time of joy, and these symbols of life and family may instead call to mind days that are gone, and gone with them, other scenes and other faces. It is a time when laughter and tears are commingled in timelessness. It is a time of re-awakening, when the idealism of the human heart comes to the foreground of consciousness, and we are stirred by the qualities of human nature in which our chief hopes lie--the impulse of forgiveness, kindness, generosity, and the urge to join in fellowship with our kind. It is a time when we yearn to throw all the power of our lives onto the side of wholeness, happiness, joy to loved ones, to neighbors, and even strangers spanning great distances, whose hearts may be beating with the same, sweet impulse. It is a realization that, despite all that is wrong with the world, there is, through human effort, still hope of redemption, still hope of reaching out to embrace others, in peace. That peace, which is so illusive, may yet be achieved, there to be grasped--maybe not in our own lifetime, but possibly in our children's. Could any gift be a greater treasure than that?

--Heather Dorrell
President Humanists of Utah