This is cross-posted as my weekly editorial at Blogher. Find all my BlogHer columns here.

“So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.”

Dar Williams
The Christians and the Pagans

“It’s dark out now, but the light is coming.” This is the message that the Pagan celebration of Winter Solstice (Dec 21st) and the Christian celebration of Christmas (Dec 25th) has in common. As the days grow short, we long for light — both physical and metaphysical, to carry us through the dark season. Advent, which means simply “to come,” is the season that leads up to both the Pagan tradition of celebrating the return of the Life-Giver, the Sun; and the Christian tradition of celebrating the birth of the Son, Jesus, who in religious parlance is often referred to as “the light of the world.” The Advent wreath, which has it’s finger in both tradition’s pies, is a simple practice that brings warmth, meaning and light to the holiday season. And the good news is, it’s easy to practice!

The Advent Wreath at it’s roots is an ancient Pagan rite. In the Pagan era people would bring their cart wheels indoors during the Winter, to preserve this important tool of survival from the wet and the cold. The wheels were hung from the ceiling and used and impromptu chandeliers. As the days grew short and the nights lengthened, people would deck the wheels out with evergreens and candles and spin them as an incantation to the Powers, asking that the light be returned. And what do you know? As the longest night of the Winter Solstice tipped the world towards Spring, the days started to lengthen and the light came back!

In the Christian era this practice was adopted by the church. (Most, if not all Christian traditions find their roots in other religions.) A wreath of evergreens is laid on a table (or here in Denmark, hung from the ceiling) and filled with four candles — one for each week of the waiting, or Advent, season. Originally the candles were simply a countdown, one for each of the four Sunday’s preceding Christmas. Now, in liturgical churches the candles are different colors and have different themes. The colors and meanings are not standardized across denominations (e.g. branches) of the Christian church. But generally the colors are purple, rose, and white and the themes are Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. (For more info, click here.)

You can easily use a wreath to bring attentiveness and meaning into your home this holiday season. Buy a wreath at your local store, and lay it on your table. You might want to put something protective beneath it like a large platter or even just a couple sheets of wax paper, trimmed to fit. Place four candles inside the wreath–or five if you want a separate one to light on Solstice Day or Christmas Day. Gather your family, friends, or your own dear self to the table once a week (usually a Sunday), light the candle are read something meaningful. Here are two inter-faith suggestions that I’ve used as an officiate at both Solstice and Christmas celebrations:

Soon, our nights grow shorter and our days grow long.
We look once more on these earthy symbols–
firelight and evergreens–
and embrace the glow of hope
That Light and Life will return once again to the earth.

——

The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light,
and we have beheld its glory,

Light,
generous from the inside out,
true from start to finish,
full of grace, full of truth.

As each week draws us closer to these celebrations of Light, the light from the wreath literally grows brighter and stronger, chasing the shadows to the corners and providing us with hope. I find it to be a powerful symbol of a universal truth: the light comes into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

What will you do to celebrate the Light’s return? Please add your ideas and links to the comments below.

More Magpie Girl about Advent, Solstice, and Christmas:

Sacred Sunday: A Prayer for Solstice and Advent

Beautiful Pagan-y Things: Feast of the Winter Solstice with the Fremont Arts Council

Poetry: Bread of the Winter Solstice

A Winter Soltice Gone Amiss (But Still, a Good Plan)

Today’s Theme: Peaceful Advent

God with Us: Brennan Manning

A Prayer for Lighting of the Advent Wreath

Tonight, our nights grow shorter and our days grow long!

We look once more on these earthy symbols–firelight and evergreens–
and remember God’s promise to our world:
That our Light and our Hope, will come.

The Words of the Prophet

What came into existence was Life,
And the Life was Light to live by.

The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
And the darkness could not put it out.

The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light, and we have beheld its glory, glory that only comes from God:

generous from the inside out,
true from start to finish,
full of grace, full of truth.

And the people who walked in darkness beheld a great light….a light came into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it…and we beheld its glory…glory as only begotten of the Creator…full of grace and truth….

Happy Solstice! Tonight time turns and our long nights grow shorter! Hurrah! Sing Praises!

We adore the Fremont Art Council’s Feast of the Winter Solstice. But packing and moving duties kept us away this year. Still, I remember the impact this event had on me, back when I was a feast virgin in ‘04. Everything I wrote then holds true for me still. So here friends, on this happy solstice night, is a picture from last year, and some thoughts from my first time. Blessed be the Light!

Rebecca, me, and Ammelia at the Feast of the Winter Solstice, ‘06.

I’m really a better pagan than I am a Christian. All of the things I do to express my faith are rather pagan-y. It’s popular right now in Christian circles to call these kinds of practices Celtic. But really, they are just pagan. Advent wreaths, evergreens, the holly and the ivy…we’ve copped it all from the pagans.

Me, I love building altars out of rocks. I think priestesses are beautiful. As far as I’m concerned lighting a candle with a real match is a thing of beauty. (Please leave those butane candle-lighting thingies at home. Ritual people, rit-tyoo-ahl!) Oh, and there’s nothing I like better than a good celebration of a seasonal change-over. (I call as a witness the 40 some odd people jammed into my house for chili-fest on the Fall Equinox.) So, you can imagine my delight when I walked into the Winter Solstice Feast on Monday night. Oh holies of holies, I’ve come home!

The Winter Solstice Feast is held in an old Safeway building in the Ballard Neighborhood of Seattle. You know you are close when you see people in glow-in-the dark turbans… and/or wings…and/or fur trimmed renaissance gowns…and/or togas…you get the idea. The feast is held on the longest night of the year and it’s primarily a time to celebrate the return of the light.

For the light came into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it…and we beheld its glory….

This particular solstice feast, thrown by the Fremont Arts Council, is especially stunning in that it hosts hundreds of people for a sit-down dinner, and it’s done entirely by volunteers! Can you imagine? This would never ever happen in any of the churches I’ve attended. We’d rely on the clergy. That’s what we pay them for isn’t it…to take care of things? Anyhow, I’m telling you this shin-dig was insane! I mean, prior to Monday night we had gone to a headdress making workshop and decorated the space with some evergreens…but I had no real idea of the scope of this event!

We walked into the building through a gorgeous metalwork arch which read “Try Another World.” (Seen here at its original site…Burning Man 2004. Artist: Rodman Miller) Greeters helped us choose headdresses (handmade party favors crafted from recycled beads, ribbons, and tochkes.) There was a bucket for donations, and everyone brought a dish to share, a mug to toast with, and a bottle of wine. Inside, the main part of the room was ringed-in with screens made of salvaged tree branches. There were rows and rows of green-lined tables. From the ceilings hung rough-wrought chandeliers made of scrap lumber covered with evergreens and rimmed in hand dipped pillar candles. (Candle making was one of the in-advance volunteering options at the warehouse/art studio called the Powerhouse.) Labyrinths and mandalas were painted on the cement floor (no elevated stages here…everyone, even the “entertainers,” were on an even playing field.) At the end of the main aisle was a huge disk of ice, rimmed by metal arms, dripping into a glass bowl etched with gold runes– an hourglass of sorts, counting down to the return of the light. (Yeah for Peter Toms who rigs up an ice sculpture of one kind or another every year.)

Eventually, someone made an announcement and hundreds of people gathered round a loaf of bread. A woman’s voice started a low humming which soon crested into a sort-of roar. The loaf was passed and everyone took a piece. The message here was definitely “Tonight, we belong together. Tonight, there is enough.” Then the feast began and people ringed the buffet tables. We would pour red wine! We would eat roast beef with our fingers! We would scrape pomegranates with our teeth! (And, unfortunately, we would eat a tofu-based vegan brownie.) The opening feast was my favorite time of the night…watching hundreds of people create a communal meal. I kept thinking. “The church doesn’t know how to do this.” Lindell pointed out that the church would largely screw something like this up, because they would just extract one aspect of it and use it out of context in an effort to be cool. He said, “We would take the girl in the fur bikini over there and decided that our worship bands should be dressed like that. Then we would just keep playing tunes from the Vineyard Music Group.” He’s such a cynic…but you know what? He’s probably right. But this crew, they had something here….Have you ever been to the wedding of a pal who was broke…one of those events where everyone just pitches in and it turns out just wonderfully? Well imagine that…only with ten time the guests. The kingdom is a colorful party, come on in.

After supper we wandered through the cavernous space. Can you imagine doing something like this in a big grocery store? It’s like throwing a party in an airplane hangar. But the designers had carved out rooms and hallways so that the event was on a human scale. My favorite section was set-off by an arch made of two dyads or angel-like figures, their twisted wooden arms reaching up to suspend a star overhead. Through this arch you entered a mysterious, restful world, moving under gnarled root-like structures to find a heart-shaped pond made of grey and blue stones, glowing orange lights like eerie dinosaur eggs, fabric draped cushions in candlelit coves. Peace and wonder in the midst of so much excitement…

Another place frequented for long periods of time by my daughters (ages 4 and 6) was the white-draped walls of the belly-dancing “temple” The girls lounged with Tonya and I on Turkish rugs and rolled pillows, while dancer moved on and off the stage. As one woman danced her controlled undulations on the stage, four other shadows danced along the walls, silhouettes from a secret world beyond the screens. I was still glad the girls had a chance to see women moving with such confidence and beauty. (Side note: This is a world where women “minister” more easily than men. Christian men, a large percentage of whom are s*xually addicted or at least mildly plagued by internet p*rn obsessions, can’t move very freely in this artful, pagan, seeking realm. There’s just WAY too much skin. Here’s the new frontier of the woman pastor! But I digress…)

The best zone was Cameron’s beautiful silk-strewn peace corner. Three columns of hand-died silk set this space apart. Each turned like a prayer wheel when you walked through them. Past a sign requesting silence, you walked into circular hallways of blue silk walls – an abbreviated labyrinth. Beneath you lay cedar and eucalyptus branches so that each step on the footpath released their scent. The final turn brought you to a pool of light within the curving walls. In the center of this circular space a column of white silk, lit from within, stretched to the ceiling. At its base small shelves held a piece of coral, stones with water-bored holes, a conical shell, a glass orb. White sand covered the floor and people sat cross legged, dragging cedar stems across it to make wavelike patterns, drawing pictures in the sand, or writing and erasing private words. The children were there too, playing and chatting quietly. My Eden sat next to Cameron’s Eden and compared dresses. (“I am and Indian princess!” said the not-my Eden.) Cate sat next to a “nun” and made indentations in the sand with the corral. “Guess what my sentence said?” Eden demanded, having erased all trace of her new-found spelling skill. “It has three words and it’s not about a holiday!” The nun laughed and all the possibilities that could include. On my way out, as I ran my hands along the rippling silk walls, someone else’s palm touched mine in passing…another wanderer on her journey in.

And the people who dwelled in darkness saw a great light…and we beheld its glory…

Now, to be utterly fair, there was plenty of cheesiness too: a tunnel to walk through in order to “activate” your unused DNA; a play consisting primarily of women spinning with colorful scarves; a room full of sofas and cushions filled with horny nineteen year olds. Mostly we, the recovering evangelicals, we laughed at ourselves. Look! A DNA tunnel…or a “Ring of Fire” prayer circle? A street play about pagan beliefs…or a YWAM performance? Some ritual with bread that we can’t make heads or tails of…or Communion? Club hoping youth staging a love-in….or the youth group on a retreat weekend? We laughed at ourselves, and our newfound pagan friends, and at the mostly-imagined distance between us. It comforted us a little to know that every religion is capable of incredible feats of cheesiness. It redoubled our efforts to want to do good art.
In the end, I think the Fremont Arts Council really found their way to what the handmade (handmade!) invitations called people to do:

You are warmly invited to attend
the Feast of the Winter Solstice…

Come prepared to renew your spirit
as we welcome the return of the light.