Notes from my Knapsack 12-22-22

Notes from my Knapsack 12-22-22
Jeff Gill

How modern are we, really, in December?
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We are modern, connected, high tech, highly evolved people here in 2022, and maybe we're ready for 2023 and maybe we aren't.

What we're still afraid of is the dark.

When nighttime starts just after noon, and morning doesn't come until long after we're up and at 'em, there's not enough daylight to give us the strength and hope and vision we need.

Our screens and texts and online content can't generate enough light and illumination to get us through our days, and we need . . . well, we need light.

So whatever your religion or spiritual orientation, you probably have some lights strung around somewhere. Garlands or menorahs or trees, strands outside or mantlepieces in the family room, we crave and covet and display our lights, shining out as evening settles around us and glowing where otherwise shadows would dominate.

Yard displays and candles in the windows are everywhere, and almost always welcomed. In downtown Newark, the longstanding tradition of lighting the courthouse has been shrouded by the necessity to limit the decorations, due to work finishing the refurbishment of the long-neglected seat of our county judiciary. Windows being replaced and cranes rolling about the lawn means the festive whole is about half this year — not forever, just for now — and the larger displays out on the grounds are nowhere to be seen. And people are fussing like you wouldn't believe, because we do not want less light, we want more.

More colors, more bulbs, in more places. Lighting the tree is not enough, it's got to be the staircases and side tables and up on the housetop if possible. Lights everywhere we can put them.

Because truth be told we're not all that modern. It may be 2022 but it's a thousand years ago or more in our hearts, and while the astronomers and almanac makers are confident that after about the 25th of December days will get longer, there's a part of us that's not sure. Daylight gets shorter and shorter and shorter and we're all getting to where we can't hardly remember what it's like to drive home under the sun and enjoy an evening on the porch. We dress in the dark in the morning and come home to . . . well, we hope to see our lights on if the timers work, because that's what we're pushing back against.

I do think each year at this time about the people who lived here for millennia, building mounds and earthworks, living in their log and bark and hide homes, looking into the fire and watching the smoke rise up to the opening overhead, tracking the sun and the moon but wondering: will days ever get longer again? Will all become night? How can we summon again the light and life of spring?

It's too easy to think of those as primitive times, and the people likewise, but we feel it in our bones as well. A certain uncertainty about day and night and light and dark. So we string our lights, light our candles, shine bulbs and spots and projectors into the night, to push it away, and call back the sun.

Soon, though, we will see it. And feel that, too, in our bones. Life will return; hope is coming.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready for some blue sky if not green shoots any day now. Tell him how you get through winter at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.