We are now exactly six months away from the Summer Solstice, the Summer Solstice being the day (the three days) when the sun is hottest, the day longest — San Juan.
We never seem, or we never seemed, to notice (let alone wonder at) the symmetry of it — exactly half a year from and to San Juan, also a holy day.
Wonder about it we begin to only when we learn, thanks to the writer Nick Joaquin, that our pre-Hispanic ancestors had celebrated San Juan before it was San Juan, before Legaspi and Christianity had come, when it was not San Juan, the Feast Day or Nativity of St. John the Baptist, but the Tadtarin.
On this day we splashed and dashed water on each other in fun and frolic and abandon and disorder. In memory of the Precursor who baptized flocks of the faithful by pouring water over their heads on the river Jordan? Not at all; we are talking pre-1521 here — we did it because it was very hot! June 24 is the climax of the year. At this time the sun is at the height of its power (or, one might say in the full power of its noon height).
One may confidently assume that this easily gave rise to fertility rites in ancient days. Joaquin’s short-story, The Summer Soltice more than suggests it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is really the primal thinking behind ‘June bride.’
Well, we are half a year away from that date. Is there something somewhat similarly spectacular about the time of the year we are in now?
That’s to transition not so much to the subject of Christmas or the Nativity of Jesus — at least not right away — as to the subject of, yes, the Winter Solstice. As pagan Summer Solstice is to Christian St. John’s Day, so pagan Winter Solstice is to Christian Christmas.
And the answer is yes, there is something somewhat spectacular, or at least special, about this time of the year. Unfortunately, we don’t see or experience it in the Philippines where we only have two seasons, the rainy and the dry. It’s in temperate countries, where it snows, that we may see and experience what winter is, and know what Winter Solstice means.
For those who haven’t ever been there, like yours truly, ‘the symmetry’ is a great help — winter is simply the opposite of summer. It is cold. It is so cold it snows. The sun looks and feels the opposite indeed of its summer self. It’s a baby sun in comparison. Precisely, in the Winter Solstice (December 21-22-23) the sun is newborn, begins to grow.
Hmm. If it is at its weakest and smallest and faintest, that would also mean our great-great-grand primeval ancestors may have felt genuinely worried, threatened, menaced by the phenomenon. The sun may vanish! You can imagine the terror —doubly terrifying because they had no electricity, not even candles!
Nick Joaquin (again!) has an interesting reading of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ famous poem that goes Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Joaquin somewhere wrote that those lines may express what cave-dwellers felt at the sight of the diminished, dying sun. Dying not because it’s sunset but because it’s winter.
In those uncertain moments one can imagine young man and young woman trusting to the fire in their hearts, fanning it, in the wild superstition that the sun, too, would follow suit.
Fortunately the sun did, true to its course, faint and far-away but there and growing with every passing day. And when it was certain that it did, what else would you expect but celebration and merry-making and music and eating and loving and sparklers (no firecrackers please). Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Praise the Lord.
