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Throughout the evening, children and their grown-ups paused by a storyteller station during the Nescopeck State Park Winter Solstice celebration. Here, volunteer Betty Thornton reads to a small group about a fox who didn’t like winter.
Mark Guydish | Times Leader
The sun hung in the sky for the shortest day of our Northern Hemisphere year Thursday. The winter solstice marks a seasonal and psychological cusp: On the one hand, the inexorable lengthening of night ends, our days get a little longer with each dawn until June 20; on the other, the cold and barren landscape of winter is fully here to stay for several months.
The cosmic event of the longest night has been marked with this good news/bad news vibe as long as humans realized it exists. Celebrations view it typically as time to pause and reflect on the recent past, and to embrace the hope longer days — and the increased sunlight — hold for the future.
Two events Thursday illustrated both facets of the winter solstice well, both as night fell, both illuminated by candles.
The garden outside St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church served as back drop for Luzerne County’s annual Homeless Person’s Memorial, a gathering to commemorate those most likely to be forgotten, having died in the past year without a place of their own.
“Home — what does that mean? Of course it means four walls, the windows, the door,” Luzerne Foundation President David Pedri said at the service. “But there’s something else with that word other than the actual physical being of it. It’s a feeling, it’s running into the house after school, it’s going to see my family when I was sick, it’s the place that I wanted to get out of when I was 18, and it’s the place that I wanted to come back to when I was 24.”
The lack of shelter and warmth is one thing, he added, “but that feeling is even worse — that feeling that we’re not wanted, that feeling that we’re nobody.”
Since 2001, this annual service has helped, in its own small way, assure that those who died did not do so as “nobody.” The names of nearly 200 deceased homeless were read aloud, both remembering them and reminding us of the reality of their plight. And no, it is not always a fate of their own making. We all need to appreciate how quickly we could be made destitute, and how many of us live comfortably but often just a few paychecks away from losing our residence. One of the many things we should reflect upon as the season changes and the year ends is the need to help others.
About 15 miles south, Nescopeck State Park hosted its second winter solstice celebration, which in its inaugural year drew about 800 people, and was expected top that Thursday. Visitors could take a stroll around Lake Frances on a path lit with scores of candles in small paper bags resting on the ground, a primitive, dimmer version of airport runway lights guiding the walkers, some with bets, some with festive lighting of their own in blinking hats or “Christmas tree bulb” necklaces.
“It’s very symbolic,” Theresa Gushaulis of Mountain Top said as she and her husband, Tom, made their way along the path. “It’s kind of like we’re going to power through winter.”
Power through, or even enjoy. The park provides snow shoes and cross-country skis if you want to try those sports — and, as Gushaulis said, “if it snows.”
This is what winter solstice has been for millennia: A time of remembrance and reflection, a time of gratitude and hope. Happy winter.
— Times Leader