The Shortest Day, The Longest Night, & The Returning of Light
December 21, 2025 | Issue #23 | Winter Solstice
Warmest of tidyings and Happiest of Christmases, friend!
As we arrive at the end of the year, I wanted to leave you with something steady and unhurried. This week’s blog grew out of midwinter reflections, on the Winter Solstice, the early roots of Yule, and a year spent noticing more than striving.
It’s less about tying things up neatly with a bow, and more about honoring rhythm, attention, and the small daily rituals that carried us through the darker stretches of the year.
Thank you, truly, for reading along with me this year. For your time, your curiosity, and your presence. Wherever this season finds you, may the returning light meet you and warm you softly.
May these words find you well, as we untangle our thoughts and explore new ideas…
“And now let us believe in a long year, that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
The Shortest Day, The Longest Night, & The Returning of Light
As the year bends toward its quietest point, there’s a particular kind of stillness that settles in. The days shorten. The light changes. Time itself seems to loosen, allowing memories, questions, and half-formed realizations to drift closer to the surface. Midwinter has always carried this quality, long before we gave it deadlines or expectations.
This piece traces that pause back to its roots, to the Winter Solstice as an observable turning of the Earth, to the early traditions of Yule, and to the ways medieval Christmas inherited older rhythms of waiting, gathering, and endurance. It explores how these cycles were never meant to demand transformation, but to offer reassurance: that the darkness has reached its limit, and the return of light, however slight, can be trusted.
Interwoven with this is a personal reflection on a year shaped less by accomplishment and more by attention, daily rituals, quiet resistance to urgency, and the slow accumulation of small acts. It’s a meditation on why consistency has less to do with control and more to do with trust, and how the work of paying attention often teaches what logic alone cannot.
Wishing you a Happy Christmas and a peaceful close to the year,
Until next time,
Guthrie
