Lighting the Darkness

Luminarias and Free Speech

Every year I celebrate Winter Solstice by lighting the darkness: I invite friends and family to help me fill dozens of lunch-sized paper bags with a scoop of sand and a small votive candle in each. We line the courtyard and driveway with these luminarias (here in Santa Fe, they are called farolitos—little bonfires—they are luminarias everywhere else).

As dusk falls, we light the votive candles one by one; the small flames burn through the night inside their paper-bag shelters, heralding the sun’s return at dawn.

Once the luminarias are lit, we head inside to with a party, filling our bellies with my sinfully delicious homemade eggnog and other treats, and our hearts with the companionship of friends and family.

Why We in the Northern Hemisphere Celebrate with Light in Winter

Light is a traditional part of winter celebrations in latitudes where the tilt in Earth’s axis sends one hemisphere away from the sun during half of each year. The resultant darkness inspires the menorah of Hanukkah, Advent and Kwanzaa candles, and the Yule log burned in holiday bonfires.

Before our relatively recent understanding of the effect of Earth’s rotational eccentricity on day-length, it must have seemed as if the sun retreated each fall, leaving only darkness and cold. Then, as if by magic, our celestial source of light and heat had a change of heart after winter solstice and the days grew longer again.

No wonder my Celtic and Scandinavian ancestors lit bonfires atop hills near their homes on the shortest night of the year. The ancient Norse illuminated the dark times with a 12-day feast in crowded halls lit by burning log and taper, where bards recited epic poems in which heroes triumphed over the darkness of evil just as the returning light would eventually banish winter’s long nights.

The luminarias that I light every year are a New Mexico tradition born from bonfires and hanging paper lanterns lit to guide the procession portraying the Holy Family in their search for shelter.

I learned about these “little lights” in the years when Richard, my late husband, and Molly, my stepdaughter, and I lived in southern New Mexico, where making and delivering luminarias was a band-fundraiser. Band kids—Molly played the flute—were assigned 250 paper bags to bring home and prepare to become luminarias by folding a collar on the open edge of each bag to hold it open when the time came to fill it with sand and a candle. I folded a lot of luminaria bags in those years!

Luminaria bags, each with their folded collar, scoop of sand and candle, ready to be placed and lit.

Light Illuminates, Both Metaphorically and Literally

Holiday lights are meant to illuminate, a word that means “to light up,” and also, appropriate to our modern insight into the way Earth’s tilted axis is responsible for the annual alternation in day length, “to explain, make clear, elucidate.” Light alleviates intellectual darkness, bestowing knowledge and understanding.

Which brings me to an issue that came up recently with Substack, the platform that handles this newsletter and that of some 17,000 other writers, an issue involving free speech, and intellectual and moral darkness. As the political writer (and Substack contributor) Jonathan Katz reported in an article in The Atlantic last month, anti-semitic and racist writers have found a home on Substack. The platform includes Nazis and white supremicists, some of whom have large followings and are making substantial money from their Substack newsletters.

When I read Katz’ article, my first reaction was, honestly, to be horrified. I do not want to participate in a community that makes a home for hate speech. Then I read writer and cultural commentator

Elle Griffin

’s thoughtful comments on free speech and I realized that her points were good ones (to whit: we decide what we read, and bans—as social media has made quite clear—are problematic in the extreme and usually don’t work).

As I thought about how to respond, I listened within for that small still voice of conscience, the voice of the sacred good within each of us. What came to me is that staying here and continuing to create a community of love and respect for all—in effect, spreading my light on the darkness—is my superpower. Not hiding my head in the sand, not going along with hate and hatred; actively spreading the light I have.

And encouraging all of you to do the same: Spread your particular light in the darkness by your actions in everyday life. Together, we can strengthen the ocean of light and love so that it overwhelms the ocean of darkness and fear.

Lighting the Darkness

I come back to luminarias as my metaphor:

The bags by themselves are flimsy and flammable, the candles too dainty for sizeable light, the sand simply grit underfoot.

Yet together candle, lunch bag, and sand do their part to illuminate the darkness: each slender wick feeds liquid wax into flame; the paper walls shelter flame from wind and snow and their translucency diffuses light; the sand, mostly made of silica, the most common mineral on earth, grounds the bag and prevents the flame from incinerating the paper that protects it.

Inside their flammable shelters, the candles burn steadily hour after hour through the darkness. When dawn comes, these ethereal lamps are still glowing softly, demonstrating the extraordinary power and beauty inherent in the simplest and most ordinary actions and things.

Standing with family and friends in the darkness of Winter Solstice night, my spirit glows, lit by the commonplace grace of small candles burning in simple paper bags.

Thank you for reading and supporting Practicing Terraphilia. May you fearlessly cast your light into the darkness, and find joy and healing in practicing a deeper connection with the community of lives who animate this planet, human and moreso.

Please feel free to share, stack, and re-stack or note this essay. Blessings of the season and beyond.