Identity in Winter's Exile

A reflection I gave at a Winter Solstice celebration earlier this year.

My sister held a Winter Solstice celebration back in June and asked me to share a reflection during the event. I thought I’d also share it here. Parts of it may seem familiar to those of you who have read The Dark Before Dawn and The Paradox of an Autumnal Easter. Even so, I think you’ll find it interesting. It was a great excuse to flick through a few of my favourite stories for insights on winter symbolism …

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To talk about the winter solstice is, of course, to talk about Christmas, which is the culmination of many of the winter celebrations of various peoples in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

We use light to discern identity. If I walk out into my living room at midnight and pick up a book, chances are I’ll have no idea what the book’s name is until I turn on a light. When we are surrounded by darkness — by namelessness and shapelessness — the question of identity is urgent and crucial.

Darkness also provides a helpful obscurity in which we can take refuge and grow when we are weak. Christ says in John’s gospel:

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground [into the darkness of the earth] and dies, it remains only a single seed [it does not grow to its full identity].

John 12:24 (NIV)

In this way, a seed is a pure, stark identity.

Warwick (2024).

One of the most readily applicable examples, in popular culture, of maintaining identity in the dark can be found in Harry Potter. Most of you probably know that the way to survive an attack from a Dementor — a figure that hides its identity in a dark cloak; a hovering symbol of death and decay seeking to take your identity — you must cast a ‘Patronus’ charm by focusing on a memory of deep and formative joy. Rowling cleverly connects this charm to the idea of a patron — someone who pays for the maintenance of your identity.

The people-groups who developed the Christmas and pre-Christmas traditions understood the importance of maintaining identity through the darkest time of the year. What memory could be deeper and more formative than the birth of a treasured child? What cultural memory is deeper, more formative or more joyful than the birth of the Saviour of the World?

Perhaps Easter or Pentecost — there may be some contenders. (On a sidenote, Pentecost was only a fortnight ago, and shares this symbol with Christmas and the Winter Solstice: that in the darkness of their Lord’s departure, the followers of The Way are re-born by the Holy Spirit and given tongues of fire (or Light) with which to fill the darkness.)

In the story of Christ’s birth, His parents are called to remember their identity, return to their hometown and tell their names to the officials conducting the census. Christ’s identity is revealed in a star — one of the most obvious symbols of a light in the darkness — and later, they obscure their identity in exile, fleeing to Egypt as King Herod attempts to hunt them down.

Just as the nativity is the beginning of the story of a King returning to His throne, so Aragorn’s story in The Lord of the Rings begins with a prophecy of a decidedly Christmas flavour:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not whither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken:
The crownless again shall be king.

This is recited to the hobbits in the days before the Fellowship of the Ring departs at dusk on the winter solstice. (They use the dark of the Winter Solstice to launch their covert quest to destroy Sauron’s identity.)

Another example of light and identity from The Lord of the Rings is when Tom Bombadil saves the hobbits from the Barrow Wight. First, the hobbits hear him recalling his own identity by singing:

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow
None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.

Then the stones of the barrow-tomb are heard ‘rolling and falling, and suddenly light streamed in, real light, the plain light of day’. Tom comes in, removes his hat — a further unveiling of his identity — and sings:

Get out, you old Wight! Vanish in the sunlight!
Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,
Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!
Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!
Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,
Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.

To wake the hobbits out of their half-asleep state, he continues his song:

Wake now my merry lads! Wake and hear me calling!
Warm now be heart and limb! The cold stone is fallen;
Dark door is standing wide; dead hand is broken.
Night under Night is flown, and the Gate is open!

Once the Wight is banished, the hobbits have spent some time running naked on the grass in celebration (revelling in their stark identity); then Tom brings all the treasures out of the barrow and, in proper Christmas fashion, begins gifting the hobbits with swords, ponies and food.

One more example from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — you might have seen this one coming.

There are a few subtleties about identity that C S Lewis weaves into the chapter where Father Christmas appears in this story. His gifts to Peter, Susan and Lucy are certainly a kind of affirmation of their Narnian identity — that Peter will be the one to protect his kingdom with a sword and a shield; that Susan will be the one to alert him to the danger (to pin down the identity of their enemies with both her arrows and her horn); that Lucy will be the one to heal the kingdom after conflict.

It is important to remember that Edmund does not meet Father Christmas because he has already let the White Witch of winter give him a false identity — illegitimate king over a mournful winter kingdom. The other three take their identity from the light that promises the coming of Aslan and Spring, but Edmund decides to settle for an identity of endless wintry darkness. (This was the dominant view of time that the ancient Greeks and pagans held — Kronos — that time went on and on in an eternal cycle, always Winter, never Spring, so to speak.)

Light gives identity to people living in darkness. A seed goes down into the dark disintegration of the harrowed earth and, as the months of Winter pass, its identity grows and eventually blooms.

This is a good time of year to think about our identity — and to remember that we are, primarily, Sons and Daughters of God; image-bearers; lights in the darkness. Somewhere below that is our familial identity as wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, cousins, etc. — and somewhere below that is our identity as a nation: Australian.

On this night of the year, here in Australia, we are turning together towards the winter solstice and celebrating the hope it conveys: that light and identity will now begin to grow again.

The question of ‘How might we shine a light on (or with) our Australian identity?’ is difficult, and one strange part of it is how backwards we are in terms of our seasonal celebrations. Most of the time, many of us here down under probably don’t even think of Christmas and Easter as seasonal celebrations anymore. But in Europe over the last Christmas, my wife and I couldn’t miss it. In those days of only five or six overcast hours each, the Christmas decorations and markets stood out bright against the austere season …

In speaking of our national identity, though, it may be useful to take a brief look at that name our country is sometimes called, the land down under, and how very fitting it might have seemed to an ancient or medieval Christian. Dr Paul Roe wrote in his book, Tell Me Another:

Robyn and I joked […] that Bourke was indeed located at the uttermost part of the earth from Israel where Jesus had walked. […] It was becoming clear to me that not only had Australia helped form modern Israel, but also in a far more profound way, ancient Israel had played a significant part in shaping modern Australia.

Ancient and medieval Christians saw the crucifixion as the single point in time and space that redeemed the whole of creation — Jerusalem was, in many ways, the centre of the world. Over on this side of the globe, near the antipode of Israel, upside-down would have seemed a very accurate description of our situation.

Perhaps even more so when you think about how Australia was mostly colonised by convicts, which bears a resemblance to the sacrifices the Israelites were called to make during their New Year’s celebration of Yom Kippur. During that celebration, they made two sacrifices — one to God in a traditional way, and one to Azazel, which is often translated as something like ‘a goat sent away’ (a scapegoat). The priest would proclaim all the sins of the people over this second goat and then send it east into the desert or wilderness. Symbolically, this is very similar to the Australian exile meted out on many of the English, Irish and Scottish criminals — Britain’s prisons were full of people not conforming to British Law, so they took that sin, proclaimed it exiled, and sent it into the wilderness on the other side of the globe.

Here down under, as we celebrate most of our seasonal celebrations in exactly the wrong seasons, we are reminded of the importance of space — the importance of being where we are …

I like to think of the southern cross above us as a reminder that even here on the furthest part of the globe from where Christ walked, his dominion is complete. Even here, his identity is proclaimed by the stars, shining even in the darkness that is furthest from home.

So, this winter solstice might be a good time to think about your identity — as a Child of God, but also as an Australian. It is a good time to have seeds in the ground — seeds that might soon sprout into a flourishing identity.

It’s cold and it’s dark — a good time to light a fire — and with Pentecost also on our minds, it may be a good time to stoke the coals of our tongues of flame. Sharing poetry is a good way to do that, and I believe that’s just what a few of us here are planning to do …

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I finished with this poem:

The Winter Dragon