a song for solstice

Take heart in the blessings of dark days

Strand on the Green, December 2025

It’s officially the darkest day of the year. We feel the absence of light here in the north - London is just a three-hour flight from the Arctic Circle after all. Grippingly, at least to a nerd like me, the earliest sunset of the year actually happened just over a week ago, but due to a mind-bending concept known as the equation of time, today is our shortest day. If you’re hungover, don’t Google this, as it’s taken me at least forty minutes to get my head around it. In short, it refers to the difference between sundial time and clock time and something about it feels very The Matrix via Philip Pullman. Down this wormhole, I also encountered horologists (experts in the art of timekeeping), which feels a worthy consideration for a future career pivot. Will log in my iPhone notes.

Anyway, you get the gist. We’re bang in the middle of the bleak midwinter and as much as the nights will be drawing out again tomorrow, ‘tis a long way to dusty days and summer children.

On Tuesday, we were hit by the most inclement of English conditions. Biblical rain seeped up denim to my knees, rucksack sodden, fingertips turned prune-like by the sheer weight of water in the atmosphere. Talking about it may be the last refuge of the unimaginative*, but over the next three months, the weather will loom large in our lives and existing with such little light will weigh in some way on our days. For this little island in the North Sea isn’t just dark because of the tilt of the Earth, it’s our colour-stealing mizzle which drains our vibrancy dry.

In the darkness, solstice rituals bring warmth and hope. Neolithic peoples held great feasts at Stonehenge with the sun setting between the two tallest stones of the trilithon. Under Roman rule, we had Saturnalia, with at least five days of feasting, while in Tudor times, us Brits really went for it, with a twelve full days off the wagon. Of course, the draw towards light in the darkness isn’t the preserve of one culture. The Hindu festival of Diwali celebrates the victory of the good over evil with diyas (oil lamps), Loy Krathong in Thailand honours the water goddess with candlelit floating baskets (krathongs) and Hanukkah memorialises the enduring flame of Judaism with beautifully lit Menorahs. Our traditions do their very best to ease us into the shadowy hours.

I live spitting distance from the Thames. Over the past five and more years, I’ve walked its banks almost daily and it has given me a shifted perspective on the changing of the seasons. Until I realised that I was a potamophile, my attitude to the four quadrants of our year was closed-minded. There were the months that I drank rosé (good), the months I drank mulled wine (not bad at all) and the rest (to be borne through gritted teeth). Perhaps it’s my age, or maybe it’s the intoxicating mystery of the river mist which I’m so regularly greeted by at sunrise, but I no longer feel the same sense of dread about the gloom. I’d go so far to say that the Turner-esque opaqueness of our city’s winter riverscapes holds me captive in a way that a basic bitch blue sky never could. In winter, I authentically look forward to seeing what the vista holds for me.

The sludgy slowness of winter has given me cause for gripes in days departed. I am the click of two fingers and the inertia of January through to March once felt like it hobbled my vim. What is everyone doing during these murky months? Battening the hatches and curling into hibernation no doubt. But no good for a night owl, always mid-flight like me. Where are the bright lights in my big city, where is the fizz, the fun? Must we really wait for Easter to peek at the next chapter?

While I can’t say I’m embracing the dark with arms wide open, today there is a certain sense of relief. I’ve learnt there’s no point fighting the change in pace, far better to find your own key into the latency. Not that I will down my tools, because for me these months most usually coincide with a massive urge to nest. After Christmas, I’m planning to take up the frankly repellent rental carpet in my sitting room and to start sanding the ancient floorboards. I last painted the house three years ago in a fit of pique, all in electric light. My husband will start travelling again in the new year and I will have weeks of home alone time, ideal for getting up a ladder, roller in hand, podcast quietly ticking along while my babies slumber in the rooms above. Solitary nighttime beavering is a joy without comparison; I’ll likely rearrange my chests and cupboards too – my thoughts uninterrupted by the options and opportunities that sunshine brings in its wake. I never realise how much I crave seclusion until no-one wants to come out to play.

The Thames Above Waterloo Bridge, Joseph Mallord William Turner, c.1830-35

Of course, there is a certain reality that as a parent, your children don’t give a shit what the clock says. But they sleep longer and deeper for the first three months of the year. I feel more trepidation for the day that sunrise breaches their blackout blinds and has them harking morning at 5.37am. None of that to worry about in February, doubtless a chilly blessing to count.

We all find our people and I’m surrounded by other women who have struggled in the dark. SAD and depleted stocks of serotonin are common in my crew, ‘Why do we live here?’ an oft repeated question. The hubbub around me is focused on winter escapes, the February half-term offering a short and extortionately priced vitamin D window. I’d once have been firmly tugged into these discussions, spending hours on Skyscanner roulette. But I no longer have to empty my coffers to transport myself to the West Coast for a dose of pearly-white positivity. I just don’t have that same aversion or panic about the quiet because I know what my version of it looks like: individual industry. Indoors.

I will have my river walks, a great raincoat and my favourite cutting-in brush. The delights may be obscured by the clouds, but they’re there alright, waiting for us to tease the corners and remake wintering in our own mould.

And anyway, the daffs will start lining the towpath before you know it.

*Oscar Wilde

Note:

This year has been both biting and brilliant and as I bid you adieu for 2025, I hope some of what I’ve written has offered you solidarity and companionship for the cocktail of the two. I’ll be back in January with some surprises and new ideas. Thank you all for walking along these winding streets with me and wishing happiest of times to you and yours. I will toast a Martha Stewart eggnog to every one of you, and hopefully remain standing afterwards.

Kx