And then I drive through the neighborhoods. The beauty of the houses lit up for the season is such a welcome sight in the everlasting darkness - so much so that I can't bear to take them down after the Yule season. I don't decorate the outside of my house, mostly because I'm lazy and don't like ladders. Inside, though, I swap out colored lights for white ones, and leave them strung over the corner barrister bookcase and the windows in the front room and the library.
For most of human history, we didn't have the ability to light up the night. The hearth fire, candles, oil lamps - these were the weapons with which we fended off the darkness, and they are feeble things in the vast scope of the night. What would our ancestors make of this brightly-lit world?
One of my small Yule rituals is to turn everything off for a brief period. Television, lights, even the cable boxes and night lights. Turn everything off and just feel the darkness. It's a little frightening, to be honest. I'm always glad to turn on a lamp again.
On the other hand, there is no beauty like that of the stars on a clear night, and winter brings my favorite constellation: Orion, the hunter, so huge in the sky, so easily found. You've seen him. If you don't know him - look up, an hour or two before dawn. His left arm is marked by the red giant Betelgeuse; his right leg, the blue star Rigel.
The myth of Orion is Greek. There are differing accounts of his story, but the one I know best is where he, the great hunter, boasts that no beast on earth can best him - and, of course, such hubris is immediately punished. He is killed by a tiny scorpion. For this reason, he and Scorpio are never in the sky at the same time.
As the saying goes, I have loved the stars far too fondly to fear the night.
But I light the lamps.
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