Sorry to be absent so long.

The end of my working is coming fast, and it has been busy.  Here's a comment I posted on Blue Hampshire in a discussion of celebration and refusal to celebrate at this time of the year:

 I come back again and again (0.00 / 0)

to the renewal of the solstice.  Being of a scientific bent, the fascination of the planets, the stars, the universe bring me the greatest joy.  So does the knowledge that under the frost there are seeds of spring.  And then, being a anthropology student at times, I know that all the mid-winter celebrations spring from this well of old, old knowledge of the turning of the year and underlie the other celebrations.  With the solstice, I feel safe.  There is none of the human history of religion, with its hatreds of the "other" and its wars and tortures.  There is simply hope.