I Wish I Could Win the Irish Lottery

Six times, I’ve put my name in an Irish lottery, hoping to be drawn to stand with a few select others, as the morning sun would rise and shine into the center of the ancient temple tomb at Newgrange. Maybe next year. Of course, it was cloudy this morning in Ireland, like most days, the sun was not seen.

Whenever I’ve gone through a rough patch in my life; someone has invariably told me, “Well, you know, the sun will come up in the morning and everything will be better.” I’ve always hated that trite statement. When I feel down, in the blues, depressed, or when I’ve failed miserably, it doesn’t feel like the sun is going to come up in the morning. It actually feels like the sun will never rise again. I’ve felt like that so often, though, I feel okay with living in the darkness.

There are days when I do want the sun to rise again. On those days, rare as they may be, I feel like I need a bit of light and warmth. Paradoxically, during the Christmas season, at the darkest time of the year, when I feel the bluest, is when our culture tells us we should be celebrate.

The first 400 years of Christianity, Christmas wasn’t celebrated. Easter was the only Christian feast. At some point, Christians came into contact with the Celts. The Celts celebrated the three-day feast of the Winter Solstice. The word “Solstice,” is translated as “the day the sun stood still;” the three days when the naked eye cannot see the shadows lengthen. On these three days, the Celts believed their prayers and celebrations participated with Creation in order to restore the lengthening of the days of the sun.

The first day of the solstice, they gathered around the community’s oak tree, which was typically in the center of their village. They decorated the tree with bright red mushrooms that were indigenous to the season. The oak tree was known as the light bearer. Whenever the great oak was hit by lightning, the people would take the struck limb and use it for the Yule fire log, which brought good luck into the home with the promise of longer days to come.

On day two, the Celts gathered at their sacred sites, like Newgrange, to welcome the rising of the sun at the Winter Solstice. These feasts honored the souls of the departed who would be taken into the heart of the living sun.

On the third day of the feast, the people would box up food to take to widows and orphans, to ensure they had enough to sustain them through the impending winter.

Christians witnessed in the Celts celebration of the Winter Solstice, the same thing they believed about the light of God coming into the world. They adopted some of the Celtic practices and in 336 CE, established the celebration Christmas on the same day as the Winter Solstice, which was December 25. (At that time Christians used the Julian calendar, which had only 362 days and no leap year.)

By the 1500’s the Julian calendar no longer matched the seasons of the years. In 1582, Pope Gregory the XIII established the Gregorian calendar that we use today. With the addition of three days and leap year, the Winter Solstice fell on December 21st or 22nd, leaving Christmas three days after the Solstice. Instead of moving Christmas back to match the Solstice, Christians left it on the 25th, marking the rising of the Son of God on the third day after the longest night—to mirror the Resurrection story.

In the ancient worship services of the Christmas feast, Christians would read four different stories from the bible about the rising of God’s light.

At the setting of the sun on Christmas Eve, they would read a story to remind them that God had always been present to people in the darkest times in their lives. Men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David who lives were often lived in the dark shadows. And women like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba who suffered under the hand of oppression. Yet in all the dark shadows and all the oppression, the promise was that the light of God would shine once again.

Then at midnight, Christians would read the story of the angel who appeared to the shepherds. This story is not the sanitized version we are familiar with; a story of sweet shepherd boys being frightened by the appearance of an angel. Instead, this story reminds the listener that the shepherds were criminals sent out of the village to do the dangerous work of tending the sheep. After living with sheep, the outcasts would smell disgusting. Everywhere they went, they carried the mark, the smell of being an outsider. Then, at the darkest moment of their lives, the angel appeared to them and said, the Light was now born into the world and they, and all other outcasts, were invited to go see this strange occurrence.

Then, before sunrise, Christians would read the third story, which was about the shepherd’s arrival at the stable where the Light, in the form a baby, had been born. The shepherds, who smelled like sheep, were welcomed into the barn; the stable where everyone, including the baby smelled the same. And the Light provided warmth for them all.

And finally, after sunrise, Christians would read the story that reminded them that the Light has come for everyone—even when they would feel like the sun will never rise again.

The Light, God, was with the ancients in those bleak times. God was with the shepherds, the criminals, the outcasts, the rejected, when all hope was lost. At the worst of times, God would appear as Light, as an angel, as a lamb, as baby, as the rising sun.

No matter how dark our life might be, whether the sun is standing still, or the sun is hidden behind dark clouds, we can be reminded, as with our ancestors, the Light, in some form, will rise again, even if I didn’t win the Irish lottery.