THE WINTER SOLSTICE (PDF-2116)

As my family knows, I am the serious party-pooper when it comes to celebrating New Year’s Eve. I can’t remember when I last stayed up until Midnight to welcome in the New Year. It just never interests me. I much prefer to sleep that through and get up early and welcome the dawn. Sunrise is my time. However, I feel very differently when it comes to the solstices. I am even quite reverent in regard to both the Winter and Summer Solstice and always observe them. To me they really are special times. This word “observe” is a funny one and I only began to understand this use of it by studying the Tibetan Buddhist calendar. In Tibet, until recently, they did not observe Saturdays and Sundays as special or as days off. Instead they observed New and Full Moons plus various other solunar events in the month. They took these days off. Imagine that. No weekends, but days off based on natural astronomical events!