Friday Ramble - Qarrtsiluni Days

There is always so much toing and froing this month, cards and postcards, home baking, wrapped gifts, tissue paper and ribbons, Christmas trees and decorations, holiday outings with friends. How does one do it all when the light in December is scant, and many tasks must be undertaken in darkness?

I think of these days before Yule as being qarrtsiluni days. That lovely Inuit word with its bewildering arrangement of consonants means "sitting together in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to happen", and that is how these darkling intervals at the end of the calendar year feel to me.

Qarrtsiluni is a northern thing. Before a hunt, Inuit hunters gather quietly indoors and sit silently in the darkness, no lanterns or other sources of light. They wait for inspiration, for a song to come to them that honors the spirit of the whale and its gifts to the tribe. When the song comes into their collective conscious, they sing it together. For the most part, we are not indigenous whale hunters, but their rite is a beautiful way of honoring the fertile darkness that enfolds us at this time of the year, the stillness before something luminous and uplifting comes into being. 

The word was also the name of an excellent literary journal published online from 2005 to 2013. The magazine curated a vibrant literary community on the web where both gifted amateurs and professional writers could display their work, and I was sorry when it ceased publication. Its archive is still online.

There is something similar going on here (no whale hunt, thank Herself, and we definitely don't want me singing). We hang out in the stygian gloom, try to stay warm, down endless mugs of hot stuff and wait for the light of the sun to shift, to slant back in our direction. Things are the other way around of course. It is earthlings who are in motion, not the dazzling star at the center of our universe.

Winter's fruitful darkness is a doorway through which we pass to ready ourselves for an exuberant blooming somewhere up the trail. Beyond our nightfall turnings at the postern of the old calendar year, light, warmth and wonder await us.