The Baboon Congress

Solstice Song Circle

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Today’s guest post is by Barbara in Robbinsdale.

Light is returning, even tho’ this is the darkest hour
No one can hold back the dawn.
Let’s keep it burning, let’s keep the light of hope alive
Make safe our journey through the storm.
One planet is turning, circle on her path around the sun
Earth Mother is calling her children home.

I sang this song over the weekend because it was the 3rd Saturday of the month, which means there’s Song Circle. This month it fell right before the Winter Solstice.

Song Circle is a group of aging hippies (and some younger, regular people) who meet monthly at various homes to sing together, led by a couple of folks with acoustic guitars and the occasional concertina, tambourine, or drum. The only requirements are a voice you’re willing to use, and showing up. There are other attractions as well – there is a plentiful supply of snacks, and in June and December there is a not-to-be-missed potluck. Once we’ve settled into the comfiest chairs we can find, we go around the circle as we take turns choosing the next song.

Talk about variety! We sing mostly from a spiral-bound book called Rise Up Singing, edited by Peter Blood et al, and with a forward by Pete Seeger (and there is a whole stack of the books available if you don’t own one), that provides the song lyrics, source, and chord progressions for the guitar-literate. There are hundreds of song lyrics, neatly organized both by title (if you’re lucky enough to know it) and topic. (A lot of the ones we sing were played on The Late Great Morning Show.) Of course, someone will always pop in with new song sheets that stretch our abilities and the skill of the guitarists. Depending on how many people show up on any given evening, we will get around the circle for two or three requests apiece.

December is particularly rich, with so many holiday songs to choose from, and there are extra booklets of Christmas songs, from the ridiculous to the sublime. This time I picked the above Light is Returning (lyrics by Charlie Murphy, tune: “original”). The words by themselves seem to indicate a quiet ballad, but no, it has a rollicking, boppy beat to it and sounds best sung with a throaty gusto. I also requested In the Bleak Mid-winter (but not too slow, please), and Bob Franke’s Thanksgiving Day as we were heading out. There was no need to stick with December – someone also chose an old Stan Rogers that I’d never sung.

I’m happy that we sing to celebrate Christmas and Hannukah, and especially glad to give a nod to the Winter Solstice. I am relieved that we’re almost there, and that even though the coldest days are still to come, the pendulum is about to start back in the other direction. Soon enough there will be more light, rather than less.

Share your favorite Winter Solstice songs, stories, poems, and customs.
If you don’t have any, you can create your own! Start here with an idea and give others the chance to help you develop it.

50 thoughts on “Solstice Song Circle”

  1. i don’t know what it is about being outdoors in the evening when it is winter but there is something special. the squeak of the snow beneath your boots, did you know the colder the temperature the higher the squeak? the cool way the light crystalizes around the street lamps. the way you can hear leaves blowing across the crust on top of the snow. every little sound seems magnified.
    i like short nights and was waking down the driveway the other night pulling my garbage cans down at 615 and thinking how interesting it is that 615 on december 18th or whenevrit was seems late and 615 on une 18 feels like there are hours left to go in the day. i love that difference. i remember visiting indonesia during ramadan and realizing they couldn’t eat form sun up until sundown and i asked when is sundown at this time of year ” around 6 was the response. when is it in the summer. “around 6” was the response again. are we on the equator ? i asked yep was the answer. boring i thought. always warm. they have a saying that if you drop a seed on the ground it will gorw. and the days are always the same length. i like our celebration of seasons, the difference between dark and light summer and winter hunkering down and spreading out in the hammock,
    i will try to start a new tradition tomorrow night with a bon fire out in the yard, my older daughter is taking the little ones (not so little any more) out christmas shopping for their last minute pick ups. college boy is home and enjoying seeing his friends who are home from school too. oldest son is working but done by 10 and a good addition to the bonfire sing along. thanks for the idea barbara.
    hey let me know when and where on the next sing along. sounds like a group worth looking into,

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    1. tim, this sounds like it might end up being a little like the hippie solstice party I attended. At some point you might consider danceing around the fire while canting something appropriate for the occaision.

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  2. Good morning to all. I guess I could be looked on as an old hippie. In the late 60s and early 70s I sometimes participated in the activities of a group of people who refered to themselves as the Tunas, short for Hell’s Tunas. They were sort of a hippie pretend motorcycle club. In their earliest form they were mostly the drop out sons of Purdue professors and thier friends from high school. Later they were joined by some Purdue students and Pudue drop outs. Some of them didn’t even own a motorcycle.

    I attended a winter solstice gathering of Tunas at a rural location where some of the Tunas were living. This group was known as the Tree Tunas because a couple of them had built tree houses. They had a big bonfire and burned the effigy of a witch in a fake ceramony as a joke.

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  3. A new winter tradition that, strictly speaking, isn’t for the solstice is creating or updating our door wreath. It started a couple of years ago when I bought a foam wreath form and daughter and I spent an evening getting full of glue and glitter, tissue paper stuck in our hair and made a circular thingy to put on the door. Bits stuck out, jingle bells rang, it was bright. The next year Daughter thought we should put something different as the “underneath” so we took everything off, separated out the stuff to reuse, re-wrapped the ring in fresh fabric and reworked the wreath, adding several new bits. It has become something that looks worthy of a place in a Dr. Seuss book with jing-tinglers hanging off the sides, sparkly bright pink plastic poinsettias, some silvery twigs with balls on them…last year’s big purple butterfly got the boot, replaced by a big blue bow. It looks a little like a junior drag queen elf had his way with our door front (and perhaps was a bit tipsy when he did so), but I love it. It’s bright, it’s noisy, and it’s a joint project with the kiddo. And no one else has one quite like it. 😉

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    1. That sounds like a lot of fun, Anna. Such traditions create wonderful memories for kids and adults alike.

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  4. Unlike the Summer Solstice, which is marked with huge bonfires and burning of witches all over Denmark, Winter Solstice celebrations were not part of my family or cultural tradition. Some twenty or so years ago, friends of ours near Northfield began celebrating it on the weekend closest to the actual Solstice. We’d gather for a potluck feast, and afterwards, fortified with warming drinks, would sit on hay bales around a roaring bonfire, singing. The original hosts lived in the country, and when they moved away, the bonfires stopped. We still gather for a pot luck feast, singing and dancing, a nice way to mark the shortest day of the year.

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    1. I didn’t know that much of what the the hippies I knew did at their winter solstice party was within the tradition of celibrating the solstice. Many of them were drop outs, but many were also very literate and probably had read about or heard about traditional solstice celibrations.

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  5. We will sing in a Longest Night service at church tonight. It is a quiet service to help people slow down amidst the bustle of the season, as well as provide comfort for those who don’t find Christmas to be a particularly pleasant time. I plan to light a lot of candles tonight.

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    2. I think there are a lot of people, including myself, who do have a tendency to find that this isn’t a particularly pleasant time of year and it is good that your church has a service to comfort those who feel this way, Renee.. I can manage to get through this time of year without too much trouble and can even enjoy some of it, but there is a lot of stress that makes it unplesant at times.

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  6. We sang “Light is Returning” at ritual last year! Good song. Sadface because I missed Solstice with my home coven this year–they’re in Madison WI, and I couldn’t afford to go down for their public ritual last weekend. I’ll celebrate by myself again this year, and next year either I’ll be in Madison or my minicoven of two will actually plan ahead and have our own ritual, gasp.

    There’s a lot of crossover between Neopaganism and science fiction fandom, and one of the things both do is filk singing (taking a known song and altering the lyrics). My favorite Pagan filk has to be “Mother Bertcha’s Coming to Town”, about a Germanic goddess in her Winter Hag aspect. I think you can guess the tune:

    You better watch out when winter comes nigh
    You better not doubt, I’m telling you why
    Mother Berchta’s coming to town

    She carries a sack made out of skin
    She dumps the toys out and stuffs the kids in
    Mother Berchta’s coming to town

    She rides on Master Skeggi
    A Goat whose back is strong
    Her beard is grey and scraggly
    And her tail is ten feet long!

    With six or eight horns, a moustache or two
    Make a mistake, she’s coming for YOU!
    Mother Berchta’s coming to town.

    She knows with whom you’re sleeping
    She knows with whom you wake
    She knows each thought you’re thinking
    So don’t THINK! For Goddess’ sake

    So when the winds howl way up in the sky
    Listen as she and Skeggi pass by
    Mother Berchta’s coming
    Mother Berchta’s coming
    Mother Berchta’s coming
    Mother Berchta’s coming to town

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    1. You won’t believe this, but we someone chose this the other night! It’s in that extra booklet – I was going to mention it but couldn’t remember the name. 🙂 Great fun to sing.

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      1. It is, and Witches Stitches once did a cross-stitch pattern of a Mother Berchta solstice stocking. Hope I still have that pattern somewhere…

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    2. All right! A good song to include in winter solstice celibrations tonight. My younger daughter and son-in-law will be visiting tonight, partly to help celibrate my wife’s birthday. Perhaps we can join together to sing this song.

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      1. One year someone handed out a sheaf of Solstice carols. I’m also oddly fond of this one, it’s so earnest:

        Solar Carol
        (Adam Austill, Court Dorsey, Charlie King, Marcia Taylor)

        See the sun how bright it shines, on the nations of the earth
        All who share this thing called life celebrate each day’s rebirth

        (chorus) So-o-o-o-lar power, inexpensive energy (2x)

        Brother river so you hear how the valley calls you down
        Send your rushing waters near, let the joyful hills resound

        Sister wind we’ve heard on high sweetly singing o’er the plain
        And the windmills in reply echoing their glad refrain

        How we love complexity when the answer’s rather plain
        Join the sun in jubilee, sing with us this joyous strain

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  7. One of my favorite picture books is not specifically about the winter solstice, but it is all about the short days of winter. In fact, it takes place in a mountain village in Norway where there is almost no sun from September to March (making our days here in Minnesota look very long indeed). Sometime near the end of winter everyone in the village climbs up the mountains to glimpse the sun. The book is written from the point of view of a young girl and it is delightful. “Welcome Back, Sun” by Michael Emberley.

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  8. Morning–

    I don’t have any songs about the Solstice… we did talk about it at breakfast this morning and my daughter wanted to know how I knew about the Solstice. I said everyone knows, how did she know? To which Mom replied, “Well, everyone knows.”

    Here’s a tradition: my friend Paul has designed the sets for the college Christmas concerts for the last few years. Every year when it’s over he leaves some little snippet of the set in or around my office and it’s always a treat for me to discover, three days later, what it was. This year, hanging from my ceiling, is the glittery ‘North Pole’ sign from Santa’s chair.

    BiR… you need to explain Puke and Snot from the end of yesterdays blog.

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    1. It was my hurried response to Joanne’s question about things that go together… (They’re characters at the Ren Fest, for the unitiated.) If I had been less groggy I might have used some restraint.

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      1. I wondered whether you were referring to the Ren Fest characters (one of whom is now dead), but decided you, or someone in your family had contracted the dreaded 24 hour bug that’s causing havoc right about now. Glad that’s not the case.

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      2. i thought it was perfect for the list of things that went together. i was surprised pj didnt know but remembered that previous discussions of puke and snot were pre pj. ben you were around, you must take a day or two off on occasion. no restraint required or wanted on this blog…. from me anyway

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  11. Two poems –

    A Winter Twilight

    A silence slipping around like death,
    Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath;
    One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
    Inking their crests ‘gainst a sky green-gold;
    One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
    Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
    And over it softly leaning down,
    One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.

    – Angelina Weld Grimké

    To Know the Dark

    To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
    To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
    and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
    and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

    – Wendell Berry

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  12. I knew Baboons would have excellent things to say and link us to, about the Solstice.And the Solstice gods are giving us snow, just a little perhaps, but enough to appease my nephew Evan and my sis, who are arriving soon from Bay Area California. Will check in again later… off to the airport!

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  15. i was in stonehenge 25 years ago without being aware summer solstice was coming or not thinking about it and the druids and their stuff that the neighborhood over there is not too fond of. The police were there making sure i wasn’t a druid trying to sneak in and celebrate. heck i just wanted ot see the site. super cool
    the pyramids also tie into the solstice and while i have that on my bucket list i have been to the mexican pyramids south of cancun in tulum and they were very cool. first time i went people were crawling all over them. most recently they were keeping people away from touching and climbing and making you look from a long distance. it was a lot more respectful and will save the ruins over the long run but it felt like i got short changed after spending a full day to go and see them. maybe they will find a middle ground. we can stop the pollution in the boundary waters canoe area by not letting people in the water. they could look from the road and it would remain pristine but not too much fun. it was a revelation to me to that the stars guided those ancient societies and grounded them with a constant in their lives. the sun would be in this spot on this day and the earth keeps spinning in spite of all the variations on a theme we have going on in our lives. it is still reassuring in a way isn’t it. happy winter solstice

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