The Longest Night
reflections on the winter solstice and a book review
I’m writing to you around four p.m. my time. I’m curled into my reading armchair with a lap desk and a hot cup of spiced tea. The lamplight beside me is strategic, chosen for hygge, of course. My writing room is also the gift-wrapping station, and shiny paper and festive bows are piled around, waiting for us to finish. This year our six-year-old and four-year-old are out of the toddler stage and actively taking part in traditions, which adds to the magic for Daniel and me.
The light is fading outside my window, golden slices illuminating the moss on my favorite oak tree and tipping slowly across the cold ground. Today is the shortest, darkest day of the year—and a day that I have come to love.
Tonight we’ll light a fire, and I’ll light candles. Neither is unusual for us, but tonight, during the longest night, they symbolize the quiet defiance I’ve come to befriend over the past few years.
December is a kaleidoscope of shopping and parties and events and traditions. It has been especially fun this year.
But tonight, the darkness gives us a space to pause. Tonight, we can take stock of how we’re coming to Christmas.
Will you join me and ask yourself what you’re carrying into this last week of Advent?
Take a breath.
Take note.
Don’t rush it.
As our pastor says, we come limping to church on Sunday. We also may come limping through the dark of Advent to the joy of Christmas and a God who became Flesh to walk with us.
“The Incarnation always brings good news, but it never minimizes the realness of our pain. Advent declares the hope that a light is coming, but first it declares the truth that the world right now is so very dark. In all the festivities of this season, the threads of Advent and Christmas are commonly confused. The celebration of Christmas only means so much if it bypasses the great waiting, the great groaning, of Advent itself. But this is where the story—and the sacred year itself—begins. The first language of this expectant season is not bell carols but groaning—the audial ache of a hurting world.”
-Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything
Shortly after I began following Stephanie Duncan Smith’s Slant Letter here on Substack, her December posts on Instagram stopped me short. In tiny squares with highlighter yellow accents, she put into words how I felt about Advent. I felt so comforted by her words about dissonance and darkness and light and presence at Christmas.
Little did I know that she was laying the groundwork for a book, and some of the sentences that resonated most were part of a larger manuscript.
So this summer, when I received an ARC of her book, Even After Everything (October 2024) I read it by the pool and as we began the school year. I read it closely, marking the sentences that bore witness to my own experiences. In her memoir, subtitled The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway, she creatively juxtaposes the church calendar with the human experience and grapples with dissonance. She explores time and rhythms and seasons and a God who is With Us in it all, the common thread that pulls safe and taut around what can feel unpredictable and even meaningless.
She says,
“And so this book is for anyone questioning how to stay steady in the midst of the unresolved. It’s for anyone who has felt unseen by the joy of a season, or of others, that is so far removed from their current experience. It’s for anyone who is worn out by the pressures and imperatives to bounce back or power through, and still, who longs to locate whatever muscles can sustain them through unsettling times.”
-Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything
It took me long enough to write this letter that the light outside is gone now. Everything is inky black, the colors are gone. The trees that glowed earlier now stand as ghosts.
But the light is coming.
Every day after this will grow longer, as the light triumphs and returns.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
- John 1:5, ESV
That’s what I’m celebrating this Christmas. A God who is with us. And a light that shines in the face of an already-defeated darkness.
Merry Christmas, friend. Thank you for being here.
Read Stephanie’s book here:
Read some of my recent work with The Anselm Society, a curation of what the editors are loving this winter:
“Limping to church on Sunday”…reminds me of something one of our writers for Cultivating Magazine says about how we’re all “belly-crawling to the Kingdom.” Such great imagery.
Excellent work. ❤️