Rhythms of the year

NOVEMBER: Orkney. It’s breezy up here in the Northern Isles. You need to have your hat firmly fixed to your heid before you venture out in the gales with the dog. Furthermore, you need to have your spectacles nailed to your nut, lest they are soon gone with the wind as well.

People up here still talk in hushed tones about the gales of 1953, when roofs took flight, accompanied by garden sheds and flying chickens. In fact, the 1953 gales marked the end of a once-thriving poultry business in Orkney. People in the deep “sooth”- ie the central belt – who complain about “gales” (which are actually harmless breezes) are regarded in the North as being rather effete. So there.

Summer visitors to Orkney are sometimes so enchanted by the vistas that they decide there and then to come north to live. The real testing time comes in the winter, when the hatches are being battened down, and the bottles of Orkney’s famous Highland Park whisky are taken down from the shelf.

You see, November in the Northern Isles is not just a cauld blast, it’s dark. After the long light of the summer, the nights have fair drawn in. Sometimes there has to be a queuing system for burials because of the lack of light during the day.

I’m not surprised at all by the popularity of winter fire festivals such as Up Helly a’ in Shetland. These events are acts of defiance against the enveloping darkness, and apointing in hope towards the future.

These earthly realities are, of course, acknowledged in the rhythms of the Christian year. We don’t have a scooby about the true date of Christ’s birth. Much as I love the Christmas hymn In the Bleak Midwinter, it shouldn’t be relied on as a meteorological statement about the birth of the Saviour. Snow had fallen, snow on snow? A yellow weather warning for camels? In Palestine? Aye, right. Let’s face it, the Church has never been shy about taking over pagan festivals and Christianising them – whether the pagans liked it or not. (Sometimes it must be irritating to be a pagan.)

To sing about the birth of a Child of Hope and Light in the wintertime makes emotional and theological sense, in the same way as the winter fire festivals banish gloom and face towards the future and the coming again of the light. In its Advent season of preparation and waiting, the Church rightly sings songs of hope while pointing forward towards the coming and coming again of a revolutionary Son who comes with healing in his wings.

In today’s troubled and darkened political and cultural times, there will be special yearnings for a new light, one that can never, ultimately, be quenched by the darkness. Anyway, back here in Orkney, the wind is howling and the dug is telling me that he needs out. I check that his bunnet is firmly in place. I put on my coats – yes, plural – and reach for the torch. “I’ll be back soon,” I shout to the lady in the electronic croft. “Isn’t that what Captain Lawrence Oates is supposed to have said to Captain Scott?” she replies.

It’s as well we keep cheery in these straitened times. “In the bleak midwinter” I start singing tunelessly. Mansie howls. Onwards and upwards, my friends. Help is on its way – for us all.

“In today’s troubled and darkened political and cultural times, there will be special yearnings for a new light, one that can never, ultimately, be quenched by the darkness.