“It is a beautiful way of assuring you that you have lived through long nights before,” he said. On the winter solstice families gather for a feast and surround themselves with candles, eat pomegranates and nuts, and recite poetry, often by the Persian master Hafez, said Omid Safi, professor of Iranian studies at Duke University who celebrates the night with his family. The Iranian tradition of Yalda began some 2,500 years ago, rooted in the Zoroastrian practices of ancient Persia. Stories of surviving darkness are among the most enduring humans have, connecting us across culture and time. It is ironic they both hope to get brighter around the same time.” “The days of the pandemic are going to get brighter, as are the days of our world. “We have to keep our eye on the end of the tunnel, knowing that there is light there,” Dr. Biden Jr.’s coronavirus task force and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm, a member of President-elect Joseph R. “The darkness of the days are real for me, and the darkness of the pandemic is very real to me,” said Michael T. One of the oldest such practices is the act of lighting fire to call back the sun.Įven now, as winter arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, the devastation is interwoven with a promise that darkness may not last forever: The day the death toll in the United States passed 300,000 was also the day the country began inoculating health care workers from the virus.ĭevin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times Since ancient times humans have created rituals to imitate a desired outcome. December in the Christian calendar marks the season of Advent, or waiting for salvation in the birth of Jesus. Hindus, Jains and Sikhs celebrate Diwali, a five-day festival of light’s victory over darkness. So far it has.”įor millenniums, during these months of darkness, humans have turned to rituals and stories to remind one another of hope and deeper truths.Īll over the world, celebrations of light dot the winter darkness like stars. “The hardest thing is to keep trusting the cycle, to keep trusting that the balance will shift again even when I can’t imagine how. There have also been some long, barren seasons when I feared the sap would never rise again,” Barbara Brown Taylor, an author and Episcopal priest, reflected. “I have spent some long, scary nights waiting for the sun to come up. It reminds us that darkness, not only light, is part of the recurring rhythm of what it means to be human. Winter is a primal time of death and loss, and a time for grief. The undeniable hardship of this winter is a reminder that for much of human history, particularly in colder climates, winter was a season simply to be survived. Unemployment benefits for as many as 13 million people are set to expire at the end of the year. Families are separated over the holidays. Intensive care units across the country are running critically short of beds. More than 300,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, and by February another 150,000 could die, he said.

These next few months could be the most difficult in the country’s entire public health history, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Across the country, the arrival of winter has filled people with fear and dread for what is to come.

Its darkness is literal, with the coming of the solstice on Monday, and it is metaphorical, with the catastrophic toll of Covid-19, as each day the number of Americans dead grows steadily. This year a raw and unbridled winter has descended on America. Kimmerer, the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “In wintertime, all life is on that knife edge between life and death,” said Dr.

This winter, as the coronavirus pandemic consumes the country, it is as though we are reliving the unbuffered winters of our ancestors, she said.

Winters orbit