It’s Christmas time again. Every year we get all worked up as the need to buy gifts and arrange schedules overtakes us.
We make time for family, the ones we were born to and then ones we have forged for ourselves. We watch the traditional specials. We make travel plans. We hear all the different sources try to tell us what the meaning of the season is.
On that last one, I think we have gotten a pretty good summation from a unique and very geeky source: Doctor Who. It’s become one of my favorite quotes about the season, and it came from the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas special, A Christmas Carol.
“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact midpoint, everybody stops, and turns, and hugs, as if to say ‘Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’”
And this, to me, is the heart of the season. There is a reason that all the Winter Solstice celebrations deal with light. It is the darkest time of the year, and then just when it feels that nothing will ever grow or be bright again, on December 21st everything turns around. The days slowly get longer and, even though it is still cold and dark, there is the return of hope as things inch back towards spring.
We huddle together in our tribes, be they of blood, friendship, work, or shared experience. We stave off the cold and look forward to the world coming alive again.
So as I publish this on the day of the lights return, I, Jeffrey Robert Harris (aka Caliban), on behalf of myself and all of my friends and loved ones who help produce this little corner of geek culture, wish you and yours well during this time and look forward to the brighter future.
Well done everyone, we’re halfway out of the dark.
