The Chilling Times...

We're getting in to the teeth of autumn up here in Minnesota, the daylight savings times when the sun is down by 6 pm and the cold starts to settle in. It's probably my least favorite time of the year.

I call it the "chilling time" because for a week or two I literally get the chills as my body adjusts to the new lower temperatures and my brain gets used to the dark. The brightness and warmth of summer is gone and the color of fall has faded and now only bare trees, cold winds, and early sunsets remain.

Christmas (Nativity) saves this time of year with its preparations, its lights, and its joy. But I can see how my pagan ancestors would make the emergence of the sun at the winter solstice a holiday. After all how depressing could this time have been in the wilds of northern Europe in the days without either lights electric or the light of Christ? It must have seemed a dark vision, like the end of the world.

An irony of it all may be that this warmer climate cycle we're in actually makes it all a bit more bearable. I can recall in years past being snowed in on Thanksgiving but today the forecast is for nearly sixty degrees with sun and so I can at least take a walk and get outside. I may even do some chores outside the house after work so we can get things buttoned down before winter sets in with a vengeance.

And set in it will...