Locals celebrate Winter Solstice

SWAMPSCOTT – A group of local residents gathered early this morning to celebrate an ancient tradition recognized by people across the globe.But it wasn’t Christmas.They celebrated a much older tradition: the Winter Solstice.”Christmas and other holidays started off of this ceremony,” Don Orne, a Marblehead resident and member of the nonprofit Clifton Improvement Association, which holds the ceremony, said Monday. “It’s probably one of the oldest things on earth that people have gathered for ? “Orne, other members of the neighborhood group and guests continued this tradition at sunrise this morning.They gathered at the Sun Circle – a henge, or group of stone pillars arranged in a circle to mark the locations of sunrises and sunsets during the year – at Beach Bluff Park at Preston Beach.The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the day when the sun annually appears at its lowest point in the Northern Hemisphere sky, Jim Keating, a retired Marblehead astronomy teacher and volunteer for the group said Tuesday.Keating explained that the earth’s annual orbit makes the sun appear to travel back and forth across the sky over the course of the year. The earth actually revolves around the sun; but the earth’s orbit makes the sun appear to move, Keating notes.The Winter and Summer Solstices – which occur around Dec. 21 and June 21 each year – mark the sun’s appearance at the end points of its journey, Keating said. On these two days, the sun appears to “stand still” – solstice comes from the Latin for “sun” and “stop,” Keating explained – before appearing to retrace its path across the sky.The spot on the horizon where the sun rises on these dates aligns with carved niches at the top of two of the stone columns in the henge.Lynn Nadeau, the Clifton Improvement Association President, said her grandchild described it as the sun “cuddling into the parentheses” in the rock.Organizers said that people have historically celebrated the Winter Solstice as the “rebirth” of the sun, as it is the date when the days begin lengthening until the sun reaches the other end of its path on the date of the Summer Solstice. Henges, such as the Sun Circle – the most famous being Stonehenge in England – and other monuments to mark similar celestial events have been constructed by civilizations from the Ancient Egyptians to the Anasazi tribe of the American Southwest to the Bronze-Age Irish, Keating said.”It’s all ?Raiders of the Lost Ark’ stuff, but it actually occurs,” Keating said, referencing the first Indiana Jones movie. “Of course we haven’t found any treasure yet, but that’s not the point.”The local Solstice tradition is comparatively recent, however.The improvement association, which owns and maintains the park, installed the Sun Circle in 2009.Since then, group members have gathered at each Winter and Summer Solstice and the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes – when the sun reaches the midpoint of its journey across the sky and aligns with other points in the sun circle – in a celebration of faith, science and art.Orne leads the ceremony and represents the spiritual aspect of the event.He brings a Symphonic Peace Gong that he said he has played all over the world at sacred sites.For Nadeau, the ceremony is a chance to refocus on nature rather than the sundry decisions and problems that occupy our daily lives.”Some people come because of the spiritual dimension, others come for the visual mastery of the experience, and school kids come,” Nadeau said Monday. “To me, in our age, it seems to me that we need to connect with the basic forces of light and darkness, hot and cold, and the glories of nature.”Cyrus Moulton can be reached at [email protected].