Mother Night and the Sun Child (2015)
Mother Night holds the infant Sun in her arms, the morning after the Longest Night of the year, at Winter Solstice. As the Wheel of the Year spins, radiance returns. The birth of the golden Child of Wonder is also the birth of hope in the time of greatest darkness.
Many traditions of Christmas descend directly from pagan celebrations of northern European Yule; so also is mirrored the birth of the holy child in the depth of winter, and the honoring of the Divine Mother. For the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples, Mōdraniht (“Mother’s Night”) was a sacred occasion to venerate all ancestral mothers, and a time in which to embrace the promise of the year to come.
(For my aunt Tita, to whom the Winter Solstice represented a magic time of renewal and wholeness, contemplation and music, in which to celebrate (in her words): “gentleness, kindness, reverence for the earth and its creatures, and good will.”)