First day of winter: Solstice 2021 (12/21)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY, Winter Solstice, Dec. 21, 2021

It's the Cold Moon at the end of the year (FA).

Today is the first day of winter, the official beginning of the cold season in the northern hemisphere. Los Angeles has been under a kind of freeze lately, with unusual rain, cloudiness, and cold.

It's hard to imagine this is the first day of the cold. The leaves have fallen, or at least what leaves will fall. It's time to honor the directions, maybe in the way the Buddha advised the young Sigala.

There's the ancient pagan way, and there's the more modern Buddhist way. It's less superstitious and more karmically useful. In either case, it's time to honor nature, the unseen world, and the social environment of our relations.

If only we had a European "Festival of Lights" to cheer ourselves up by participating in. Or just think of all that Chinese food on Christmas.