If the earth were to exhale, it would be on this day. Empty, without, things barren and hidden, huddled and dark. And poised...

I love the Solstice, the first day of winter. It is one of those ecological staples that connects all the sheets of human existence and reminds us of our tilted life on this pale blue dot. The Shortest Day captures that human urge to harken light, to shout into the dark. It's a sensitive collaboration between Newbury Medal winner Susan Cooper, illustrated by Caldecott winner Carson Ellis that captures the ends of this extreme day.

From the very beginning, our lives have been cyclical. At the solstices, the sun reaches its highest or lowest point in our sky, giving us the longest or the shortest day of the year; at the equinoxes, day and night are almost equal. Spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, winter solstice: round and round they go. If you live on a planet that circles a sun, your time is governed by the patterns of light and darkness, summer and winter, warmth and cold. And, of course, life and death.

And everywhere down the centuries snow-white world. Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. The lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive.

Once our forebears learned to farm, they planted and harvested at the equinoxes, but it was the solstices that caught their attention. The extremes. They watched their days shrink from the bright abundance of high summer to the bleak, dark cold of winter, and they invented rituals to make sure the light would come back again: to bring the new day, the new year, the rebirth of life. The rebirth rituals have become traditions that we still celebrate, whether or not we remember where they came from.

All the long echoes sing the same delight. 
This shortest day.
As promise wakens in the sleeping land.
They carol, feast, give thanks, and dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.

What would you do to bring back the light in the dark? To see it clearly, capture and hold it still. Internalise its warmth. The same things we do now, are what we have always done, will always do. Shout out the dark, beatify the world, and unite in harmony. As we have always done, will always do. "So the shortest day came, And the year died."