It was a good summer, at least here in Finland. But the seasonal conveyor belt never stops and now we are moving fast from fading autumn light towards frigid darkness.
Back in the day, in the absence of electric light, one could only imagine the sense of collective melancholy as the days drew in. Is it nothing more than human nature to light a fire against the darkness, as we see in the pagan winter festivals of Halloween and Yule?
Halloween to me is a far more interesting event from a cultural perspective because, like many other latter day ‘Christian’ festivals (their version being All Saints Day) the original is much older, heralding from Samhain, a Celtic festival with its origins in the Northern Hemisphere.
Halloween as we now know it today was a true gateway festival — a liminal space where the boundary between autumn and winter dissolved, and more interestingly, the veil between this world and others became so thin that spirits were said to walk among us.
but in the same manner as Yule (as the proto Germanic tribes celebrated it) being an important marking of the winter solstice and a return of the light, it has been hijacked not once by the prevailing world religion, but twice by the candy cane forces of dumb commerce.
Earlier, I’m sure it held a sense of gravity now lacking. In the Northern Hemisphere, historically we all stood before a looming crisis; a season where nothing grew, and autumn’s gifts of grain, fruit, berries, mushrooms, and game had to be carefully prepared and provisioned for months on end. Without the kindness and strength of the community, some would never make it through. For now, though, the daily glutfest continues unabated…
But if you take away the international supply chains and invisible supporting hands, nature’s bountiful gifts are few on the immediate ground, even for a smaller population — a hard scrabble subsistence existence and most likely a breakdown of civil society to accompany it.
I suppose my point is that we have lost sight of nature, that engine of creation and recreation that feeds us one year to the next. Who among us has even seen a farm, foraged or hunted? In Finland, this is not entirely uncommon but in Britain, the land itself is largely in the hands of private owners effectively cutting off access by ordinary people.
Instead, we are invited to disregard nature, locked away in virtual worlds of work or distraction, staring at our screens while it steadily and catastrophically degrades.
This is unsustainable and I think that we are fast approaching a reckoning that will put nature back at the center of our lives, with the caveat that the soufflé we have created must first collapse.
The pandemic was just a warning shot and cynically, governments around the world used it for their own political purposes to quell restive populations, such as those in China and to magnify the inherent asymmetries of wealth and poverty written into the code of humanity.
Most of us have moved on from that world-stopping event with little to show for it, while others got fat from the profits. This too, could have served as a valuable lesson, but it was wasted. Profligate need has been met once again with profligate waste.
Now, at this liminal space between autumn and winter, between peace and war, light and dark, we should give pause and meditate on nature’s gifts. Our best laid plans rely not upon the thoughts and prayers and lies of politicians but on the engines of agriculture and those who honour the pact we have with the natural world.
Every plant, tree, insect, and domestic animal is a pinnacle of perfection, not least the ones that feed the masses. As winter approached, the people that celebrated Samhain knew that and acted accordingly. We would do well to remember that we are not above nature, but one species among others on a very fragile planet — our only home.
