The Light That Came Before the Story

This day carries so many layers.

Old ones.

Borrowed ones.

Ones that were handed to us long before we knew we had a choice in what to believe.

For most of my life, December twenty fifth was a fixed point.

A day wrapped in certainty.

A day wrapped in someone else’s story.

A day that came with rules about what it meant to be good, grateful, faithful, or obedient.

It took years for me to learn that this date did not begin where I had been taught it began.

Long before it was called Christmas,

long before the nativity was written,

long before the story of a holy birth was placed here,

people were already celebrating the return of the sun.

They lit fires to call the light back.

They told stories about renewal.

They honored the earth and the sky.

They gathered because the longest nights were difficult,

and community kept people alive.

Sol Invictus.

The Unconquered Sun.

A festival that marked the rising of light after the deep winter.

A celebration woven from hope, survival, and the quiet certainty that darkness never lasts forever.

Much later, those older traditions were relabeled, repurposed, and folded into a new faith.

Not because the old ways were wrong,

but because someone in power wanted a unified calendar.

A unified belief.

A simpler way to control what people were allowed to know.

But the roots are still there.

You can feel them if you sit quietly for a moment.

The ancient pulse beneath all the layers.

The truth that light returning has always been a human story,

long before it became a religious one.

I find comfort in that.

In knowing that this day belongs to something older and wider than doctrine.

Something that includes all of us,

whether we were raised with hymns,

with candles and cider,

or with nothing but instinct telling us that the sun was worth celebrating.

So today, I am choosing the meaning that feels true.

The warmth in the middle of winter.

The spark inside me that refuses to dim.

The reminder that every little moment of healing is its own kind of sunrise.

And the quiet knowing that we are allowed to honor the light

in whatever way helps us remember who we are.

However you hold this day,

I hope it brings you gentleness.

I hope it brings you breath.

I hope it brings you back to the place inside you

where light has been waiting all along.