The Solstice-Nativity Continuum
There is a sacred landscape of time that is connected and ceremonial....
The story of Solstice and Christmas are one and the same, with shared roots.
Nativity means “to be born”: The Christmas nativity story holds a secret seed of the feminine traditions, and is a grand mystery of what it means “to be born” or “to be reborn”; it holds the womb mysteries of a how the feminine births life, and how the cosmic feminine births new eras and epochs, from the cyclical womb of time.
The nativity is archetypal and cosmic; it tells the story of how the Sacred Mother rebirths the light of the sun/son, and brings fertility and life from the feminine dark womb. In the Christmas tradition this becomes our Mother Mary who births the avatar of the light, Jesus. It is an anthropomorphized version that carries incredible spiritual power. Whether we believe in a literal birth of Jesus or not, the medicine is immense.
Once a year we celebrate the incredible miracle of a birthing woman and the magic of her child. This story is eternal, it lives through every human birthing mother. It also lives through Mother Earth and her birth cycles, and the great cosmic cycles, as Great Mother births creation. This story is recorded in many sacred traditions around the world, where a cosmic creatrix is honored.
In old lore, the Solstice is the start of the birth event - the crowning of the light - and it is on December 24th/25th "the eve of the Christ child" that the birth happens. After the light crowns through the cosmic-cervix on Solstice, we enter three days of sacred birth space, a luminous passageway within the womb-darkness, watching the light begin to emerge, as the birthing journey unfolds. When the light/child of light is born a great celebration happens – with feasting, singing, carousing, toasting, gift giving, family gatherings, spiritual gatherings, and joy and hope.
Just like the family of a new baby might shower the parents with gifts, bring rich, nourishing food, toast with drinks, and take a “time out of time” to celebrate such an auspicious arrival, so this happens on a metaphysical level. Much focus is paid to fasting and retreat in religion, but in the old religion, celebrating was also holy.
Feasting, revelry, decorations, rituals, helped welcome the new energy, and if a new light or energy was not midwifed with joy and praise, it might not embody. The women’s mysteries in particular were guardians of these sacred passageways.
Traditionally, the celebrations of the “birth” happen on Christmas Eve, on the 24th, or Christmas Day, the 25th. In the old ways, a new “day” begins with sunset, as it is thought the start of anything new begins first with darkness, and the light only emerges later, out of this original primal womb. So, at sunset on the 24th, the “eve of” the sacred day of Christmas begins, and ends on sundown on December 25th.
Then, thirteen holy days of celebration and revelry begin – the thirteen days of Christmas – until the birth energy is anchored on Epiphany, on the 6th, when in the traditional story the Magi and Maga, astrologers and midwife-shamans visit. This is probably related to magical practices of the witch-midwives that are forgotten.
Yet, these traditions did not disappear – they have been preserved, right under our noses, maybe not fully intact, but the magic is there waiting for us to remember.
A 40-day postpartum period is also marked out between the birth, on the 24th December, and the returning of the light, on Imbolc, on the 2nd of February.
So, we are not meant to race into productivity on January 1st or start new diet regimes, or hit the gym. We are meant to keep close to the nest, nourishing ourselves, feeding this new light from the earth and cosmos, with yin magic.
How powerful that we still live the mystery of nativity - experienced by every woman who births, and every human who lives within this great nativity of the cosmos and earth? And by intentional magic, we become a “midwife” of this light.
Reclaiming the Nativity – The Great Birth
After the birth of my daughter in 2019, this idea of “nativity” gained a new perspective for me. As a new mother during Christmas, this old, old story began to grow new green shoots for me; along with a deeper recognition of its significance, both at a spiritual level, and on the level of remembrance of ancestral traditions.
Like many people who are not Christian, or have left behind any association with institutional religion, the Solstice on the 21st had a “fresher” feel. It felt good to honor the cycles of the earth mysteries, and welcome in a new cycle of light. Whilst the “Christmas” holiday seemed mired in old associations and dogma.
Yet, while holding a wee babe in my arms one night, nearing Christmas, I found myself searching for second-hand nativity cribs online. I loved the cosmic idea of the earth rebirthing the light, but I also wanted the story of another human mother.
The image of Mother Mary, in a humble stable, breastfeeding her new babe, holding a miracle in her arms, born from her womb, spoke to my feminine soul. It felt intimate, personal, relatable. For many new mothers, the birth feels like a miracle, this new being, this new soul light emerges into the world, and everything around feels illuminated by this beautiful glow. I remember holding my baby for the first time, and the light shining through the windows felt like angels dancing.
We humans are “story beings” – we love a good old yarn, and we like it to be as close to our normal life as possible, not abstract. That is why so many indigenous and folk traditions veil great cosmic mysteries in everyday tales of normal people, and why quantum science and energies, are portrayed as God and Goddesses, or beings just like us, who quarrel, make mistakes, fall in love, and birth their babies.
There is a great cosmic mystery of how the earth rebirths the light through the womb of winter, and how even greater cosmic cycles ovulate and menstruate. It is powerful to recognize these vast powers, and also to encode it in a story that we can make sense of, and feel in our bodies, and relate to. As above, so below.
The nativity story holds these cosmic “Mystery Codes”, and Mother Mary invites us into the stable with her, to join in the miracle of celebrating the birth of the light.
As Lady Saturn holds the menstruation power, Mother Mary is the cosmic birther. She is the “light twin” to the dark feminine; they work in tandem, as a holy team.
Star of Bethlehem – Cosmic Mystery Codes
As we experienced the “Star of Bethlehem” again in 2020, it feels like we are being reminded of the deeper significance and mystery of the birth bed. Cosmic and human. We begin to see this is not a “one-off” day – but a journey, a pilgrimage.
In 2020, my baby’s grandmother bought her a nativity scene hand-carved from olive wood in Israel, as a gift, and we have it in the house illuminated with tiny lights. A friend of Sicilian and Polish heritage visited, and was delighted by it.
She instructed me on some of the native folk traditions, woven around the Christian mysteries, that were practiced for hundreds of years for the nativity. Rather than treat the nativity scene solely as a decoration, it is a mystery play.
I had set it all up beautifully, with Jesus in his crib, and the shepherds and Magi all gathered around, as the story tells. “Oh no” my friend chided me, “Jesus isn’t put into the crib until Christmas eve on the 24th” she revealed, “and you have to swaddle Jesus, then put him away in a sacred place.” The placing of Jesus into the crib is a family mystery ritual, performed on Christmas eve with great reverence.
Likewise, the shepherds and sheep, are placed near the nativity scene, as are the Magi and their camels, as if they are pilgrimaging towards the stable. The nativity set comes alive with magic. It is not static, it is held in sacred time, it is a journey.
So, these last years, with deep magic, I have witnessed a real life “Star of Bethlehem” in the sky, and swaddled a symbolic baby, now nested in a small crystal shrine. I am waiting with anticipation for the night of Christmas eve, when he can be “born”.
As I sit here typing, I look over to the crib – and now in my mind, Mother Mary isn’t just an inanimate carved statue, but a pregnant woman, pregnant with possibility, waiting patiently for the great arrival, I can almost feel the “cosmic pregnancy” we have all been talking about, that first came in the lead up to the Grand Conjunction in 2020.
And because I am a human being, an ordinary woman, I feel it more deeply through those magical little figurines, and the story of an ordinary women, charged with an extraordinary destiny – as are all mothers – to birth a new world into being.
Christmas – Celebrating the Cosmic Birth
So, in many ways, Christmas as such is not just an orthodox “Christian” event, but a remnant of the great indigenous traditions that spanned the globe, to honor the great birth mysteries. Solstice and Christmas aren't set apart as different traditions, they are joined together as one in the birth light. They are part of the Cosmic Birth Mysteries that haven been forgotten, and dishonored, as a male story took hold.
The distinctly female aspects of the nativity have been overlooked or diminished, as have the feminine mystical arts of revelry, feasting, food, games, costumes, play, joy, community, domestic witchery, sacred rituals of the hearth and home.
To illustrate this point, in England back in the 17th century, when Oliver Cromwell and the puritans had taken power, a parliamentary law tried to ban the celebration of Christmas, considered as “devilish”. The law failed, but they did manage to mandate that the markets should open for business as normal on Christmas day and not honor the birth portal, and that church gatherings could not partake in any celebrations of Mother Mary birthing Jesus, or enact special celebrations of the story. Even mince pies (a festive sweet treat) were banned as “popish indulgence”!
The same puritanical wave that simultaneously burned wise women at the stake, was dead set against the celebration of this “popish” (read pagan) celebration of the feminine birth mysteries, and tried to ban Christmas altogether, mirroring the numerous ways the feminine and her womb powers have been degraded as evil.
Over centuries it would also try to ban and outlaw all traces of the pagan and mystical feminine traditions, including the festivities, gatherings and holy days.
With this absence, the people lost their felt connection to the power of the cycles and seasons of life, unfolding within the land they lived upon, within their bodies and the cosmos, and enacted as simple and honorific family rituals in their home.
From top-down, a religion of sin and punishment was imposed; but from bottom-up, from the people, a continuation of folk traditions celebrating life was enacted.
For those of us with Christian cultural backgrounds, whether we are “religious” or not, the secrets of our more ancient folk traditions are hidden in plain sight. The magic portal of Solstice has been celebrated for millennia as a birthing mother.
It also calls to mind the creation story of Aluna, as told by the Kogi tribe of Columbia, and as discussed in the Womb Awakening book. This creation story is one of the most elegantly preserved transmissions that tells us of a feminine cosmic creatrix. Her menstruation does not indicate her sin, but her fertility. Her womb is holy ground.
“The indigenous Kogi people of Colombia, are one of the few living cultures that have maintained an unbroken connection to the deep feminine wisdom since ancient times, uninterrupted by the modern world. They are the spirit keepers of the most intact womb cosmology on the planet, and they have been told by Aluna, Great Mother, that now is the time to spread this knowledge to the world, as our Earth is at risk. They say: ‘In the beginning there was blackness, only the sea. No sun, no moon, no people. In the beginning there were no animals, no plants, only the sea. The sea was the Mother. She was not a person, she was nothing, nothing at all. She was when she was. She was memory and possibility. She was Aluna. She is the mind inside nature.’” Womb Awakening
We can imagine a time, long, long ago, that all cultures told this sacred story. Imagine how differently the world would look now if our birthers were honored?
We are in a very sacred mystical time, that our ancestors revered and celebrated with full heart and full participation. We have had our Solstice light crowning, and now it’s time for the new birth. Let's celebrate the wonderous mystery of life and the mother earth who holds us, and all the mothers whose bodies birth our new humanity.
May the Christmas spirit be with you this season, carrying the new light.
This essay was first written in 2020 (and slightly edited) appeared in Spirit Weaver, released in 2022.
this year as I publish this essay again I cannot but help wrap the nativity story in extra prayers for all the birthing mothers who are living through such extreme times.