The Return of the Light, Post Office Woes and Flying Home for Christmas
From the desk of the artist Alana Clohessy, in a small corner of Paris, on the Left Bank of the Seine.
My apologies for the lateness of this letter today, I realised the Winter Solstice would happen before we next got to chat and I wanted to share a solstice event with you.
Thursday, 12th December 2025. 5°C and Cloudy.
Tea in my Cup: Twinings English Breakfast Tea with milk, no sugar.
I have hardly been out in days. Yes, I have made short excursions to the shop and the post office but that has been it. I leave for Ireland next week and I have a list of things I want to finish before then. I sit late into the night hunched over my desk like a prawn, writing and drawing the hours away.
I have begun to understand the reasons behind the attire of the eccentric artist. A long suede fur coat hastily thrown over a floaty dress with black leather boots and a hand knitted woolen hat, a bobble on top. A haunted look as images and words flit through the mind, as an old woman in front argues about the price of stamps and bemoans having to use an automated machine. I tell myself I will remember the words when I get home, the images firmly cemented in my mind. I proceed to argue with the post office worker that you do not need to pay taxes and duties on a parcel from Northern Ireland as they are still part of the EU Free Movement of Goods. They proceed to tell me that all of Ireland has to pay taxes and duties, as Ireland is not part of the EU (Ireland has been part of the EU since 1973). The muses grow weary.
I rush back and sit at my desk but the muses have snatched away the words in anger, annoyed at being ignored. Others will come along but I wonder how many glittering lines lie at the bottom of the creativity well. Twinkling under the water like coins in the bottom of the Trevi Fountain. A wish thrown in the hope of a dream. Bad luck, to try and fish them out again.
I have begun to dread air travel. I am not afraid of flying, it is the hassle of going through airports. Especially Charles De Gaulle. Not matter how early you arrive, you will end up running to your gate, a cursory glance at the alluring Duty Free (seriously, Duty Free in T1 Charles De Gaulle is amazing) before being rushed through your gate only to stand in the finger while passengers fight with the flight attendants about putting their duty free in the overhead compartments and sitting in the wrong seats; a choir of exhausted children giving a rendition of breaking the sound barrier.
I usually leave through the newly revamped Terminal 1. Elegant and kitted out with the newest technology in automated passport control - in theory. Most of the automated machines are turned off, forcing standstill queues to snake throughout the corridors. Staff walking along the side, calling out flight numbers and pulling people out of the queue to ensure a waiting plane gets off the ground. When I first moved here, I was told that you must skip the queue in the airports if it gets close to the time of your plane’s departure. As an Irish person, we are laidback about a lot of things but for someone to skip a queue and push in front of you, will raise the hackles on the most gentle of folk. It takes some getting used to, both to experience and to do.
Once I board the plane and get settled, the flight attendants come around with refreshments. I usually get a cup of tea and a Twix. When I travel on my own, there is nearly always someone in the near vicinity that overhears my order, looks at me and says “that’s a good combination” and proceeds to order the same themselves. I look out the window for a bit, then I take out my book. The flight from Paris to Ireland is short, before you know it you are descending through the clouds towards the tarmac and being told the weather by the pilot - usually wind with rain.
A smiling face (or more) is always there to meet me. We bustle across the carpark, someone else insisting on wheeling my suitcase, as your hair gets sucked skywards - the pilot being spot on with the wind. A brief moment to recall where the car is parked and we are on our way. The parking ticket gets deposited in the machine and the road opens up in front of us. An Irish DJ chats animatedly on the radio in the background as you get caught up on all the local news. Who’s dead, who’s married, who’s had an operation. The local butcher had an ingrown hair on his buttock that caused sepsis. The cat has kidney failure and refuses to eat her special food. A favourite cafe has closed and the price of petrol has become scandalous. Your father has insisted on building another shed.
You are finally back in Ireland for Christmas.
Sunday, 15th December 2024. 8°C and Cloudy
I have realised it is the Winter Solstice next Saturday (21st December) and I will not be talking to you before then. If you have been drinking tea and chatting with me here from the beginning, I wrote my first letter to you during the Summer Solstice of this year (you can read that letter here). When I finished writing that letter to you, I went and watched the sun set over the Seine.
When I lived in Vancouver, every Winter Solstice I would go to a solstice festival run by The Secret Lantern Society, who held small events around the city during the darkest night of the year. There were lantern walks after dark through the streets of Chinatown and other locations, celebrations of music, shadow displays and fire dancing. There was also a Labyrinth of Light.
Close to where I lived was the classical Chinese gardens of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Opened to the public in 1986, this Ming Dynasty style garden and home was built using the same traditional building techniques, materials and tools of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). No modern inventions or conveniences were employed during its construction. All work was carried out by experienced Chinese artisans and craftspeople. The architectural plans, materials and tools used, down to the smallest wooden bolt in the ceiling, all came from China and were crafted in the traditional way. The garden and home is one of the first of its kind outside of China, allowing visitors to walk down open air corridors and through garden walkways just as others had in China centuries before.
Employing the philosophical principles of Feng Shui and Taoism, the garden and home strives to create balance and harmony within the opposing nature of life. Flowing water over craggy stones, a still, small pond reflecting the ever changing sky. A registered not-for-profit, all revenue from the garden and museum goes towards “the fufillment of [their] mission to bring together cultures and communities”. It was here I would celebrate the Winter Solstice with the Secret Lantern Society.
The festival was called “The Return of the Light”.
When we think of the Winter Solstice we tend to think of it as the shortest and darkest day of the year (which it is) but we forget that it heralds the return of the sun, from that day forth the days once again grow longer. There are many cold, dark days ahead but the light is returning.
The Labyrinth of Light, was for me, the highlight of the festival. The labyrinth is an ancient practice used by many cultures around the world for meditation, prayer and ritual. You waited outside a large dark room, a few people allowed in at a time. As the doors closed behind you and your eyes adjusted, you would hear singing bowls being quietly played. An ethereal sound through the dark. Five hundred pure beeswax candles within lanterns, were glowing in a spiral labyrinth in front of you. You were directed to very slowly enter the labyrinth mentally carrying any old attachments from the last year (or life), the warmth of the candles surrounding you.
Once at the heart of the labyrinth, you would leave the attachments behind. As you turned your back on those discarded disappointments and slowly wove your way from the centre of the labyrinth, it was time to envision new hopes and dreams. You would walk with them slowly. As you exited the labyrinth and stood under the open sky of the darkest night of the year, you felt lighter, renewed. A reminder of what our ancestors intrinsically knew, that no matter how dark the days become, the light will always return and the darkest night of the year heralds a new, brighter season.
I don’t live in Vancouver anymore, so I can longer celebrate the Festival of Light with the Secret Lantern Society but I have a new tradition now. As the philosophy of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden states that balance is found within the opposites of life, Covid lockdowns brought with it some good - some might say great. A greater freedom for people to work remotely, a return to the enjoyment of crafting and the arts, growing cultures in your fridge to bake sourdough bread and time to reconnect with those closest to you (because you were stuck with them 24/7). The greatest thing for me were the talks and lectures that were only possible by attending in person, suddenly became available to everyone online. I listened live from my small corner of Paris as people spoke about Irish mythology in Boston University, Massachusetts. I watched Manchán Magan give a talk on his book “Thirty Words for a Field” and the origins of the Irish language. I listened to authors in intimate settings speak about the journeys and roadblocks that they encountered while writing their books. I was part of an artist collective from Canada and we met online every week (I speak about them here). I watched professors from the University College Dublin, give lectures on the history of the National Folklore Collection of Ireland - which is inscribed into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, in recognition of its “world significance” and “outstanding universal value to culture” - a collection I had never heard of up to that point. (I will speak more about the National Folklore Collection in another letter. It is fascinating.) These are just a few of the things that Covid lockdowns brought.
Unexpectedly for me, it also brought with it, a new Winter Solstice tradition.
I have briefly mentioned Newgrange in a previous letter (you can read it here). Newgrange is a UNESCO World Hertiage Site in the Boyne Valley, Co Meath, Ireland. Originally considered a neolithic passage tomb, it is now recognised as an Ancient temple, a place of spiritual, astrological and ceremonial importance. Built 5,200 years ago (3,200 BC) by Stone Age farmers, these were a people in Ireland before the Celts. They no longer walk this earth, their DNA no longer detected in living things.
Newgrange is 500 years older than the Great Pyramids of Giza and 1000 years older than Stonehenge. Every Winter Solstice, the rising sun enters the passage tomb of Newgrange through an opening, called a roofbox, above the entrance door. The sunlight pierces the centre of the tomb, illuminating the inner chamber 19 meters within, where bones of the dead were laid. This has happened every year for over the past 5000 years. We have no idea how they accomplished it. An ancient society of people with astrological knowledge of the stars, the orientation of the earth, the physics of light, the architecture of stone and the mathematics of life, created a monument that has outlasted millennia.
People who lived in houses that have disappeared into the earth, built houses for their dead that we can still walk through today.
While Newgrange is aligned with the sunrise, Dowth, a second passage tomb in close proximity to Newgrange, is aligned with the setting Winter Solstice sun. At sunset, the light penetrates the tomb of Dowth, illuminating decorated stones within. Newgrange and Dowth along with 38 other stone passage tombs are part of a complex of ancient monuments within the Boyne Valley. They are known collectively as Brú na Bóinne (Irish for the bend of the Boyne River). Not all have been excavated or explored, out of respect to those that have been laid to rest there.
A public lottery is run every year to allow a very small number of people to be the ones to stand inside Newgrange for sunrise during the solstice. Hundreds gather outside the monument to celebrate but only the lottery winners get to go in. They stand quietly within the heart of the dark tomb, without electricity or light and wait for the coming dawn, just as people did 5000 years before them. They stand witness as the sun breaks over the horizon and enters the roofbox above the door. They watch, as it slowly creeps towards them down the narrow stone passage. As the sun continues to rise, the beam of light widens, flooding the inner chamber, where they stand, with dazzling sunlight. The whole event lasts for 17 minutes and begins around 9am Irish Time. A gift from a forgotten people who harnessed the light and told the time using stones.
During Covid lockdowns, when people could not enter or attend Newgrange, the Office of Public Works (OPW) of Ireland, began to livestream the Winter Solstice event. They have continued to do so ever since.
December 2020, I sat at home in Paris and watched the solstice dawn break over the Boyne Valley in Ireland. The light creeping through the clouds, the inner chamber of Newgrange in darkness, then in light. I continued to watch it fade away again. Along the way we have forgotten how or why this happens but somewhere within the soul of our bodies, we remember the light.
I will be in Ireland during the solstice this year and watching it online. I have physically stood within the inner chamber of Newgrange, walked down its stone corridor and touched the stone along the walls. I have seen the roofbox where the sun enters above the door and walked around the tomb’s exterior that covers over an acre of land, surrounded by 97 large kerbstones carved with megalithic art. Unfortunately, this has never been during the solstice. I have never won the lottery. Perhaps one day. Until then, I thank the vagaries of fate that have allowed me to witness it for the past four years. A new tradition has begun. I will pop a link below if you would like to experience it yourself. If you are ever in Ireland, I recommend you visit Newgrange and Brú na Bóinne in person, whether it is the solstice or not. It is a place that needs to be experienced. A very ancient, unknown part of the world.
Au revoir - until we meet again,
Alana x
So cool. I'll check out the live stream.