What is the Longest Night?
19 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Doing Church
The Longest Night is the eve of the winter solstice, which this year happens at 5:30 am on December 22. The Longest Night is the night before the light starts to return, and the days begin to get longer, as imperceptible as that lengthening may be until sometime in February when we suddenly realize it’s happened. The Longest Night Service is a service that commemorates all of the complexities of the holiday season: darkness, light, joy, loss, nostalgia, hope, sadness, celebration, death, and new life.
Many churches have “Longest Night” or “Blue Mass” services this time of year, and St. David’s is no exception. It’s a place to observe the season in a way that honors loss and sadness. A friend of mine once said about this service:
“it helps me compartmentalize all the sadness that I always feel this time of year for no reason. I come, I light a candle, I cry a little bit, and then I can get on with celebrating Christmas.”
Our personal longest night doesn’t necessarily coincide with the longest night of the year. The longest night you stayed up with a loved one who was dying, or stayed up waiting for a wandering child to call, or stayed up longing for something to be other than it was….The Longest Night service can be a time to remember those long nights, to mark them night with a candle, a song, a prayer, a bite of bread and a sip of wine in memory of the One who comes to us with the slow return of light.
The Longest Night Service is itself not long. It begins at 6 pm on Wednesday, December 21, and ends shortly before 7. We’ll have a place to light a candle, share a photo or another memento, sing, and listen to wonderful music from the Portland Women’s Threshold Choir. If you need a place remember someone you love and miss this time of year, or just to mark the ambiguity of this season, we hope to see you on the Longest Night at 2800 SE Harrison in Portland on Wednesday.
