Shortest Day, Longest Night: Etseri, Svaneti
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Winter Solstice, as it’s called. We had a week of mostly sunny days before today as I write this, doing much to melt the thin layer of snow which had fallen, although some of this still remains, keeping our local albedo (reflectivity) closer to 1’s pure whiteness than to 0’s perfectly absorptive black. But last night’s and today’s cloudiness has acted as a blanket, and the melting has thus continued a bit, despite some more light snowfall in the last few hours.
Currently our sunrise has been at about 9:30 am, and sunset at a little after 4 pm. Now those numbers will swing to earlier starts and later finishes. But statistically the coldest parts of the year are still ahead of us. This is because the temperature of the large body of air of the entire Northern Hemisphere is slow to change. So, while the planet’s tilt in relation to the sun is already moving back towards the vertical noons of midsummer, its northern atmosphere will take a while to catch up. Thus, colder Januarys and Februarys than one would expect at a glance!
However, few of my neighbors can remember such a mild December, or one with so little snow, in their lives. So what the next two months will actually give us is anyone’s guess. Few of us will complain if it stays this warm. At least the mountainous ski resorts, high as they are above us, have got enough snow to open the winter sports season locally today, however; and this, if not much else, will proceed as normal.
As one of the few Westerners in Svaneti, I have strange feelings as our date for Christmas approaches. The Georgian, and Orthodox, date is January 7; mine is December 25. The latter isn’t even a holiday in this country. So, it seems that my Christmas is creeping up on an unsuspecting local world, unannounced, unrecognized.
Just as that First Christmas did, some 2000 years ago. They had no idea what was upon them. It had been declared to a few chosen spectators and participants by angelic visitation: the Family itself, the Wise Men, the shepherds. The general population were entirely unaware of the drama unfolding in secret, in the humblest surroundings and way. God divesting Himself of heaven and taking an infinite step downwards. A larger gulf to cross than one of us people becoming an ant! Creator becoming a small part of creation.
Of course, the Svans will celebrate Christmas, just a couple of weeks later than I do; I get to have it twice, if I want to. But their version tends, as much of the rest of their ritual events, to allow the departed rather than the living or newly born to take center stage. The dead must be honored, remembered, feasted, toasted. Jesus can seem lost in such crowds.
But… it was like that back then too. Israel, a vassal state of occupying Rome, longed and looked for a King who would deliver them and inaugurate their new golden age. Aside from the privileged chosen few, the populace failed to see the tiny miracle at their feet, in the straw instead of the gilt. King Herod, seeing competition, unleashed a massacre of baby boys, hoping to include the One he had heard about! All that did was fulfil a prophecy of national mourning made centuries earlier. The Family became refugees in Egypt until Herod’s death allowed them to return: a nice reminder in today’s troubled, war-torn, traumatized times. The Boy was in good—God’s—hands.
It was all going to happen; unstoppable, if invisible and incomprehensible. Even “Happy Holidays” will do for me, because Modern English “holiday” is short for Middle English “holy day,” coming from Old English “halig daeg”. Being that this is the case, I’ll add: Merry Christmas!
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer