Ben Lowry: The shortest, darkest evenings of the winter are already behind us
This week Canon Ian Ellis, on these pages, wrote an interesting thing about light.
Canon Ellis was writing about how the message of Christ brings light into these dark months of December. Then, as a metaphor, he mentioned how a single candle can transform a dark house in a power-cut. (Click here to read Canon Ellis’s article)
It was, in a way, an obvious point yet I found it very striking even so. It reminded me of a recent discovery that Neanderthal man was using fire in Britain 400,000 years ago, hundreds of thousands of years before man was thought to have been able to create fire. It is, when you think in terms of a single candle, quite extraordinary to reflect on what an immense advance it was to be able to create fire.
The days are already getting longer. Well, not quite. The winter solstice, the shortest day, is in fact tomorrow. But the shortest evening (earliest sunset) was earlier this week and the nights have already begun to get slightly longer. The latest sunset, however, is not until the end of the month, and so the mornings will continue to get darker.
I find it a stunning point in the calendar. Tuesday (see the main photograph on this page) and again yesterday there was some fabulous December sunshine in Belfast. There is something magical about sunny days in NI around Christmas with their bright blue skies, that – for me – forgives or even dispels the gloom of the surrounding grey days.
• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor