Of all of the meanings that have been assigned to the winter holidays -- be they Christian, Jewish, cultural, pagan, secular, whatever -- what has come to be, for me, the most meaningful aspect of this season is the solstice.
Autumn is a lovely but difficult time of year for me, living as I do in the Northwest. Days become appallingly short as we move through November and into December, and when the gloom of cloud cover and rain is added to the mix, what we end up with at times is going literally for days without seeing the sun.
It is -- and I really can't come up with a better word to describe it -- rather a bummer.