Four Days to Christmas: Winter Solstice (Return of the Light)

From “Winter” by Alfred Lord Tennyson in The Christmas Treasury: A Collection of Stories, Poems, Carols, and Traditions, edited by Kate Hayden:

The frost is here,
The fuel is dear,
And woods are sear,
And fires burn clear,
And frost is here
And has bitten the heel of the going year.

Bite, frost, bite!
You roll up away from the light,
The blue-wood-louse and the plump dormouse,
And the bees are stilled and the flies are killed,
And you bite far into the heart of the house,
But not into mine.

Bite, frost, bite!
The woods are all the searer,
The fuel is all the dearer,
The fires are all the clearer,
My spring is all the nearer,
You have bitten into the heart of the earth,
But not into mine.

From “The Nest” in Lights from December: A Collection of Christmas Poems by Arlene Johnson Jens:

A nest became empty and dry —
Its mud sides had cracked
and its lining of grass
became brittle and chippy.
It fell from the bush
where the evergreen foliage
had buried it.
There it was.
A nest on winter’s ground.
For what?

In the light,
pearls from the earth
moistened the nest.
Its case
became clay
and the brown dry slivers
revived.

A small boy came along
and shrieked, “Hey,
a nest for my snowball!”

And he placed it there
with tenderness.

Why do we have

The Solstice of Winter
The Saturnalia of the gods
The Festival of Lights
The Light of the World!

Before hearts turn to emptiness
and dryness, become cracked
and brittle and chippy,
they must fall from the
protection of darkness
to be renewed and refreshed
by a Light!