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The Research

So much of our modern culture is still linked to the sun. Here are just a few threads to help share our ideas. We share some videos below in an attempt to tie simple dates of past events together in a new kind of narrative that tells a story of connection, while celebrating our differences in opinions.

We can ALL understand missing the sun in winter. And that is how the whole thing starts.

Through history, the sun and the moon were the first, and still used, ways to track time. Our holiest day is still based around the sun. People slowly became more sophisticated in tracking the sun’s movements, tying dates along with the moon, with its more easily perceptible movements in a monthly timescale, then added the stars for further depth to the study.

We are not even getting into astronomy/astrology here, just cold hard facts and an interpretation through architecture and headlines to create a narrative that brings us from our earliest musings to today.

The Natural Symbols

In our book, each page dives into a separate element, explaining its possible origin from events from the past. Our three main natural elements we draw from include the sun, the tree, and the mushroom.

• We can all understand missing the sun in winter, and how the biggest celebration of the year, in most religions, ties to this date when the days start to become longer.
• We can all understand the interest in celebrating plants that stay ever-green all year.
• And the mushrooms invite us as well as the more silent creatures beneath us that have important stories to tell.

Even the train becomes a fun symbol of shared information. Each icon important in drawing this larger picture of our winter season, and beyond.

Our favorite thread is how the mushroom has become a symbol that invites us to explore on dual levels: breaking the mold by looking at things differently (in the case of psychedelics), as well as learning how much they actually do for us in social and physical sense. We learn how much they have to teach us as nature’s connector, bridging trees with each other to share nutrients and electric signals beneath our feet. They invite us to look at the more silent creatures of our world, imploring us to maybe notice their unique gifts. Plus they are just beautiful! Once you start to notice them, you find them in all kinds of children’s books and stories. It’s an odd choice, including a psychedelic mushroom in many children’s books without explanation, knowing they can be toxic, but also medicinal when handled properly and with guidance, as they have been in traditional cultures for thousands of years.

And we are meant to look at all this with a tribe: to talk and discuss and pass on our knowledge. We want to tell stories and connect.

The Siberian Connection

We argue that the thread to the symbolism of our holidays comes from natives living in the cold Arctic. We see the red and white spotted mushrooms growing under pine trees naturally, in a snowy climate where reindeer LOVE to eat them, pushing soldiers over to eat them (and their byproducts… funny story), and shaman guide experiences and bring back visions. And the most telling artifact that we are in the right place… we find a group of people that actually climb into their homes via the chimney when their doors are blocked by snow.

So if these communities existed, and still exist, how did their stories make it to us? The timing matches perfectly from Russian exploration into their lands for resources. But remember, this land is HUGE. It encompasses 1/6th of all land on earth. Since the 1500’s, we see accounts of researchers and exiles, and still find journals from people running into natives (and now Russians too), who, though many Christian in name (converted by force), still show many pagan remnants of previous religions that were not able to be stamped out completely. Many of these include communities that still love the mushrooms, as a wonderful source of nutrition, and also for spiritual experiences. And the guidance from shaman (a shadow version of Santa) help people use the medicines (or use it themselves, and tell of their visions).

In the United states, the 1800’s is when this idea of Santa is really crystalizing, and it is not a religious creature. He is a mix of other “pagan” (which just means “country folk”, or “non-christian”) practices, which were considered pretty heretical, and even illegal at times. It is kind of hilarious that the strongest characteristics of the modern traditions that have survived are ones of native cultures that the mainstream tried so hard to remove. I see the want to hold onto these kind of traditions as intuitive and beautiful; a spark that would not give up, no matter the ridiculous political climate of the times.

The “christ” in Christmas

I kept this out of the children’s version of the book, and want to emphasize connection more than anything, but we cannot talk about the season known as “Christmas” without talking about its namesake.

The truth is that this part of the story gets quite ugly. Some may also call it controversial, but in broad strokes, the facts reveal something quite clear: anytime people have sent “missionaries” through “native” lands, there has been bloodshed and heartache. While we may understand cultural genocide has been played out on repeat, we would like to think the religion we are born into is better than that. But the his-story of the church is not a pretty one, and few look into the details of its prevalence, and even relevance to their practice. This is a topic I (Victoria) love to discuss, and am working on getting into it in more detail in a subsequent book where I can tread carefully while trying to stay very scientific.

The most exciting part about it all is that, still, in our modern world, we see so many remnants of the religions that existed prior to the three major “Abrahamic” religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We can extend this view into ancient Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Indian cultures, and all kinds of Asian and American customs as well. The evidence is really starting to stack up to show the first remnants of religion start with some kind of tracking of the all powerful lights in the sky: whether the sun, the moon, or the stars.

And we can understand why that would be: we still feel awe when we look at them. We still have SO many visual clues of them in our modern languages (phrases like “shedding light” onto something in terms of bringing more awareness, extending slowly into things like hope of the new day, etc). Plus the modern calendar, hours, days, and “holiest” days of the week still being on “Sun”day show us the importance of that Sun.

People all over the world celebrate the time known as Christmas for natural reasons, and as we look further, almost every kind of date and icon in the Christian calendar and catalog was transposed on top of a pre-existing religious icon. This by no means demolishes the importance of this kind of religion, just reveals a deeper meaning to them. And the politics around religion, or anything, gets really interesting the more we look.

Evidence of Solar Tracking

There are many ways to show evidence of the Sun being so important to people of the past. Existing monuments help tell this story.

Dates

We share some lists of dates to showcase research for anyone who wishes to follow our threads and invite everyone to draw their own conclusions from the same fundamental stories known from earliest times. We invite debate and learning, and hope you can share this excitement of exploration, because we all have unique interests that will get us into infinite rabbit holes and all benefit from the shared collective findings!

Magic is all around us.

But we sometimes miss it. We sometimes forget to pause and notice it. We sometimes forget the connection we have with each other and the world around us. We sometimes take advantage of that everyday magic, like air and water, but when we pause to think about it, are awed at its beauty and simplicity and complexity. Science and art interweave when we look at this magic around us.

Einstein once said, “You either see the magic in everything, or nothing.” Children are great at pointing out this magic.

This little book asks us to look a bit deeper at ourselves and our shared modern customs to find the links that connect us all. What is it about the holidays that link us together, and to the magic of this world? Is there a shared past that we can celebrate together that keeps the magic alive?

Twas The Night Before Solstice is a children’s book written for adults. While reading to children, parents have just as much interest to learn as their children! Modern research is showing us how important it is to know about ourselves. Children who know more about their parents grow up to be more self-confident, so why not give them as much information as this modern world, and all its freedoms, allows us.

Kids yearn to know more about why we do what we do, and where they (and you) came from. They remind us that we can be interested people too, and keep alight that flame of curiosity that brings you to new corners and rabbit holes to explore. Sometimes we magically find the time (and interest) to do our own digging to find out why exactly we do the strange things we do.

In our own digging, we found realized we all have much more to learn about our shared heritages.

In this story, we have tried our best to share some fun little-known details about our collective past, allowing the reader to bridge between little facts. We provide dates below, of quotes and known artifacts that help provide a trail of breadcrumbs that lead us to certain conclusions, but you may find they take you elsewhere.

Our viewpoint is one of a her-storical perspective, after centuries of only hearing his side of his-story. And we implore each of you to continue the archeological exploration into your own personal roots to find your own unique story in all of it. We realize that much of the past has been written by the victors, and some peoples have been used and forgotten, while threads of their stories magically survived to possibly be the root of our modern traditions.

Continue Learning

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We have more discussions about our conclusions in our “backyard talks” on youtube, and plan to add much more. Victoria is also in the works of creating an “adults” version of the story, including the darker parts of her-story that accompany losing whole civilizations, with only remnants of threads being passed along.

We continue to learn more everyday, reading as we tuck our boys into bed every night, sometimes quite long nights. Twas the Night is just a glimpse into our larger goal to share our synthesized version of the past, helping to share that there is a scientific thread we can follow that allows us to learn about these various pasts without taking any of the magic away. Facts can really be stranger than fiction!

We believe there is a deep importance to some seemingly subtle things that tell us about our past cultures: the foods we eat, the words we use, and the celebrations we embrace. In fact, some of these things are the hardest to erase (by those victors of the past).

We also believe in holding onto the magic of the world, embracing both the science and awe of nature. Both science and shared customs only reveal deeper how incredible this world is, inviting us to notice her beauty, and ask us to look more deeply at her. We embrace this freedom in an age of mass-access to information, taking us back to start painting a broader picture where individual differences are irrelevant, but still beautiful and interesting. These stories help us all to look up and the sky and feel awe- and feel okay with the person next to us having a different view of what it all means. We can still learn something from the more mainstream arguments about these customs (in the context of modern religion), but asks us also to listen to other views as well. We believe it to be incredibly important to remain open to questioning things we do, especially as we start to pass on traditions to the next generations.

So here are just a few nuggets of our research. We have included reasons we believe the Sun has remained in vital importance to every human, and living thing, on our planet. We believe the sun has inspired many beautiful things, and as things evolve, new stories invited new viewpoints, but we sometimes lose the original stories, and just hum along to a tune with lost lyrics. The most important thing is feeling secure enough to be being able to question assumptions in your own life, and CHOOSING a path forward without fear, guilt or repression.

This kind of exploration takes time. It takes courage. It means possibly needing to break down some barriers and ask uncomfortable questions. We truly believe this kind of work can help people from all walks of life be just a little more tolerant of the “other”.

We are living in an amazing time in her-story when we have the freedom AND ACCESS to this Big DATA of information known as the internet. I believe we are in the midst of a cultural movement that will break open all the blocked structures of the recent past, to reveal more about ourselves than we were, or ever could have been, told about ourselves.

This blending of unique backgrounds into new perspectives will be such a beautiful process, if we choose to embark.

If anyone has further ideas or comments, would like to have a chat about this, support in any way, or are just interested to learn/share more, drop us an email at twasthenightstory@gmail.com. We have been setting up podcast episodes, in person events, and have many more books waiting in the wings. One day we will have more time to devote to a more regular email list and other fun stuff. For now, our passion project is second only to our first priority: raising our sons in a more aware, loving, environment. We look forward to hearing from you!