Look on the bright side
AS IT has done intermittently for the last 5,000 years, the arrival of the winter solstice on December 21 will bring together a disparate group of people to Co Meath to celebrate the end of the darkest days of winter. They will re-enact a ritual at Newgrange that began 600 years before the famous pyramids at Giza were erected, and 1,000 years before the great rocks at Stonehenge were heaved into position. Newgrange has long been associated with the mythical Tuatha De Danann, is mentioned in the Fionn mac Cumhaill story of The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne, and there are legends that the kings of Tara were buried here 2,000 years after it was built.
Perhaps the celebration of the winter solstice at the megalithic tomb is the only ritual that can claim such a long ancestral lineage, while still retaining a symbolic meaning relevant today.
