The Third Act: Many Happy Returns

No sooner is holiday buying over, no sooner are living rooms out from under the jolly chaos of ribbons and wrapping paper, than we’re headed back to the malls and downtown shops with returns. Gift givers, I feel your pain. I know the ouch factor when you’ve spent hours agonizing over the perfect present, only for it to be summarily marched back to the store to be exchanged for something else. The season of giving makes way for the season of returning.

There’s a happier, less frenzied form of returning that also characterizes this time of year: the return of light, of long and longer days after the dark and darker days of October, November and December. Participating in the wide variety of centuries-old traditions celebrating light’s return, communities are glimmering, shimmering and glittering; downtowns are bedecked and bedazzled in strings of color. In neighborhoods, shrubs bloom with light and bare trees magically leaf out in twinkling stars. Light is cheer. Light is festivity. Light is hope. The shortest day of the year, December 21, is behind us.

Winter solstice annually marks not only the end of dark days, but also the day when the sun stops. (In Latin, solstitium means “sun stands still.”) Early civilizations saw this as a cause for fear, wonderment, awe and, ultimately, the celebration of the life-giving, crop-growing, spirit-lifting return of more daylight — as well as inspiration to create early versions of astrological observatories. Built in 3200 B.C., before Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, Ireland’s Newgrange is perfectly aligned with the winter solstice so that the sun shines through an opening in the roof, lighting up the inner chamber of the enormous mound. Peru’s famous Nazca lines, etched into the earth around 1700 A.D., also uncannily match up with winter solstice. So too do Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, the temple of Karnak and many others. And then there are the countless winter solstice festivities still observed around the world.

For Christians, the birth of Jesus is celebrated on December 25. That’s the same day ancient Romans used to mark the “birthday of the unconquered sun.” Iran’s Yalda festival honors Mithra, an angel of light, thought to have been born during solstice. China’s Dongzhi festival celebrates when winter’s darkness begins to give way to prehistoric light. Danes, Norwegians and Swedes gather for Juul, or Yule, to welcome the return of the sun god. Common to all is the invitation to take stock, to reflect — a warm-up for meaningful New Year’s resolutions.

On my recent December birthday, a card I received wished me: “Many happy returns.” “I’m down with that,” I thought to myself. “Lots more birthdays sound like a good thing.” But I have since learned that some, like actress and author Shirley MacLaine, interpret the phrase “many happy returns” differently — less a wish for more birthdays and more a reference to passing through many bodies on the way to a higher level of perfection, on the way to healing the cosmic soul. It all gives new meaning to the notion of meeting yourself coming and going, buying and returning! Historically, most civilizations, spiritual practices and religions have believed in a form of reincarnation. Hinduism, Buddhism, some streams of Judaism and a number of tribal societies are among those that still do.

MacLaine, 90, has long championed the notion of past lives and the migratory properties of the human soul. She claims she has lived in some form during the pre-Atlantis times, as a harem girl at a pasha’s house in Turkey, as an entertainer in Isfahan and a gypsy in Spain, according to Closer Weekly. She has been dismissed as a kook, her notions seen as untethered and eccentric. At the same time, she is credited for her role in starting the New Age movement in the 1970s. Always funny, fun and self-deprecating, at a 2017 Oscars event she acknowledged the applause with, “That’s the nicest reception I’ve had in 250,000 years,” according to Ruth La Ferla of The New York Times.

“Each of us has had multiple experiences in past lifetimes that equip our souls with memories and intuitions that can’t be explained any other way,” MacLaine states in her 2011 book, “I’m Over All That: And Other Confessions.” She has written 10 bestsellers on the subject. To MacLaine, death is a transformation — nothing more, nothing less. She’s well aware time is running out to satisfy all her curiosities about this life, but she is not afraid of dying. “I’m kind of interested in going there,” she is quoted as saying during a CBS interview in October. She says she looks forward to dying because then, on return, she can prove she was right all along.

—Poet and author Ellen Waterston is a woman of a certain age who resides in Bend. “The Third Act” is a series of columns on ageing and ageism.

This article appears in Source Weekly December 26, 2024.