Last week, the Christian Science Monitor looked at the war in Iraq on its 1,000th day. The chart showing the number of insurgent attacks is depressing. Comparisons to other wars are enlightening.

I’d like to wish everyone a very happy Winter Solstice.

Every day since the first day of summer, half a year ago, the Sun has risen and set a little bit farther south, and the noonday Sun has been a little bit lower in the sky. The days have grown shorter and the nights longer — at least here in the northern hemisphere. Today, that changes. The Sun stops its southward movement. Tomorrow, and each day for half a year, the Sun will rise a little higher, the days will grow a little longer, and the nights shorter.

Imagine how happy the sky watchers of ancient times must have felt when they realized that the Sun was returning — that the cold and dark of winter would not last forever. What a celebration there must have been then!

Those ancient people almost certainly believed the earth was flat. How do you suppose they explained the movements of the Sun that governed the seasons? We know that some cultures worshipped the Sun, and made sacrifices to it. Greek mythology says the Sun was the chariot of the god Apollo, but it seems unlikely that many Greeks actually believed that. There were countless other ancient cultures about whom we know little or nothing. I would be fascinated to know how they balanced reason and fancy in their explanations of what they saw.

Ancient people weren’t stupid. They just didn’t know some things that we know now about the reason for the seasons: that the earth is round, and orbits the Sun once a year; that it rotates on its axis, which is tilted about 23.5º relative to the plane of that orbit, so that the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun for half the year, and away from the sun for the other half.

How much effort did ancient cultures put into observing and describing the phenomenon, and how much into weaving intricate flights of fancy attempting to explain it? How many years did it take for those flights of fancy to become dogma? Did they persecute those who doubted? How much has human society lost when mystic certainty has trumped logic and doubt? How often, and at what cost, does dogma triumph over truth today?

Oh, well. You don’t have to be a pagan or a Zoroastrian to appreciate the Solstice. The Sun is returning to the north. There will be brighter days ahead.