Fortune favors the prepared mind. –Louis Pasteur
By Lambert Strether of Corrente
I was going to take some pictures at a Winter Solstice bonfire last night and post them here — because there is a finance angle, I promise — but the organizers cancelled it because of the ice storm. So, herewith a picture of an alternative source of light and heat: My wood stove:
Nice to know I’ll still have heat if the power lines go down, from the weight of accreted ice, I hasten to add, not the collapse of Western civilization up here at the end of the supply chain.
Catching myself: “Down,” “weight,” “collapse,” “end” — it’s almost like I’m letting the cold and the dark get to me; only natural, since after all the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. But look on the bright side: The days are only going to get longer from here on out, all the way out past the day planting season begins, so far into the future we might as well not even worry about the days getting shorter again, ever.
My favorite Christmas Carol is It Came Upon a Midnight Clear for the following lines:
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold
I love the image of the sky tearing open, and great shining beings leaning down through the rent; it’s more about the light than the music, with me. I’d include a YouTube, but the rendition I have in mind is my mother’s, as we would sing round the Steinway on Christmas Eve, and Bing Crosby (and Sinatra (and Ella Fitzgerald)) just don’t compare; they don’t soar, as angels should do. Gone the Steinway, gone my mother, gone the family, of course; ice and sleet ticking at my lit window….
Still, Naked Capitalism being a finance blog, we should remember the effects that the loss and regaining of light can have on us. From the Atlanta Fed [PDF]:
Winter Blues: A SAD Stock Market Cycle
Abstract: This paper investigates the role of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in the seasonal time-variation of stockmarket returns. SAD is an extensively documented medical condition whereby the shortness of the days in fall and winter leads to depression for many people. Experimental research in psychology and economics indicates that depression, in turn, causes heightened risk aversion. Building on these links between the length of day, depression,and risk aversion, we provide international evidence that stock market returns vary seasonally with the length of the day, a result we call the SAD effect. Using data from numerous stock exchanges and controlling for well-known market seasonals as well as other environmental factors, stock returns are shown to be significantly related to the amount of daylight through the fall and winter. Patterns at different latitudes and in both hemispheres provide compelling evidence of a link between seasonal depression and seasonal variation in stock returns: Higher latitude markets show more pronounced SAD effects and results in the Southern Hemisphere are six months out of phase,as are the seasons. Overall, the economic magnitude of the SAD effect is large.
Remarkable that the Atlanta Fed wrote that; I thought only New Englanders like me got SAD. Let me close with a story about that may be useful to some of you. Back when I lived in Boston, I was taking the Red Line home over the Charles around 5:00 PM, in the dark, feeling tired, and cranky, and not exactly like there was an elephant’s foot on my heart, but burdened, and wondering why, why, and idly perusing a random article — no eye contact! — in Scientific American that’s so old I can’t find it online and which had a checklist for SAD symptoms, one of which was a craving for starch. And the light bulb went on: I’d just eaten a whole bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. And I was suffering from all the other items on the checklist too! The kicker? I already knew I was prone to SAD, had known it for years. But it took a chance reading on the train to connect my own knowledge to my own experience. SAD, and its evil, monstrous cousin, depression, are indeed insidious and subtle adversaries. So take care of yourself, get plenty of light, and remember that the days are getting longer!
Oh yeah, I forgot about the whole birthday thing. But I think the pagans got this one right. Also too, full spectrum lamps, and so what about the placebo effect?
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Happy Solstice Lambert.
The “Birthday Thing” is real big here Down South. So what if the early Church Fathers stole the pagan midwinter holiday and incorporated it into their up and coming religion. The animating idea is the same; Rebirth.
The SAD phenomenon teaches the lesson that we are creatures of our environments, not ever victorious conquerors. What a wonderful world we’d have if the “Titans of Finance” ever partook of a little humility.
I’m fine with trimming trees, Santa Claus, elves who want to be dentists, candy canes, overindulging, even the Nutcracker and the occasional choir. Just stop jamming that Christ stuff into my government and down my throat!
nave of the world, you cast me thus
born in bleak hours of winter’s dusk
on sheets of ice, cold as clay
alabaster skin blue veined
flee pale sun beyond amazon, flee
linger there three days, i beckon thee
return to bring thy blessed light
heal our dark worldish pain
sacred oak neath ice, lowly bend
sacred herbs mistletoe and holly lend
your everlasting green to hope
will ever life to earth return?
fortuitous those in autumn bred
to slumber in summer’s heather bed
but to me in darkest hour your year begins
mid winter pin you all your dreams
yet I, ice born mid dimmest light
enamored, swathed, in deepest night
rejoice ye all as seasons turn
not me, but spring and summer yearn
come all ye, behold the child today
mask dread, feign cheer in holiday
marked forever in hostile northern climes
o sun return, you whisper, my lullaby
~pabruce
My Gratitude & Best Wishes to All at NC!
(The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. Carlin)
Yes, happy solstice, and lest we get all too birthday-happy – there is Krampus, too. The just deserts…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gruss_vom_Krampus.jpg
Depression I consider a precious ally, not an adversary (although, from some perspective it would look they’re the same…). I mean, what else is there to remind us that really, we will be judged not by how we look and what we have? Depression is the process that keeps the house clean and sparkly – if I let it. Somewhere in our bones, there’s that knowing part, that will not let us rest in the delusional safe havens our culture has built. I bless that part, it has chased me out of deadly traps. Like Krampus, a fierce, ruthless lover that refuses to let my soul die.
And a bit of real work; building an electropsychogenic bridge. http://theperambulatorblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/20-12-13-53rd-3rd/
Mixed and disturbing seasons – barren winters and hoped-for springs – was wonderfully captured by T.S. Eliot in his poem “Little Gidding,” which opens in midwinter, at the winter solstice, as the sun is setting over the water near the chapel of Little Gidding, a seventeenth-century Anglican monastery in south England. Everything is dead yet blazing with the sun’s fire:
“Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?”
– T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets
Thank you for this. The Four Quartets are a well of mystery, beauty, wisdom, and wonder.
I walk in the mornings when the weather allows and on sunny days I have been stopping and, with my sunglasses on and my eyes closed, have turned directly towards the low, cooler sun of winter to let the light from the sun imprint itself behind my eyeballs and I feel as though I am bathing in the sunlight!
We have a solstice tree and every year, at the exact time of the Winter Solstice, unless it’s the middle of the night, one of us turns the tree topper from Moon and Star to Sun. In 2010 I photographed the turning: http://peoninchief.blogspot.com/2010/12/solstice.html
Happy Solstice All.
My Best Wishes to you in the New Year, Lambert. This is a difficult time of year, but it does end in glorious spring.
Read that getting outside during these short daylight hours for even ten minutes can help alleviate SAD.
“kumiageru mizu ni haru tatsu hikari kana
In these dark waters
Drawn up from my frozen well…
Glittering of spring” (Ringai)
Spent lots of time outside today in Toronto, after the ice storm. I scraped my walk, a neighbours’ walk, then another neighbour’s, then another neighbour’s car (for tomorrow), then anothers. I went a couple of blocks away, a friend with fibromyalgia, not too good at ice-scraping, but a fine knitter and fabric artist. I scraped and shovelled her walk, then asked her about salt or sand, she said no, she uses birdseed. Ho! Birdseeded her walk then went inside for sherry and ginger cookies, and a Yule bag of goodies — a pine Christmas tree! a black and red knitted/crafted silk scarf! — excellent, I am having Christmas dinner with some anarchist friends, to one of whom I will probably re-gift this. Some sherry-laden Scottish-style ‘Chrissie cake’! This went to a neighbour family, Polish, with whom I scraped still another neighbour’s driveway. A turned wooden Christmas ornament! which is probably as old as my house, that is 150 years, give or take a few.
I am content, and look forward to longer days and many more Nekkid C’s. Thank you Yves. Hint to me and to all, $52 is a dollar a week, and excellent value.
My dear Lambert, je suis desolee, I can’t come see you this time, but you just wait, one of these days I will show up at your door ready to turn the compost pile or mulch the fandango trees. But be warned, I want to see those kibble bushes in person.
Merry anything at all, to everyone everywhere.
My favorite Christmas carol was always “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”:
Peace on Earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.
But I’m also very fond of “Good King Wenceslas”:
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath’ring winter fuel
“Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know’st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”
“Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither.”
Page and monarch forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
And the bitter weather
“Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, my good page
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.”
In his master’s steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed
Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.
When we would sing in The Methodist Temple in downtown Chicago and I was a young lad of 12 singing tenor, we would sing many songs of Christmas. One I liked was “The Holly and the Ivy.” It is hard to pick one fav. but this one has meaning beyond just words.
The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To be our sweet Saviour
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly bears a bark
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to redeem us all.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
The holly and the ivy
Now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir
Best of Holidays and be safe in this world of unsafe realities.
Bill
Lambert; re: SAD
Buy Chromalux light bulbs. I wouldn’t accept any other brand if I were you; many have tried to copy them, but you need rare earths. They are made for SAD in Finland (now manufactured in China I think, which makes them cheaper). Oh yeah, they last 5,000 hours each. I’ve got some that are still working after 20 years. Great on a dimmer, so put the max wattage in each socket. Fluorescent Chromalux available, they’re as good as grow lights; mine have lasted 20 years as well with daily use.
Ah! Ah! Beautiful is the mother
Ah! Ah! Beautiful is the child
and
till he appeared
and the soul felt its worth
A beautiful version of the Wexford Carol as arranged and performed by Loreena McKennitt and her fellow musicians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6vOASt2RU
Extracted from her album “To Drive the Cold Winter Away”, highly recommended by yours truly.
Peace to one and all.
Like many, I suffer severe SAD. I think it’s important that we remember, though, that there was a time, in the pre-industrial era, when there was very little work to be done, in wintertime. People got drunk, invented, communicated, fornicated, and, basically relaxed.
But oh, how times have changed! ‘Work’ [ie, filling the pockets of oligarchic rentiers, in order to ‘make a living’] is required all year long, allowing a mere day or two of respite to con$$um€ and to celebrate the emergence of one or more mythical creatures.
I’m with all of my fellow SAD’ers in heart and mind … but it’s important to remember what the remedy has always been and why it’s no longer available.