Why do we burn the sun?

OK, so why DO we burn the sun?

Time to ruffle the feathers we wear in our hair and in our hats.

Good time to ask.
Life full, as it is for 10 days now, of bending and sticking, thinking and planning, papering and painting, arty farty and engineering and making do – making the Sun.
I made one for the first time last year – in a long line of crafty improvisors.

And had to face the weird, cathartic, ambivalent moment we makers have all faced when it goes up in flames …

but …

it “completed” … it was made to burn.

It was horrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
All that work – but that was what it was for.
And I roared along with everyone else.

The Neo-pagans are distraught – and they’re right – it’s “wrong”.
The logical humanists are appalled – and they’re right – it tells a messed-up story.
The historians are baffled – no one ever did this – and perhaps they’re right – it’s just another invention.

Yep yep yep.

But …

The foundation story goes:
The sun is made from willow and paper – trees –
we burn them – turn them into something new – something ethereal, spiritual –
we send a smokey, delicate, arboreal message out to the green things in hibernation all around us –
the year is turning – spring will come – be not afeared – life will be renewed.

But I feel there’s something else:

Like the scary faces we carve at Halloween – we’re playing a dangerous daring game with sympathetic magic – by declaring the sun as our most urgent need when we fear it might be abandoning us – the world standing still –
we burn it almost to dare it to come back –
we say (in mock hubris) “we don’t need you” – we take the risk (as though we had a choice)
and all the time we know, we believe, we trust, that the year will turn.
And it does.
Every time.
And Spring comes and summer and the year turns … oblivious.

And, definitely, more important than all these things – we do this because it has become a tradition.
The why isn’t actually the point.
It doesn’t need to make sense – that is the logic of the mechanical age (it has its uses but also its curses) –
our faith verifies it.
And the more outrageous it is, the harder to explain or believe … perhaps the purer our faith.

And all the effort we invest is of enormous value just as it is – we’re doing it for something outside of and bigger than ourselves – our community.

Maybe it is a bit silly – but it’s one day a year – indulge us – one day when the world is turned upside down – it’s Montol.

There are many things we don’t understand and perhaps there are some things we don’t have to understand – willingly, openly, oppositionally, choosing to share a belief is part of what binds us together, makes a community sound.

We don’t have to tell dubious stories about ancient occult family traditions, dubious initiations, implausible survivals – what we’ve got, invented though it might be, some of it quite recently, like many other stories, is more than enough … and we can face the world with what we’ve got.
Because for us … it works.

This is not a sermon but a call out for a conversation, a debate and discussion.

Pile on.