SOLSTICE

by Whispering Jack

For the record I am not a Pagan.

Nor am I a Laidley or a Crocker either. Boom, boom.

OK. That's the joke out of the way.

I'm writing this on the morning of the winter solstice and, as it happens, I've just been out to an early breakfast where I sat drinking my coffee intently reading a Sunday Age article entitled "Pagans party as winter solstice brings hope"

It's about how some of the pagans of this state like Gavin Andrew go about celebrating the winter solstice which is the shortest day (9 hours and 32 minutes) in the southern hemisphere. In the northern half of the world, it's the longest day. The northern pagans will observe the summer solstice today.

Andrew and his fellow pagans (according to the last census there are 30,000 of them in Australia) rose early today to watch the sun rise at 7.36am and then to celebrate with a bloody good feast and a drink or two of mead, the original alcoholic drink of the prehistoric pagans, often consumed warm. This is the pagan way of giving thanks for what they have in this world - a warm home, shelter, food and friends.

As I read on, I was beginning to like this pagan thing more and more although the ritual of going in and out of the spiral seemed a little over the top to someone who had previously shown little interest in paganism. However, the other stuff's not too shabby at all - music, poetry, shadow-puppetry and fire twirling. You've got to love fire twirling!

Then, I started to think how football world has let the pagans down badly with its decision to mark the solstice with only one game which happens to be an unremarkable fixture that nobody's interested in although, after a day of getting shickered on the mead, it probably doesn't matter anyway.

The President of PAN (Pagan Awareness Network) is a David Garland (no, I'm not sure if he's any relation) and he reckons that, despite the census figures there are about 200,000 pagans in Australia and that most of them will be marking today's significance.

"It's a celebration that the days are getting longer. It gives us hope," he says.

Well, I'm so impressed with the hope aspect that I've decided to jump on board with my own brand of paganism for Demon fans called "baileyism". After all, our most precious commodity as Melbourne supporters these days is "hope".

We baileys won't spend the day standing around prehistoric rock circles chanting mumbo jumbo about coming cosmic events but, after this half season from hell, we won't mind the feasting and (especially) the drinking part. So at 3.45 pm today, the exact time when the tilt of the earth's axis is inclined away from the sun in the southern hemisphere we will raise our glasses of piping hot mead in thanks for what we have at the Melbourne Football Club.

Hope.

Well, hope isn't all of it. We also have a club that has survived (albeit we need a couple million bucks to jump into the kick rather quickly), we have new sponsorships with emerging enterprises and we have closer relationships with the MCC and the AFL. We have the AFL's youngest list including some exceptional, exciting young Indigenous players and an exciting future. That's not to mention our cosmic comic game plan that some can't comprehend while others believe it to be evolving a bit like Geelong's (watch them play tonight and compare it with our most recent efforts against Collingwood and Essendon) except that we change it every week for the third quarter in order to avoid being predictable. We're also spreading our wings into the rustic, rural areas like Casey where we can practice baileyism on crisp, cold mornings in open fields with gardlands (there's that word again) of flowers and skipping among the cow pads.

For all these things, we can gladly offer our thanks because we are patient and there are better days to come when our young team has many more games of football pumped into those presently scrawny legs and emaciated, thin supermodel-like bodies. Incidentally, today's feasting and drinking should help them on that score too!

The baileys will of course be celebrating long and hard on this day of the winter solstice but our real big gig - the "Gift of Light" will have to wait until the summer solstice when the bailey community will be able to conduct a special pagan ritual of thanks for the gifts of the national draft and the pre season draft. By then, we baileys will be looking forward to a new time of more hope and a new season for our Demons and the long, cold and dark days of 2009 will be over.