The Quiet Turning of the Year December 19 2025

December in Waldorf schools gathers its meaning around the approach of the Winter Solstice. As the days shorten and the natural world seems to withdraw, the mood turns inward. Classrooms grow quieter, movements slower, and the presence of candlelight more intentional. Children experience this season not as something to rush through, but as a time to pause, to notice, and to feel the depth of the year before its turning.

The festivals of light that surround the solstice speak less about explanation and more about reassurance. Light appears again and again as a gentle companion to darkness, not opposing it, but illuminating it from within. Children sense that even at the year’s deepest point, something is quietly changing. The return of the light begins not with drama, but with patience and trust. This rhythm is absorbed through repeated experience rather than words.

Over time, the solstice leaves children with a lasting inner picture: that life moves in cycles, and that darkness is never an ending. The slow strengthening of the light after the solstice becomes an image of resilience and hope, carried forward into their growing lives. In Waldorf schools, the Winter Solstice is not simply marked on a calendar, but lived as a meaningful turning, one that teaches children to tend their own inner light and to recognize its quiet power in the world.

May we all comprehend the Light this year and hear, within our hearts, the songs of its coming. At first they may arrive as a whisper, but as the days turn and the light grows stronger, they can grow into joyful song, carrying us toward warmth, brightness, and renewed life.

I strive to learn
To learn to give
To give my heart
To all I see.
I see that I
With heart aflame,
Aflame with Love,
Can light the world!

— verse for ending main lesson, Rudolf Copple