Dear St. Christopher’s Family, 
Traditionally the first real weekend in September marks the end of summer. In a quite literal sense it marks the ‘sunset’ of the year as the days grow shorter and our anticipation of a new year starts to take hold. Around the world, people celebrate these times, the equinoctes and solstices, that mark a change in the light that comes into the world. This is the origin of all of the fall bonfires that take place in the fall as celebrations of harvest and Oktoberfest, or, more recently, of Homecoming at colleges around the country. Apart from just the fun of having a big fire, we have, from ancient times, used these celebrations to mark the times when the sunlight grows shorter and shorter. We take matters into our own hands with the fire, and literally chase the darkness away ourselves as we wait for the sun to return.
 
The language we use about ourselves makes a difference in this season: we can talk about ourselves as ‘coming to a close’ as 2025 does, or ‘becoming something new’ with the arrival of 2026. The fall can be a time of increasing dark and lamenting the close of something, or it can serve as a chance to take our future into our hands and chase that darkness away.