On December 27, Freemasons celebrate The Feast of St. John the Evangelist. As we first learned in our 1st Degree lecture, he is one of the two Christian patron saints of modern #Freemasonry.
This day also marks the Winter Solstice that happens every year when the Sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees. In other words, when the North Pole is tilted farthest – 23.5 degrees – away from the Sun, delivering the fewest hours of sunlight of the year.
Freemasons follow an ancient tradition and celebrate twice a year the so-called Solsticial Feasts, also known as Festivities of St. John, the Evangelist in December and the Baptist in June.
Freemasons, however, do not celebrate solstices for astronomical reasons, nor in remembrance of a christian or pagan rite. The invariable course of the planets in the Heavens, the eternal cycle of yearly solstices and equinoxes constitute the most striking demonstration of the order that reigns in Nature; an order that reflects an act of the Creation.
Ordo ab Chao
From the Book of Genesis it is very clear that God separates light from darkness, the heavens from the earth, the day from the night. Order, therefore, lies at the base of reason, logic, all sciences, and all creation. That is why we represent the divinity in our Masonic Order as the Great Architect of the Universe. The great builder who brings order in place of chaos.
We celebrate the Solstices in homage to the immutable order of Nature that reminds us, day after day, year after year, that our lives must not be left to the rule of chance, chaos, madness, but to that of order, reason, logic, mathematics, and Geometry, the queen of Sciences, represented in our Temples by the letter G placed above the Master’s chair in the Lodge.