Across Pagandom, an unexpected trope recurs again and again at the Winter Solstice: the segregation of the sexes.

The Great Dance of the Wheel

The heart of our Midwinter's Eve observance is the Great Dance of the Wheel.

Two concentric circles. Inside, the men, facing out. Outside, around them, the women, facing in.

They dance to the same song: the old, old song that tells the story of the Sun's life, death, and rebirth.

During the verses, the circles revolve in opposite directions, alternating deosil and widdershins.

During the chorus, they dance toward, and then away from one another: four steps in, four step out.

This is the point of the ritual during which—as I expect from all good ritual—I generally experience the oceanic sense of immersion in the greater world around me.

Spear Dance

On Mother Night, the men of the North Country Theodish kindred retreat to the traff, a jerrybuilt outdoor shelter.

There they change, chant around the fire, and prepare to approach the house, where the women are busy with rites of their own, with the Hooden Horse, in the traditional Spear Dance.

After the Dance, the men and women sing back and forth to one another, improvising jesting verses.

Meanwhile, in the Hindu Kush...

Chaumós, the month-long Winter Solstice festival of the Kalasha, the last remaining Indo-European-speaking people to have practiced their traditional religion continuously since antiquity, is marked by a strict period of segregation of the sexes.

The men move out of the houses and sleep in the goat sheds. During the time of greatest sanctity immediately preceding the Solstice, sex is forbidden.

In a state of heightened ritual purity, the men and women dance separately, singing raunchy songs and aiming obscene jests at one another.

Among Pagans Old and New, the Winter Solstice tends to mark the end of the old cycle and the beginning of the new.

The segregation of the sexes that recurs so frequently at this time of year is redolent of what mythologist Mircea Eliade called in illo tempore: the return to the Dreamtime, the mythic time before sexual differentiation, out of which arises the new order of the world.

I am divided for the sake of union, says she.