On the longest night of the year, a procession of wicked creatures fiercely takes over the horizon on their galloping ghost horses. Hooves smash the midnight sky, echoing through the empty streets. Families huddle together in candle-lit rooms as the smell of a crackling Yule log lingers in the air. There are lessons to learn in these moments of quiet and togetherness. The figures in the sky are spirits from another realm, harbingers of death and destruction to come.
This is the Wild Hunt—an ancient Yuletide legend that has captured the minds of poets, academics, and folklorists for centuries. Interpretations of the story are varied. Some say it is led by Odin, the Norse god, along with his ghost riders, to capture the souls of those who cause harm. Others say it is an army of women blessing good homes or cursing the cruel and greedy. Legendary folklorist Jacob Grimm modified the folk tale in the 1835 book, Deutsche Mythologie, taking his own liberties and twisting it to suit his personal beliefs. According to folklore historian Ronald Hutton, Grimm manufactured his own telling of the Wild Hunt legend, veering from disjointed folk stories common in Pagan societies, towards themes of racial superiority, nationalism, and militarism.
Upon reading about the wild hunt, I found myself asking—what moments of teaching do we have in our modern era? When politicians attack teachers and ban books and disregard the desire to change as “too radical”? The pain and discomfort that we experience in our day-to-day lives have been normalized, but a pause and some contemplation over this year’s solstice could help us emerge from the darkness differently. We have been severed from our connection to the planet and its lifeways, with capitalism and imperialism keeping us distracted and divided. Taking a moment to pause gives us an opportunity to rethread that connection.
Disconnection
Capitalism is a deeply individualistic system that has normalized disconnection and apathy toward suffering. We can see this hyperindividualism illustrated all times of the year, but especially now with the contradictions of Canadian Christmas. Pop culture and movies brand the holiday season as a time of gift-giving, of counting blessings, and of gratitude for family. And yet, these customs don’t apply to everyone. Christmas hampers are gathered for those “in need”, but for the rest of the year those people are nothing more than a nuisance—or the test subjects of forced institutionalization and psychiatric incarceration. Politicians smile in photo ops with their canned goods to deliver to the poor but then go on to advocate for policies that criminalize poverty. Would the ghost riders of the wild hunt give this hypocrisy a pass?
Blustery, dangerous and deadly cold, Canada does not have a solution for its people on the streets, despite considering itself a nation of tolerance. In reality, people are turned away from overflowing shelters. Even finding a space to offer refuge is a struggle for extreme weather shelters, not because there is a shortage of space but because neighbouring residents often oppose it. In 2023, the Cowichan Valley community centre on Vancouver Island used one of its rooms as an emergency shelter from the cold, but parents whose children play sports in the nearby arena objected. In a moral panic, the local hockey association and others argued their reasons for opposing the shelter. The potential for death and human suffering mattered less than their discomfort in witnessing the depths of poverty caused by late-stage capitalism.
Cold is extremely dangerous and people die without shelter, but the state does nothing meaningful to solve it. In 2023, a story broke in the CBC that revealed how common frostbite and amputation is among people living on the street in the cold winter months, with a dramatic spike in amputations in 2021 and 2022. Being in community and camping together reduces the risk of death and violent assaults for unhoused people, especially in winter. The Canadian Human Rights Commission released a report in February 2024 explaining that encampments are a way for unhoused people to “claim their human rights and meet their most basic needs.” Knowing this, police still obey orders to violently displace unhoused people by conducting inhumane raids and brutal street sweeps on encampments. Breaking up encampments, disposing of personal items and tents, and relocating people perpetuates trauma among already marginalized and stigmatized communities, and can even lead to death. Violent displacement does not solve poverty. It does not solve homelessness.
This cruelty is avoidable, if only political will existed. Where is the political will? Any progress made toward alleviating poverty has been violently incremental, causing what Friedrich Engels referred to as social murder. In the Yuletide wild hunt, murderers’ souls would be swept up as the ultimate form of cosmic justice. In our world, it seems as though justice never comes.
Polarization
Though harmful and violent dogma should be challenged and critiqued, we should also realize that disputes among us—the working class—only benefit fascist politicians and billionaires.
While we are busy battling over ideology (sometimes, with good reason), the ultra-rich keep getting richer and benefitting from the resurgence of neo-fascism, brought in by theatrical and deceitful politicians. Authoritarian figures like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, John Rustad, and Pierre Poilievre use fascist tactics like undermining and defunding education, attacking the free press, encouraging ultranationalism, and scapegoating immigrants and Indigenous peoples, to keep their voter base in a constant mode of distrust and division. This keeps the power balance working in their favour. This isn’t the first time in human history where oligarchs thought they could rule society in whatever way they pleased. In the medieval period, there would have been communal uprisings and revolts against this type of oppression.
Of course, it’s not just far-right politicians who are to blame for the current state of affairs. Liberal-leaning politicians like Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh use progressive language and co-opting of collectivist values to hide their pro-corporate interests that only benefit the elite. Politicians who do advocate for causes that challenge the social hierarchy have limited power and influence in the colonial establishment, and can even find themselves kicked out of caucus if they express views that do not align with the party leadership, as was the case for MPP Sara Jama who spoke out against Israeli violence in Gaza.
No, the Liberals won’t make us eat bugs as the Conservative Party claims; they do not care what we eat, or if we eat at all. Food insecurity in Canada has become so severe that the 18th century disease scurvy has re-emerged. Canada’s political parties are sending us messages about how bad the future will be unless we cast our vote for them, but things are bad enough now. No party is offering the real, transformative solutions we need to navigate the polycrises that are threatening our survival as a species.
We cannot succumb to their identity politicking any longer.
The climate crisis is perhaps the most existential manifestation of political abandonment. Scientists have known for decades that pollution from capitalist industry, the military industrial complex, and unfettered consumerism has a devastating warming effect on our planet that is leading to biodiversity collapse. And yet they have done nothing to adequately stop the problem. As our animal kin and the planet warn us of the coming ecological disasters, the billionaire class continues to pollute and destroy the earth as they see fit. But one day perhaps, they will understand that climate change will transcend class borders.
Our wild hunt is social uprising
The cruelty and barbarism that the world is experiencing—from wars and genocides to the class struggle at home in Canada—has unleashed something that oligarchs perhaps did not intend: a deep rage at the machine, the whispers of class consciousness. In 2024, students around the world occupied universities to demand divestment from the Israeli apartheid machine. It was no business as usual while Palestinians are slaughtered in Gaza and while our nations fund ecocide, scholasticide, and genocide.
On December 5, Amnesty International concluded Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide. Amnesty International asks the questions we should all be asking: what have our political leaders done? What are the worldly institutions doing to end this genocide and hold its inflictors accountable? We must demand justice.
In the words of Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard, “No war criminal should ever be allowed to walk free, undisturbed. Fearless. Let’s put all our instruments into action.”
National tribunals, international criminal court, universal jurisdiction. The wild hunt is coming.
There are other forms of resistance brewing, too. All across the country, Canada’s United Postal Workers (CUPW) are fighting the ‘gigification’ of essential public services, writes striking letter carrier, Kieran Delamont. Though the media and Canada Post attempt to paint the strike as “greedy”, it is more than just a dispute over wages—it is workers taking a principled stand against the oppression of the capitalist system that insists on the ongoing erosion of workers’ rights. CUPW is fighting for job security, rather than the precarious gig economy that prioritizes profits for CEOs over the wellbeing and sustainability of workers. The Labour Minister and the Canadian Industrial Relations Board has ordered postal workers to return to work without meeting the demands of the union, which it describes in a recent statement as the right to “fight for fair wages, safe working conditions and to retire with dignity.”
Do not listen to the billionaires and ideologues who seek to divide: it should not be “woke” to stand in solidarity, to care for each other, to want our relatives to live long and dignified lives, to reconnect with the earth. It should not be “radical” to reclaim what we are owed: profits from the products we produce, safe and affordable housing, access to healthy outdoor spaces, free public transportation that can take us anywhere, free education, free baby formula and other essential items, and the ability to thrive in this world that we have built. Us, the workers—not Justin Trudeau of the Leaurentian elite; not Pierre Poilievre, the career politician.
Us—the plumbers, the aestheticians, the teachers, the doctors, the nurses, the electricians, the factory workers, the caregivers, the janitors, the community leaders, the mental health workers, the writers, the knowledge-keepers.
This winter solstice is the darkness before a period of renewal. May we show the oligarchs that we will one day soon lead our own wild hunt, to restore our connection with the planet and with each other.
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