Saint Scholastica got the female religious order thing started somewhere between 480 and 547 A.D., and in the world today, there are just over 700,000 nuns.

My mother, Nurse Vivian, had a cousin she called Jetty. Around the same time that my mother left Johnstown, PA to attend Kings County Nursing School,in Brooklyn Jetty entered the convent.

Sister Jetty was a holy woman -- and a feminist in a black habit with a white wimple. She said she wore it because it reminded her that you could only see light when you contrasted it with shadow. I once saw Mother Theresa in Greenwich Village and she didn’t look half as virtuous. My last memory of Sister Jetty: at my mother’s wake, the priest didn’t show up. She grabbed me by the elbow and said, “We don’t need a clergyman. I’ll do the service. You do the eulogy.”

But there are fewer nuns in the world than there used to be. Around 1965, in the United States, for example, there were about 180,000. Nowadays there are less than 50,000. Less than 1% of these women are under the age of 40.

Several orders have merged or died out. Sister Lil, the only Ursuline nun living in San Francisco, said, “I used to worry about who would turn out the lights, but not anymore.”

This was an odd turn of phrase, and it haunted me. What else would we be turning the lights out on and who would turn them out? Sister Lil might not be worried, but I was.

We live in an age of doubt, where we question what we used to respect, institutions like the police, democratic elections and the church. In many ways they have failed us, and so we have lost our faith in them.

So I wonder: Who would turn out our lights? There are only four Fisher-Paulsons in the world, and two of us are in our 60s. I’m the last known repository of Nurse Vivian’s apple pie recipe. Unless one of our sons gets serious with a girl who likes antiques, who will inherit Brian’s family Bible? Or Nana’s opal ring?

Who will turn out the lights of the blow-mold nativity scene that has glowed in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior twenty Decembers? Unlikely to be our sons Aidan or Zane.

More than 10,000 years ago, humans noted the length of days followed a predictable pattern, that for roughly half the year, we got more and more daylight, and then the trend reversed. Either end of that cycle became known as the sun (sol) standing still (sister), or solstice. The summer solstice had the longest daylight of the year, the winter solstice the longest darkness.

There are monuments in Newgrange in Ireland, and at Stonehenge in England, that are aligned with the sunrise on the winter solstice. The Jews celebrate Hanukkah to commemorate the battle with the Maccabees by lighting candles, finding light in even the darkest of times. In Iran, Yalda was celebrated at the feast of Mithra, the sun god.

The Romans celebrated Saturnalia. Emperor Constantine, who wanted to convert everyone to Christianity, rebranded the holiday as Christmas.

Whether we burn the pagan yule log or string lights around the tree, we celebrate this miracle, that dusk may be coming faster than ever, but the dawn indeed will come.

Some days that’s hard to believe in. The light has gone out on Lucca’s Deli, for instance. And the Western black rhinoceros. And Cable Car Joe’s.

But for some things to begin, other things have to end. The world had to change. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be married to another man, and I wouldn’t have adopted sons, and those sons would not have been young men of color, and we wouldn’t have the rainbow family that we have.

So Sister Lil, as usual, got the sentiment right. Don’t worry about turning off the lights. Instead, make something worth believing in.

There may not be a whole lot of nuns anymore, but there are inspirational, inspired women, like women I know: Sasb, Terry Asten Bennett, Sarah and Jill. They might not practice religion, but they practice spirituality, whether that be through tarot cards, quilting, miniature ponies or Ru Paul.

Although we call Dec. 21 the solstice, the sun does not stand still, but rather hurtles through the heavens per usual. The question isn’t “Who will turn out the lights?” The light never really goes off. It just changes.

Have yourself a merry little solstice. May your hearts be light.