Community The Season to Celebrate Wintertime

By Pete McBride

Astronomy may seem like a weird way to preface an article on winter-time festivals and traditions around the world. However, “the Sun; our Sun; a Sun” has figured prominently in many theologies, religions, cults, customs, practices, and belief systems throughout human history in relation to wintertime celebrations – especially those related to what we now call the Winter (or hibernal) Solstice.

This event occurs every (solar) year when either of the Earth’s poles reaches its maximum degree of tilt away from the Sun during Earth’s orbit. Although this extremity lasts only a moment, “Solstice” refers to the entire day of its occurrence, that day being astronomically the day of the year with the fewest hours of daylight (i.e. the shortest day and the longest night).

In 2024, in the northern hemisphere, Winter Solstice (considered the first day of winter) will be Saturday, December 21 at 4:21 a.m. EST.

From prehistory, across many cultures – especially those that venerate “sun gods” – this cosmic event has spurred festivals and rites that symbolize the death and the rebirth of the “dying sun” or “sun god” and the sense of new beginnings that such a solar resurrection has prompted.

The timing of this solar phenomenon has been associated with many cultural practices around the world, prompting feelings of solemnity and joy. It has led to such things as the positioning of ancient monuments like Stonehenge, the timing of planting cycles, and traditions like a new year with feasting, house-cleanings, fresh starts, and birthing.

Just a few festivals, rites, customs, beliefs, traditions, and cultural practices celebrating Winter Solstice and the start of winter include:

Saturnalia

This ancient Roman festival honoring Saturn, god of abundance and agriculture, was held December 17 of the Julian calendar as early as 133 BCE; it was later extended seven days to December 23.

Varying by location, the period celebrated a figure called the “Lord of Misrule” with feasting, partying, and drunkenness.

Christmas

Although little is left to be said about this holiday, the Roman Church began formally celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 in 336 CE.

Emperor Constantine chose the date to undermine pagan celebrations such as Saturnalia and Sol Invictus (“rebirth of the unconquered Sun”).

Some early Christians did not celebrate Jesus’s birth (or did so only in early spring) and the December date was not widely accepted in the eastern half of Roman Christianity, which celebrated the same on January 6, only becoming a major Christian festival in the 9th century CE.

Pope Gregory XIII fixed the date of December 25 when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582.