How to Celebrate the Winter Solstice
The Winter Solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year. In the Northern hemisphere this will occur on Wednesday, December 21, 2022. The change in daylight that the Winter Solstice marks happens because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Each year the Earth travels around the Sun, when the Earths tilt is toward the sun there is Summer in that part of the world.
As the northernmost point of the Earth shifts away from the sun, days grow shorter in the Northern hemisphere. When that northernmost point is at its furthest reaches from the sun, the Winter Solstice occurs and then the wobble turns to the other direction bringing the north toward the sun and the length of the day grows.
As eclectic pagans our family celebrates the Winter Solstice and Yule each year. We’ve actually been celebrating in little ways for weeks now. We began noticing the shortening of daylight hours around the Equinox but once Thanksgiving passed, the real fun began as we brang out the decorations and splatter our red and green creations and family heirlooms around our living space.
A week before the Solstice our family celebrates St. Lucia’s day, a day which is a traditional Swedish holiday with possible Pagan origins. We celebrate by making St. Lucia buns which are sweet and tinged orange with saffron. The last few years we’ve made a batch for my preschool aged son to share at school.
This year we made our buns vegan (without egg or milk) so that all of his friends could partake. We also used calendula flowers to dye our buns instead of the traditional saffron because that’s what we grew in our garden. It was wonderful having the connection to talk about with my sons. The sun symbolism in the shape of the buns, playing with the sunshine we were mixing into the dough in the form of flowers from our garden. We talked about how this time spent sharing and creating together brings us joy in a cold and dark time.
There is also a wonderful book we like to share each year, Lucia and the Light by Phyillis Root. As part of her quest to find where the sun has gone, a young child, Lucia, has a run-in with a group of trolls. She tricks the trolls who have capture the sun and brings light back to the world.
With this story, a tasty bun and mug of something warm we look forward to the Winter Solstice the following week.
That brings us to the big day — the Winter Solstice. There is a myriad of ways to celebrate but these are a few of our favorites:
Make a feast. A feast is a great center piece to any celebration. In the case of the Winter Solstice, a feast of variety can be a way to celebrate the many blessings of the year past and to represent hope for many blessings for the year ahead.
This year we’re having a ramen bar with many toping choices — thanks to my friend Ivy for the inspiration from her recent dinner pictures :)
Meditate. Guided, silent, candle lit, etc. Former chief of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, Philip Corr-Gomm, had a great meditation for the Winter Solstice on his latest Tea with a Druid video on Youtube which took the listener on a journey to Newgrange.
Contemplation is also an appropriate celebration for this time of year. You might take some time to consider the past year — what you are grateful for, as well as what was difficult. Identify one thing you would like to spend more time/energy on in the coming year and at least one measurable action you can take to get you there.
Light up your home. You might decide to have a candlelight feast and when that is over blow out the candles and sit in the dark and silence for a moment. Relight the candles with each person at the the feast taking turns to light theirs.
With our kids we like to turn out all the lights in the house and then after a moment in the darkness race throughout the house turning on every single light again to symbolize the returning sun.
Watch the sunrise. As darkness falls we say goodbye to the setting sun and look forward to its return, born anew in the morning. The length of sunlight will grow every day until we once again reach the Summer Solstice when days start shortening again.
Waking up early on the Winter Solstice to watch the sunrise is a great novelty for young ones and for many adults too. You may wish to identify a spot on a hill when you can get that first glimpse of the sun as it breaks the horizon or you may find it enough to watch out your window.
If you don’t have a good vantage point for the sunrise, there is also a live stream of the sunrise at StoneHenge that will stream on December 22 — you can also watch it afterward at a time that is convenient for you.
Our family likes to shake bells on the morning after the solstice and bang drums to celebrate the reassurance that spring will come and that the growing things will flourish again in our part of the Earth.
Which leads me to my final point.
Spend time outdoors. While it can be unpleasant to be outdoors in the Winter — my fingers and toes went numb after being out for just 15 minutes today— it is still so good for you to be in nature. Being outdoors has a positive effect on mood and executive functioning (1) and beyond that, it is the best place to observe the changes occurring in the world throughout the year.
Spending time contemplating the Earth and Sun at the Winter Solstice can be of spiritual importance no matter if you have a religious path or not. With the rush and pressure of many other celebrations occurring this time of year, we can all benefit from the moments of peace, hope and gratitude that this celebration can bring.
Many blessings to you for this Winter Solstice!
Do you celebrate the Winter Solstice? If so, share how in the comments ❤
(1) G. N. Bratman, C. B. Anderson, M. G. Berman, B. Cochran, S. de Vries, J. Flanders, C. Folke, H. Frumkin, J. J. Gross, T. Hartig, P. H. Kahn Jr., M. Kuo, J. J. Lawler, P. S. Levin, T. Lindahl, A. Meyer-Lindenberg, R. Mitchell, Z. Ouyang, J. Roe, L. Scarlett, J. R. Smith, M. van den Bosch, B. W. Wheeler, M. P. White, H. Zheng, G. C. Daily, Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective. Sci. Adv. 5, eaax0903 (2019)
