Traditions Celebrated Around the Winter Solstice l Winter Solstice Traditions l Festivities Around the Winter Solstice

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Behold the winter solstice is coming upon us. Sounds eerie, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t need to be. It actually means that it marks the longest time of the year on Dec. 21. It happens when the sun stops moving south and then pauses to track northward. Going forward the days will be longer and the nights will be shorter. The winter is known to be dark, cold and sometimes cruel. Many think that December is only about Christmas trees, Santa Claus and gifts, but there is so much more. People plan many festivities around this time for parties, for dances and for feasts. There is the Feast of Juul, Christmas, Saturnalia in Rome, the festival of Chaomos in Pakistan and the celebration of Saint Thomas in Guatemala, which are all celebrated around the winter solstice. Allow these 5 traditions observed around the winter solstice to change your perception.

Christmas

We still need to kick things off with Christmas. In modern times it is believed that Dec. 25 is the birth of Jesus Christ. It is an ongoing debate on whether this is the correct date of Christ's birth. Roman emperor Aurelian first established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (Dec. 25), the official sun god and saint of Roman soldiers. Christians then formed their own holiday to offset the pagan rituals. However, scholars disagree according to NPR. "Early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering--they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods." Today Christmas is a massive holiday and is celebrated by believers and nonbelievers.

St. Thomas' Day

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The Mayan Indians honored the sun god with a ritual called the “flying pole dance.” Men would climb a 50-foot pole and someone would be beating a drum while the men were on the pole on Dec. 21. The men would then jump off the pole and landed on their feet because they believed that the sun god would be pleased and the day would become longer. When Catholic missionaries landed in Guatemala the locals converted to Catholicism. Today the people of Guatemala celebrate the Feast of St. Thomas on the winter solstice due to the closeness of Christmas. It should be noted that the Roman Catholic Church has since moved St. Thomas' Day to July, but many kept the tradition in December.