What to Know about December 21

Finally, the shortest day of 2016 is here. In light of the many beloved celebrity deaths of 2016— not to mention election season — it seemed like we were going to be trapped in this year forever, but thankfully time continues to pass and we have our seasonal reminder that nothing lasts forever, not even ’16. The downside is that it’s going to be so very cold and so very dark from now on.

What’s the winter solstice?
It is the precise moment the Northern Hemisphere is as far as it will ever get from the sun.

And should I want to time my celebration to the minute, what should I do?
Well, it’s too late. It happened at 5:44 a.m., EST Wednesday. Sorry. There’s always next year.

If Wednesday is the shortest day of the year, why is it going to get colder before it gets warmer? Aren’t we at peak cold right now?
Short answer? We live on a big planet. It takes a little while for everything to level out, so it’ll be a few weeks before the loss of sunlight makes itself apparent in the mercury.

Exactly how short will the daylight hours be?
About nine hours max right now. But eventually we’ll be gaining a minute of daylight per day by a week after New Year’s, and then two minutes a day by the fourth week of January.

So … what’s the big deal?
Well, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and a few other holidays all derive from solstice celebrations. Much like how Halloween dates back to pagan celebrations of the end of farming season and the harvest, winter solstice celebrations were one big party before everything shut down for the winter.

Is that why the girl I’m Facebook friends with who went to art school and wears only black is so jazzed?
Probably. One of the biggest solstice celebrations in the world is still going on at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, annually, where druids, Wiccans and other pagans gather to mark the holiday.

Go on.
Well, “Yule,” as a thing, comes from the winter solstice celebrations of various Scandinavian and Germanic peoples. (It was also known as Jul, Julblot, jólablót, midvinterblot and julofferfest.) After these were reconciled with Christianity, we got the Christmas tree, Christmas wreaths, and Yule logs. Consequently, a lot of pagans who are into pre-Christian Viking, Germanic, etc. religious customs are very into the solstice.

They can’t be the only ones who celebrated such a thing!
Ugh, no, fine, you’re right. Virtually every culture has some kind of myth or tradition tied to the solstice. There’s Amaterasu in Japan, the Shinto faith’s sun goddess, whose emergence from a cave is celebrated on the winter solstice; there’s a prehistoric Irish tomb called Newgrange that’s aligned to capture the winter solstice’s sunrise; and there’s the Roman feast of Saturnalia, which was a week-long feast in December that included the observance of the solstice.

Wasn’t the world supposed to end around a winter solstice at one point?
Good memory! Yes — 2012’s winter solstice coincided with the end of the Mayan calendar, which many interpreted with sadly unfulfilled apocalyptic connotations.

Should I cast spells on the winter solstice?
As soon as possible, yes. According to Witchipedia, the winter solstice “supports magick related to turning points, changes, new beginnings, home and hearth, family relationships, world peace and personal renewal.” Sunrise is the best time to cast such a spell, so either try again at sunset or wait until next year.

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