Winter Solstice
Showing posts with label Reason For The Season. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reason For The Season. Show all posts

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Reason For The Season, The Sun



Christmas is the celebration as the days start to lengthen, which in the Northern Hemisphere, is in the middle of winter. 

The "reason of the season" is honoring the sun, it’s death on December 21st and resurrection or rebirth on December 25th.




From the summer solstice to the winter solstice, the days become shorter and colder.  

From the viewpoint of the northern hemisphere, the sun appears to be moving south and gets smaller and the days get shorter.  


The shortening of the days and the approaching winter solstice symbolized death to the ancients.  

So what we have here is the death of the Sun.  

By December 22nd, the Sun’s death was final, it had moved south continually for 6 months, made it to it’s lowest point in the sky.  


It appears that the Sun has stop moving south, it hangs there for 3 days.  

During the 3 days the Sun hangs on the Southern Cross, or Crux, constellation.  


And after this time on December 25th, the Sun moves 1 degree, this time north. 

It’s the beginning of longer days, warmth, and Spring is not far off.




And so it was said: the Sun died on the cross, was dead for 3 days, only to be resurrected or born again.  


It is the Sun’s movement back into the Northern Hemisphere, which brings Spring, life and salvation.

However, they did not celebrate the resurrection of the Sun until the spring equinox, or Easter.  


This is because at the spring equinox, the Sun officially overpowers the darkness, as daytime thereafter becomes longer in duration than night, and the rebirth of spring become obvious.


Christmas, a secular midwinter holiday season, a multicultural festival with ancient Pagan history, can be celebrated by everyone.

Reason For The Season


As an interesting side note: 


The winter solstice may have been more important than the summer solstice for the people who built and used Stonehenge. 

Excavations at Durrington Walls suggest that people held huge feasts around winter solstice time of year.




Archaeologists think that the people who built and used Stonehenge lived nearby. 

Recent excavations revealed huge amounts of discarded pig and cattle bones.


Archaeologists discovered that these animals were probably killed when they were around nine months old. 

They would have been born in the spring, so it would seem that these pigs and cattle were slaughtered around the time of the winter solstice. 

It’s probable that people gathered at Stonehenge during the solstice to take part in feasts, ceremonies and celebrations. 


The evidence shows that the Stonehenge crowd loved their roasted pork and beef.


The settlers who built Stonehenge worked hard and had an appetite.


It appears the ancient builders of Stonehenge may have hosted massive barbecue cookouts where thousands of revelers feasted on meat.

Yes, they ate barbecued meats, like pork and beef, just like us.


By analyzing fat residue found inside pottery shards and on animal bones, a team of archaeologists from the University of York and the University of Sheffield discovered "evidence of organized feasts featuring barbecue-style roasting."


If Stonehenge’s builders ate veggies there’s little evidence of it. Mostly, the archaeologists say, they were busy were boiling and roasting the meat—pork, in particular—and then staging elaborate feasts. The cooking seems to have been done inside people’s homes as well as outdoors.


And it seems the cooking and feasting were organized to a fare-thee-well.


The Sun has been around much longer than any life on Earth. 

From ancient civilizations to the present day, humans have made sense of the Sun in different ways. 


Significance of the Winter Solstice and the role of the Sun


The word 'solstice' comes from the Latin solstitium, which means 'sun stands still.' 

This is because the apparent movement of the Sun's path north or south stops before changing direction. 

Despite the Summer Solstice and the Equinoxes are also celebrated, the Winter Solstice is the most important day of the year at Stonehenge. 


As mentioned already, the builders of Stonehenge, the mid-winter solstice was presumably more important. 

As farmers and people rearing domestic animals and growing crops for food, the midwinter sunset marks the turning of the year. 

The days would get longer and the weather would improve. 

Soon, spring would come again and with it their life and work would be easier.