Next year is a leap year, which resets the calendar so that the winter solstice will fall on the 21st again," said Marek Kukula at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.
In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night, but the sun continues to rise later for some days afterwards. The reason is that Earth's orbit around the sun is not circular, but elliptical. As the Earth rotates, it also moves along this curved path, and so sees the sun a little sooner than if it were stationary. The northern winter solstice occurs when the "top" half of Earth is tilted away from the sun at its most extreme angle of the year.
Being the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice is essentially the year's darkest day, but it's not the coldest. Because the oceans are slow to heat and cool, in December the seas still retain some warmth from summer, delaying the coldest of winter days for another month and a half.
Similarly, summer doesn't hit its heat peak until August, a month or two after the summer solstice. Throughout history, humans have celebrated the winter solstice, often with an appreciative eye toward the return of summer sunlight.
Massive prehistoric monuments such as Ireland's mysterious Newgrange tomb video are aligned to capture the light at the moment of the winter solstice sunrise. Germanic peoples of Northern Europe honored the winter solstice with Yule festivals—the origin of the still-standing tradition of the long-burning Yule log.
The Roman feast of Saturnalia, honoring the God Saturn, was a weeklong December feast that included the observance of the winter solstice. Romans also celebrated the lengthening of days following the solstice by paying homage to Mithra, an ancient Persian god of light. Many modern pagans attempt to observe the winter solstice in the traditional manner of the ancients. Related: Get Stonehenge facts and pictures in National Geographic magazine.
In a number of U. Of course, as the name suggests, The Christmas Revels mix ancient winter solstice traditions with customs of the holiday that largely replaced winter solstice celebrations across much of the Northern Hemisphere: Christmas.
Related: "Christmas Star Mystery Continues. Eastern churches traditionally celebrate Christmas on January 6, a date known as Epiphany in the West. The winter date may have originally been chosen on the basis that Christ's conception and Crucifixion would have fallen during the same season—and a spring conception would have resulted in a winter birth. In the Western church the December date became the date for Christmas.
Early church leaders endeavored to attract pagans to Christianity by adding Christian meaning to existing winter solstice festivals. All rights reserved. But the winter solstice isn't all about astronomy.
Solstice in Space: Astronomy of the First Day of Winter During the winter solstice the sun hugs closer to the horizon than at any other time during the year, yielding the least amount of daylight annually.
Most celebrations of the winter solstice in Europe involved merriment and feasting. In pre-Christian Scandinavia, the Feast of Juul , or Yule , lasted for 12 days celebrating the rebirth of the sun god and giving rise to the custom of burning a Yule log. In ancient Rome, the winter solstice was celebrated at the Feast of Saturnalia , to honor Saturn, the god of agricultural bounty. Lasting about a week, Saturnalia was characterized by feasting, debauchery and gift-giving.
With Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity, many of these customs were later absorbed into Christmas celebrations. One of the most famous celebrations of the winter solstice in the world today takes place in the ancient ruins of Stonehenge, England. Thousands of druids and pagans gather there to chant, dance and sing while waiting to see the spectacular sunrise. News U.
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