Today is the Winter Solstice, What Does That Mean?

If you’ve grown weary of short days and are looking forward to more sunlight, you won’t have to wait much longer. Today is the winter solstice , bringing us the shortest daylight period and longest night of the year. Going forward, the days will gradually lengthen as the sun climbs higher in the sky over the next six months. But the winter solstice isn't all about astronomy, here are some other interesting facts about the official first day of winter. 

~"Solstice" is derived from the Latin phrase for "sun stands still."

~During the warmer half of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole is tilted toward the sun. 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.

~Massive prehistoric monuments such as Ireland's mysterious Newgrange tomb 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.

~Scholars aren't exactly sure of the date of Jesus Christ's birthday, the first Christmas. Along with other tidbits of fact, Westerners soon co-mingled Christmas with traditional observances of the first day of winter, thus the December 25th date we have today.