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Winter Solstice: How Did Ancient Celts Celebrate Christmas?
Christmas today obviously has its roots in Christianity, but how did the ancient pagan Celtic culture celebrate this time of year? And the ancient celts, along with most if not all of the ancient cultures around the world, did have major celebrations around the end of December.
The winter solstice occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky.
When the winter solstice happens in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole is tilted about 23.4° (23°27′) away from the Sun. It usually happens on 21st or 22nd December in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s usually on 20 or 21 of June. This year’s Winter Solstice will take place at 3:27am on the 22nd December 2023 UK time.
The word Solstice is quite interesting itself. It’s Latin in origin and is taken from the idea that the Sun appears to come to a standstill. In Ancient Rome, this was described as ‘solstitium’, a combination of the words ‘sol’, meaning the sun, and ‘sistere’, meaning standstill.
In ancient cultures, there may have been a sense of not knowing if the sun would rise again given their lack of scientific knowledge relative to ourselves, leading to legends and myths being built around this. However, as astrology is one of the oldest sciences, and people would sit around the fire and look up at the stars, it’s interesting to wonder how knowledgeable ancient cultures would have been about the movement of the stars.
Even well before the Celts, relatively accurate ancient calendars have been found. The oldest calendar in the world was found in Scotland a few years ago, and it is dated to around 8,000 BC, or about 10,000 years ago. This calendar was a lunar one that mimicked the phases of the Moon in order to track lunar months over the course of a year and measure time. And this was 10,000 years ago.
Sources:
National Trust for Scotland - Scottish Christmas traditions [ Ссылка ].
Winter solstice [ Ссылка ]
University of St Andrews - World’s oldest calendar found in a Scottish field [ Ссылка ]
Winter solstice [ Ссылка ]
THE WINTER SOLSTICE 2023: THE SHORTEST DAY OF THE YEAR [ Ссылка ]
WINTER SOLSTICE – HISTORY AND TRADITION [ Ссылка ]
Irish Times - The shortest day: Celebrate the solstice like the Celts [ Ссылка ]
#christmas #wintersolstice #solstice
