Solstice: The hallowed beginning of winter.
These modern people greeting the solstice are not unlike those who gathered here for the same purpose thousands of years ago.
Yesterday, December 21 (2024), was the day of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the astronomical beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. My life has been utterly insane the last week or so, with family issues, a medical emergency (it’s okay, I’m all right now), scrambling to get my latest video done, the release of my book The Gangster Crown, and the normal stresses of the holiday season. But it did occur to me yesterday that amidst the hustle and bustle of the modern world the age-old progression of the seasons, keyed to astronomical conditions literally as old as the stars, does not pass unnoticed.
Whenever the winter solstice occurs I return to this particular photo, by photographer Mike Peel. It depicts a group of people gathered around and inside the world-famous monument Stonehenge at the crack of dawn on December 21, 2012. It’s a tradition in Britain that on the day of the solstices, summer and winter—and no other days in the whole year—people are allowed to go right up to the stones themselves. The site, erected by ancient peoples some 5,000 years ago, does seem to have some astronomical significance. The monoliths are aligned to catch the summer solstice (June 21/22) sunrise and the winter solstice (December 21/22) sunset in precisely the right place. As you can see from this photo, December 21, 2012 happened to be a clear day, which I imagine doesn’t happen all that often in southern England in December. For the record, it was cloudy yesterday when the same ritual occurred, so those who went out to the site missed the sunrise and sunset.
