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The 2024 winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, happens on Saturday, Dec. 21, and is marked with traditions and celebrations around the world. What to know about the winter solstice, 2024 ...
The winter solstice occurs during the hemisphere's winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the December solstice (December 21 or 22) and in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (June 20 or 21). Although the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment, the term also refers to the day on which it occurs.
The winter solstice celebration Shab-e Yalda has its roots in ancient Iran, when local clans worshiped the sun god Mithra. According to myth, Mithra was born on the shortest day and longest night ...
Humans have been celebrating the winter solstice for thousands of years. Ancient civilizations built landmarks like Stonehenge in England and Torreon at Machu Picchu, Peru, to track the sun's ...
In the recent Druidic tradition, Alban Arthan is a seasonal festival at the Winter solstice. The name derives from the writings of Iolo Morganwg, the 19th-century radical poet and forger. On the solstice, it has recently been speculated (with very little evidence) that druids would gather by the oldest mistletoe-clad oak. The Chief Druid would ...
Many ancient monuments were constructed with solar phenomena in mind; for example, stone megaliths accurately mark the summer or winter solstice (for example in Nabta Playa, Egypt; Mnajdra, Malta; and Stonehenge, England); Newgrange, a prehistoric human-built mount in Ireland, was designed to detect the winter solstice; the pyramid of El ...
Historically, the winter solstice has been of great importance to many cultures, such as Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome, often as a marker for the passing seasons, and a possible time of rebirth.
The Nile flood at Cairo c. 1830.. Current understanding of the earliest development of the Egyptian calendar remains speculative. A tablet from the reign of the First Dynasty pharaoh Djer (c. 3000 BC) was once thought to indicate that the Egyptians had already established a link between the heliacal rising of Sirius (Ancient Egyptian: Spdt or Sopdet, "Triangle"; Ancient Greek: Σῶθις ...