Winter Solstice Traditions

Winter Solstice Traditions – Members of the Shakti Sings choir sing as monks, pagans and revelers gather at the center of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England to celebrate the 2016 winter solstice.

Thousands of people around the world will welcome the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, with centuries-old traditions like soaking in fruit-filled bathtubs and dressing up as the mythical Satan punishing naughty kids around. Christmas.

Winter Solstice Traditions

Winter Solstice Traditions

Eid al-Fitr, which falls on December 21 of this year, coincides with the first day of winter. It begins when the North Pole is the furthest point from the sun. Winter is considered the change of year in many cultures. The sacred day, or Yule, is for pagans to celebrate the birth of the sun in the new year, according to the Sanctuary Circle, a well-known pagan group in the US. Dozens of pagans and monks came to Stonehenge, a famous site in England, to pay their respects to the sun during the summer solstice.

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A member of Haiminger Krampusgruppe dressed as the Krampus creature, the Austrian winter cult, allows spectators to touch themselves before the annual Krampus Night in Tyrol on December 11, 2016.

Winter Solstice Traditions

Crowds of revelers flock to Hollabrunn, Austria every year in winter to watch hordes of people dressed up as Krampus – Santa’s half-demon, half-goat – terrorize and mock people. “It’s weird, but it’s exciting,” said Natalie Kononenko, professor and Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnology at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Krampus is a character who punishes naughty children with whips, according to German mythology. The Krampus tradition in Austria is said to ward off evil spirits as winter approaches, but is also a source of local entertainment, Kononenko said. Last year, the animals carried flashlights, attacked over-excited guests and jumped through security to whip them, according to a video released by the Associated Press.

Winter Solstice Traditions

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While many of the costumes include large horns, sharp teeth, and pointed faces – features that might be considered a nightmare for the average person – the annual Krampus run entertains attendees. “It’s kind of Halloween,” Kononenko said. “You can wear this silly outfit. You can do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

This year’s family-friendly Krampus from Hollabrunn’s main square takes place on December 16. “True fear again and meet evil for fun is the motto,” organizers wrote on the event’s website. .

Winter Solstice Traditions

Dozens of lucky people are selected in the annual lottery, having the chance to stand inside the Newgrange monument in Ireland and catch the first rays of sunlight as they fill the ancient rooms during the winter.

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Newgrange is an ancient monument in the Boyne Valley in Ireland that is more than 5,000 years old. According to its website, the Stone Statue has a 62-foot walkway that leads to a room that aligns with the sun as it rises in winter. Between December 19 and December 23, at dawn, sunlight penetrates the top of the room and slowly illuminates the room for about 17 minutes.

Winter Solstice Traditions

According to the website Newgrange, more than 32,500 people have applied for a spot in the room this year. Only 60 of them were drawn to participate in the winter ritual.

A pair of adult capybaras and three young take a yuzu-yu bath, or hot bath with yuzu berries, a winter solstice ritual in Japan.

Winter Solstice Traditions

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In Japan, it is customary for people to soak in a hot tub with the citrus fruit yuzu to welcome winter and protect the body from the common cold. During last year’s summer solstice celebration, children from a local kindergarten shared a tube of traditional yuzu tuba in Toyooka City with dozens of yellow yuzus around their heads, according to Japan’s Tokyo Daily. .

. In addition, bathing has become a habit of some animals living in Japan. Photos from local media show Japanese monkeys, hippos and capybaras enjoying a tub full of fruit last December in their enclosures at the Fukuoka City Zoo and Izu Shaboten Zoo.

Winter Solstice Traditions

In Korea, red bean porridge wishes good luck on the summer solstice. According to Seungja Choi, a professor of East Asian languages ​​and literature at Yale University, Koreans often make this dish to eat and spread around the house to ward off evil spirits. In addition to the believed mental benefits, Choi said, this dish is also packed with nutrients. “If you eat this, you’ll be healthy,” she said.

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The sun peeks through the clouds as monks, pagans and pilgrims gather at the Stonehenge center in Wiltshire, England in winter 2015.

Winter Solstice Traditions

The famous Stonehenge in England attracts thousands of visitors during the summer and winter. Revelers gather in Wiltshire’s ancient stone front yard to sing, dance, play musical instruments, kiss rocks and practice yoga as they wait for the sun to rise. Stonehenge is famous for its precise alignment with the motion of the sun and may have served as a place of worship and celebration for thousands of years, according to English Heritage, which manages the site. Our Christmas traditions are rooted in medieval winter celebrations for decades. thousands of years old. Come back and remember

‘The winter solstice marks the exact moment when part of our planet Earth is tilted away from the sun.’ Winter celebrations at Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Photo: Neil Hall/EPA

Winter Solstice Traditions

Winter Solstice Traditions From Around The Globe

The Winter Festival is our oldest, most important festival, dating back tens of thousands of years. The winter solstice – usually around December 21 – is the day we experience the shortest day and longest night at the north pole: the exact moment when our planet Earth is furthest from the sun.

Means “the sun is at rest”, when the apparent motion in the sun’s path seems to stop for a moment. But this did not happen in just one day; We traditionally enter the darkest days of the winter solstice, but it takes a few days – until the morning of December 25, in fact – for daylight to become noticeable for more than a minute.

Winter Solstice Traditions

This event has long been considered the return of the sun’s presence in the sky, which is why ideas of birth are often associated with this great solar event. The ancient Egyptian god Osiris, the Roman god Sol Invictus and the Greek god Apollo are among the many divine entities of the solar system whose birthdays are celebrated on December 25, before the birth of Christ. Jesus and Christianity. It took nearly 400 years after Jesus’ birth for that day to be his birthday, and no coincidence.

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In our agrarian society, the cold of winter is used to mark and guide activities such as slaughtering animals, growing crops, and tracking winter food stocks, all of which are important. for the preservation and maintenance of human life. It was the last celebration before the deep winter and “starvation months”, as from January to April it was known that the new crops were not ready to be harvested.

Winter Solstice Traditions

‘Preserving fragile life until it can be ‘reborn’ by the sun is the foundation of our beloved traditions of evergreens, elms and houseplants.’ Photo: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Only the strongest animals can be kept during the winter; and the rest are slaughtered in the 11th month, and their meat is preserved. Meadow and wine made in late summer has been fermented and is also ready to drink. So in the middle of winter, there’s a lot to take advantage of.

Winter Solstice Traditions

Winter Solstice Celebrations

Preserving fragile life until it can be “reborn” by the sun is the foundation of our beloved traditions of creating evergreens, elms and houseplants. People believe that the spirit of summer, life and growth has sheltered evergreens and winter trees – and that cutting them down and bringing them inside will give them shelter until spring. When the church was trying to erase old pre-Christian traditions, decorating the church with evergreens was strictly forbidden, but it didn’t work. Many ancient cultures were so ingrained in the human mind that they allowed holly and ivy to enter their churches. We even have the carol The Holly and the Ivy, which might seem a bit odd considering the baby Jesus was born in the Holy Land, but this is where the connection originates.

The yule log (which most people today think of as a chocolate cake) is the main tree – or even the trunk – that is brought home and burned during the 12-day celebration between winter in Scandinavia and Germany at the beginning of the year. before. In the 900s

Winter Solstice Traditions

And the ancient image of Santa Claus also comes from the old boreal forests, alluding to the wild, natural life in the middle of winter, growing up to be the angry elf, which Pelznickel

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