The Winter Solstice Marked Out Millennia Ago

[lpetrich]

The ultimate reason is, of course, the Earth's axial tilt, which makes it receive a varying pattern of incoming sunlight over the year. At each solstice, one hemisphere gets the most light that it will get, and the opposite one gets the least.

People in various parts of the world have been celebrating at Northern-Hemisphere winter solstice time for centuries. Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, HumanLight, ...

Many of these celebrations are ripoffs or imitations of older ones, it must be said. Reform Jews made Hanukkah into a big celebration to compete with Christmas, as Ebonmuse has noted in Why Hanukkah? Kwanzaa was invented by black nationalist Ron Karenga in 1966, and HumanLight was invented by the New Jersey Humanist Network in 2001.

But how far back can we look? It is certainly difficult to tell what people celebrated in the absence of written records, but there are other clues that one can use.

Ebonmuse has also noted that it is the Season of Light. All those lights in the celebrations are for making up for the lack of light at that time of year in northern latitudes. And Christmas trees? They are evergreens, meaning that they keep their leaves all year round, keeping them from looking dead.

These features are unconnected with Jesus Christ and part of the Bible forbids decorating trees (Jeremiah 10:3-4). But these features are connected with the ultimate reason, axial tilt, which means less sunlight, which in turn means more darkness and colder weather, and so forth. But they do not give us much of a time clue.

The name of  Yule does, however. Various early Germanic peoples had Yule celebrations, and these got turned into Christmas ones; Scandinavian people still use their cognates of "Yule" for the holiday (Danish jol, Icelandic jól, Norwegian jul, Swedish jul). This suggests that it was also celebrated by the ancestral Germanic people, who likely produced the  Jastorf culture of Denmark and northern Germany around 500 BCE - 1 CE.

And since Christmas trees are originally Germanic, they may more properly be called Yule trees.

 

[lpetrich]

Can we go further?

In several parts of the world are ancient monuments which are designed for viewing various astronomical alignments, which suggests that the occasions of those were times worth marking out. Here are some winter-solstice ones, suggesting that winter-solstice celebrations have great antiquity:

• The Newgrange Megalithic Passage Tomb (3200 BCE, Ireland) has its entrance corridor oriented so that when the Sun rises on Winter Solstice, it shines directly into that corridor.
• The Dowth Megalithic Passage Tomb (similar age, same place) is similar; there is a part of it that is illuminated by the Sun only during the Winter Solstice afternoon.
• The Maeshowe Chambered Cairn (3000 BCE, Orkney Islands just north of Great Britain); its entrance is aligned for viewing the winter-solstice sunset.
• Stonehenge (3000 - 2000 BCE, southwestern England); Its main alignment is from winter solstice sunset to summer solstice sunrise.
• Chichen Itza (around 1000 CE, Yucatan Peninsula), also has some solstice alignments.
• Lunar Markings on Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico discusses the distinctive illumination of some markers on the solstices; those markers were likely carved around 1000 CE.
• Some pre-Inca monuments near Quito, Ecuador.
• The  Mnajdra temple complex in Malta (around 4000 - 3000 BCE). One of its temples is astronomically aligned. At sunrise on the vernal equinox, the sunlight goes through the main gate through two chambers to fall upon a stone slab on the opposite side. At sunrise on the solstices, however, the sunlight falls upon one of the stone pillars on each side of a passageway connecting the two chambers.
• The  Nabta Playa in Egypt has a Stonehenge-like structure (5000 - 4000 BCE). It has a north-south alignment and a summer-solstice-sunrise alignment.

The British-Isles ones are, of course, much older than Jesus Christ -- 3000 years older. They are also almost 2000 years older than the first mention of Jesus Christ's ethnicity, which was in Pharaoh Merneptah's Victory Stele ("Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more").

In fact, the only people who could read and write back then were Sumerians and Egyptians -- and they were far away in the Middle East.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The sun was life. It is no wonder that in these latitudes the people gave it so much attention. They didn't know what it was but they knew what it did. And they correctly connected their own survival to its behavior.

It would be quite nice if the new year started with the winter solstice, giving the solstice more attention, scientific attention. Maybe people would be more curious and interested in it, perhaps removing some of the fake interest in the birth of a godman.

One can only hope.

 

[lpetrich]

The champion in age so far is the  Goseck circle, the "German Stonehenge", with homepage Startseite - Sonnenobservatorium Goseck. It it a set of concentric ditches 75 m / 240 ft across, with two palisade rings with gaps in certain places. From the structure's center, those gaps point north, southeast, and southwest, with the southeast and southwest ones pointing to the directions of Winter Solstice sunrise and sunset.

It is located in Saxony-Anhalt, close to the border between former West and East Germany, on the eastern side of it. There are some 250 similar ring ditches in Germany, Austria, and Croatia, though archeologists have studied only 1/10 of them. They had long been a puzzle because they had no villages inside, but if they have astronomical alignments in the fashion of the Goseck circle, then that could explain that puzzle.

The Goseck Circle has been dated with the help of the styles of some pottery fragments found in it; it is about 6900 years old. The pottery fragments belong to the  Stroke-ornamented ware culture, found in eastern Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic at about this time. It is a version of the  Linear Pottery culture (LBK) found in east-central Europe over 5500 - 4500 BCE. That culture started out in the Czech Republic and Hungary around 5500 BCE and spread outward at about 4 km/year; its people were likely the first farmers in central Europe.


I also wish to note the traditional Yule / Christmas song  O Tannenbaum (O Fir Tree). This song celebrates these conifers' continuing to keep their leaves and look alive in winter, unlike many other trees.

 

[Juma]

The champion in age so far is the  Goseck circle, the "German Stonehenge", with homepage Startseite - Sonnenobservatorium Goseck. It it a set of concentric ditches 75 m / 240 ft across, with two palisade rings with gaps in certain places. From the structure's center, those gaps point north, southeast, and southwest, with the southeast and southwest ones pointing to the directions of Winter Solstice sunrise and sunset.

It is located in Saxony-Anhalt, close to the border between former West and East Germany, on the eastern side of it. There are some 250 similar ring ditches in Germany, Austria, and Croatia, though archeologists have studied only 1/10 of them. They had long been a puzzle because they had no villages inside, but if they have astronomical alignments in the fashion of the Goseck circle, then that could explain that puzzle.

The Goseck Circle has been dated with the help of the styles of some pottery fragments found in it; it is about 6900 years old. The pottery fragments belong to the  Stroke-ornamented ware culture, found in eastern Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic at about this time. It is a version of the  Linear Pottery culture (LBK) found in east-central Europe over 5500 - 4500 BCE. That culture started out in the Czech Republic and Hungary around 5500 BCE and spread outward at about 4 km/year; its people were likely the first farmers in central Europe.


I also wish to note the traditional Yule / Christmas song  O Tannenbaum (O Fir Tree). This song celebrates these conifers' continuing to keep their leaves and look alive in winter, unlike many other trees.

I’m sceptical about this... I googled about this place and couldnt find smything that could convince me that the placement of alignment the oprnenings with winter/summer solistice wasnt a mere coincindent.

I didnt find ant description of the other 100+ found sites so I dont know if their openings are similarily placed.

 

[whollygoats]

Heh...I did my pilgrimage to the Heart of Neolithic Orkney this past spring and visited the sites of Maeshowe Chambered Cairn, Unstan Chamber Cairn, the Standing Stones of Stennis, the Ring of Brodgar, and Skara Brae. I 'saw' the Ness of Brodgar from afar, but it is an active archeological dig and was not open to rubbernecking touristas like me. The sites antedate the great henges of the southern end of the great isle.

The Ring of Brodgar

It is amazing stuff....testimony to the extensive communities and their level of social cohesion and organization in the Neolithic age. Keep in mind that the underground stone residential community of Skara Brae had built-in drainage.

Oh...and a tree, of any kind, would have been a wonder. The Orkneys are effectively Hyperborea. I can see how a tree might be considered 'sacred'.

Juma....It fits my understanding of a lot of Neolithic monumental structures. Check out Malta, Mnajdra in particular.

 

[humbleman]

The sun was life. It is no wonder that in these latitudes the people gave it so much attention. They didn't know what it was but they knew what it did. And they correctly connected their own survival to its behavior.

It would be quite nice if the new year started with the winter solstice, giving the solstice more attention, scientific attention. Maybe people would be more curious and interested in it, perhaps removing some of the fake interest in the birth of a godman.

One can only hope.

Kind of agree with your insight.

I truly don't see any connection between those ancient monuments with gods.

 

[whollygoats]

The sun was life. It is no wonder that in these latitudes the people gave it so much attention. They didn't know what it was but they knew what it did. And they correctly connected their own survival to its behavior.

It would be quite nice if the new year started with the winter solstice, giving the solstice more attention, scientific attention. Maybe people would be more curious and interested in it, perhaps removing some of the fake interest in the birth of a godman.

One can only hope.

Kind of agree with your insight.

I truly don't see any connection between those ancient monuments with gods.

Not even Sol Invictus?

 

[bilby]

The sun was life. It is no wonder that in these latitudes the people gave it so much attention. They didn't know what it was but they knew what it did. And they correctly connected their own survival to its behavior.

It would be quite nice if the new year started with the winter solstice, giving the solstice more attention, scientific attention. Maybe people would be more curious and interested in it, perhaps removing some of the fake interest in the birth of a godman.

One can only hope.

New year has been pegged to all manner of dates. Common before the Julian and Gregorian calendars dominated was a new year starting with the first new Moon after one or other of the Equinoxes - the Romans preferred an Autumn lunar new year, while South East Asia used a Spring one - and still does today.

Tax authorities have, on a number of occasions and in a number of jurisdictions, moved the date for new year for tax purposes, such that revenue collection was made easier or (cynically) to shorten the time between receipts to less than a full year, causing an effective, but crudely concealed, tax increase. The tax year in many countries is distinct from the calendar year - in Australia, taxation is for the year July 1 through June 30, for example.

The main reason for New Year dates that don't coincide with solstices or equinoxes are the use of combined lunar and solar calendars (and as the number of lunar months does not divide the solar year neatly, this caused all kinds of fudges to be required - the date of Easter is, as a result, not fixed in the annual calendar, and differs between the eastern and western Christian traditions), or the use of calendars based on other celestial objects - the ancient Egyptians used Sirius as a seasonal indicator, as its position was known to be an accurate predictor of the onset of the flooding of the lower Nile.

I suspect, but can't find much evidence for it, that the eventual fixing of New Year in the dominant modern calendar at about ten days after the solstice, is the result of compromising between a number of different pressures, including the timing of both lunar and solar events, plus taxation and egotistical issues - various Romans were keen to inflate the importance of months named for themselves or their factions, by pinching days here and there to make their months longer than those of their rivals, and by adding entire new months (which is why September, October, November and December are not the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months respectively; and why poor February has fewer days than the other months).

The modern calendar is what you get when a series of committees with conflicting agendas are used to try to force at least three or four major cycles (the day, the 29.53059 day lunar synodic month*, and the 365.24219 day mean tropical year**, plus the arbitrary seven day week that crudely approximates a lunar phase, and/or the dozen arbitrary calendar months of between 28 and 31 days), that don't divide neatly into each other, to share the same rigid framework repeating annually about an arbitrarily chosen point that will make both their tax authorities and their religious authorities happy. It's quite impressive that it didn't turn out to be a bigger mess than it actually is.




*A lunar synodic month is the time taken for the moon to complete a full cycle of phases as viewed from Earth
** A mean tropical year is the period of time for the mean ecliptic longitude of the Sun to increase by 360 degrees. The Sun's ecliptic longitude is measured with respect to the equinox, and so the tropical year is also a complete cycle of the seasons; It is approximately 20 minutes shorter than the sidereal year, which is the time taken for the Earth to complete on orbit relative to the positions of the background of distant stars (called 'fixed' stars because they are too distant to show measurable parallax).

 

[LordKiran]

The sun was life. It is no wonder that in these latitudes the people gave it so much attention. They didn't know what it was but they knew what it did. And they correctly connected their own survival to its behavior.

It would be quite nice if the new year started with the winter solstice, giving the solstice more attention, scientific attention. Maybe people would be more curious and interested in it, perhaps removing some of the fake interest in the birth of a godman.

One can only hope.

You can see this in modern pagan revival efforts actually. It isn't uncommon for the wiccan types to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes of the year. Personally I am a fan of this idea and would like to start practicing perhaps with the new year.

 

[RavenSky]

New year has been pegged to all manner of dates. Common before the Julian and Gregorian calendars dominated was a new year starting with the first new Moon after one or other of the Equinoxes - the Romans preferred an Autumn lunar new year, while South East Asia used a Spring one - and still does today.

Tax authorities have, on a number of occasions and in a number of jurisdictions, moved the date for new year for tax purposes, such that revenue collection was made easier or (cynically) to shorten the time between receipts to less than a full year, causing an effective, but crudely concealed, tax increase. The tax year in many countries is distinct from the calendar year - in Australia, taxation is for the year July 1 through June 30, for example.

The main reason for New Year dates that don't coincide with solstices or equinoxes are the use of combined lunar and solar calendars (and as the number of lunar months does not divide the solar year neatly, this caused all kinds of fudges to be required - the date of Easter is, as a result, not fixed in the annual calendar, and differs between the eastern and western Christian traditions), or the use of calendars based on other celestial objects - the ancient Egyptians used Sirius as a seasonal indicator, as its position was known to be an accurate predictor of the onset of the flooding of the lower Nile.

I suspect, but can't find much evidence for it, that the eventual fixing of New Year in the dominant modern calendar at about ten days after the solstice, is the result of compromising between a number of different pressures, including the timing of both lunar and solar events, plus taxation and egotistical issues - various Romans were keen to inflate the importance of months named for themselves or their factions, by pinching days here and there to make their months longer than those of their rivals, and by adding entire new months (which is why September, October, November and December are not the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months respectively; and why poor February has fewer days than the other months).

The modern calendar is what you get when a series of committees with conflicting agendas are used to try to force at least three or four major cycles (the day, the 29.53059 day lunar synodic month*, and the 365.24219 day mean tropical year**, plus the arbitrary seven day week that crudely approximates a lunar phase, and/or the dozen arbitrary calendar months of between 28 and 31 days), that don't divide neatly into each other, to share the same rigid framework repeating annually about an arbitrarily chosen point that will make both their tax authorities and their religious authorities happy. It's quite impressive that it didn't turn out to be a bigger mess than it actually is.




*A lunar synodic month is the time taken for the moon to complete a full cycle of phases as viewed from Earth
** A mean tropical year is the period of time for the mean ecliptic longitude of the Sun to increase by 360 degrees. The Sun's ecliptic longitude is measured with respect to the equinox, and so the tropical year is also a complete cycle of the seasons; It is approximately 20 minutes shorter than the sidereal year, which is the time taken for the Earth to complete on orbit relative to the positions of the background of distant stars (called 'fixed' stars because they are too distant to show measurable parallax).

That is really interesting, thanks!