Cultures around the world are preparing to mark the winter solstice this Saturday, including with festivals, special meals and several live-streamed events from historical monuments like the Stonehenge in England and the Newgrange in Ireland.
Revellers celebrate Winter Solstice at Stonehenge in southern England on Dec. 22, 2023.
The winter solstice occurs when the path of the sun is the furthest south in the Northern Hemisphere, creating the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern half of the globe.
The 2024 astronomical winter season—and the moment when the Northern Hemisphere is the farthest from the sun—will occur Saturday at 3:21 a.m. EST.
After Saturday, days will become increasingly longer, and nights shorter, through the summer solstice on June 20, which will be the longest day of 2025.
The winter solstice also marks a change in sunset patterns: On Saturday, the sun will appear to stop in the sky as it reaches its farthest point to the south and then change direction to move north, and it will continue to set progressively closer to the north each night as the summer solstice approaches.
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Visitors to Stonehenge wait for sunrise on Winter Solstice on Dec. 22, 2023 in Wiltshire, England.
Monuments like Stonehenge in England (built in 2500 B.C.) and the Torreon in Machu Picchu, Peru (built around 1450), were built to track and predict the movement of the sun. While scientists today have much more information about the universe, the astronomical event is still celebrated and tracked by the monuments built thousands of years ago. English Heritage, a charity that oversees Stonehenge, will invite thousands of people to watch the sunrise at the monument, and the event will be live streamed. In Ireland, an ancient burial site called Newgrange was built in 3,200 B.C. to allow light into its chamber only during sunrise on the winter solstice, and the monument will livestream the phenomenon from within the passage Saturday.
Historically, the winter solstice has been celebrated globally as a time of renewal and rebirth as it marks the return of light after a dark period (days again getting longer after months of shortening). Brighton, England, will host its annual Burning the Clocks festival and parade Saturday which will see thousands of people walk through the city with paper lanterns to be burned in a bonfire to bid farewell to the past and welcome the new year. Vancouver will host its Winter Solstice Lantern Festival for the 31st year in a row to fill the streets with light on the darkest nights. Millions of people around the world celebrate the Persian festival of Yalda, which marks the sunrise after the longest night of the year, said to be the night evil forces held the most power. During the celebration of Yalda, people eat pomegranates to symbolize protection from evil spirits and watermelon to shield them from both the winter cold and summer heat. In Japan, it's tradition to take a "yuzu bath," a hot bath with whole citrus yuzu fruits floating in the steaming water, to invite health and fortune into the new year. The Yule festival in German and pagan tradition is one of the oldest winter solstice celebrations in the world and includes burning a yule log—often the largest log a family could find—on the shortest and darkest day of the year. The log would be burned for 12 days, and ashes saved to fertilize spring crops.