Quotes & Sayings About Winter Solstice

Nico di Angelo came into Olympus to a hero's welcome, his father right behind him, despite the fact that Hades was only supposed to visit Olympus in winter solstice. The God of the dead looked stunned when his relatives clapped him on the back. I doubt he'd ever got such an enthusiastic welcome before. — Rick Riordan

That's what Hanukkah is about: trying to survive the darkness on the far-fetched hope there's still some life and light left in the universe. It's more than just a religious story. The days have been growing shorter, imperceptibly but inescapably darker ... Heading into the night of the winter solstice, every spiritual tradition has some kind of festival of light. We're all just whistling in the dark, hoping against hope that someone up there will see these little Hanukkah candles and get the hint. — Lawrence Kushner

What Whileawayans Celebrate

The full moon
The Winter solstice (You haven't lived if you haven't seen us running around in our skivvies, banging on pots and pans, shouting "Come back, sun! Goddammit, come back! Come back!")
The Summer solstice (rather different)
The autumnal equinox
The vernal equinox
The flowering of trees
The flowering of bushes
The planting of seeds
Happy copulation
Unhappy copulation
Longing
Jokes
Leaves falling off the trees (where deciduous)
Acquiring new shoes
Wearing same
Birth
The contemplation of a work of art
Marriages
Sport
Divorces
Anything at all
Nothing at all
Great ideas
Death — Joanna Russ

The Romans had, like other Pagan nations, a nature festival, called by them Saturnalia, and the Northern peoples had Yule; both celebrated the turn of the year from the death of winter to the life of spring - the winter solstice. As this was an auspicious change the festival was a very joyous one ... The giving of presents and the burning of candles characterized it. Among the Northern people the lighting of a huge log in the houses of the great and with appropriate ceremonies was a feature. — Samuel L. Jackson

As it somehow always manages before the winter solstice, but never after, the early darkness was cheerful and promising, even for those who had nothing. — Mark Helprin

The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians. — George Monbiot

I moved recently and I moved my cable and Internet and phone service which was all provided by Time Warner Cable. And you know, I made a plan with them where they'd come sometime between summer solstice and winter solstice and I would wait. — Eugene Mirman

The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time
a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken. — Frederick Lenz

The ecliptic is shifted clockwise away from falling into the Akheru portal, which means the setting n the zodiac is that of the Winter Solstice's; this is Christmas time. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

No one wears buckles anymore, and I decided to get him some real boots next winter solstice.Some sexy guy boots. Yeah. — Kim Harrison

The Christian Bible is a symbolic book, not a literal one. The one Christians know as Jesus was actually a symbol for the sun. Ancient sun worshippers believed the sun died at the end of the winter solstice and then three days later it would be reborn at the start of its cycle - December 25. — David Icke

Now, near the Winter Solstice, it is good to light candles. All the nice meanings of bringing light to the world can be beautiful. But perhaps we are concentrating on lighting the world because we don't know how to light up our own lives. — Ralph Levy

At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow. — Gary Zukav

On the solstice: "The tilting of the earth may very well have stopped at the winter solstice, creaking to a halt and starting back the other way, but I was down in the basement at the time, running a power saw, and didn't hear a thing. — John Jerome

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory. — Gary Zukav

I celebrate the spirit of Christmas. It's the winter solstice celebration, rebirth and new possibilities. — Ian Astbury

Some evidence seems to exist that an idea prevailed that in the fairy sphere there is a reversal of the seasons, our winter being their summer. Some such belief seems to have been known to Robert Kirk, for he tells us that 'when we have plenty they [the fairies] have scarcity at their homes.' In respect of the Irish fairies they seem to have changed their residences twice a year: in May, when the ancient Irish "flitted" from their winter houses to summer pastures, and in November, when they quitted these temporary quarters. — Lewis Spence

Every year we get together and throw a big feast for the winter solstice, a festival in which every game and every confectionary you could possibly imagine suddenly become a reality. The children put on a play about the Black Bear and the Gray Bear, an age-old story that relates the Gray Bear's trip to eternity through the freezing white snow of the north. At the very end of the celebration the men and the women perform the warm dance, a giant, joyful circle dance the Shoshone invented thousands of years ago in order to send blessings to the wild animals who — Rose Christo

I smiled, then shivered. "It's dark so early these days."
"Today's Winter Solstice - shortest day of the year."
"Gee, thanks a lot. Way to pick the shortest day of the bleeping year for my birthday."
He laughed and put his arms around me. "Ah, but the longest night ... "
"Scandalous!"
He blinked innocently at me. "What? More time for movies, right?"
"Sure ... — Kiersten White

I liked the myth elements of Christmas. The way in which its origins reach back far beyond Jesus, to the rituals of people unknown to us. The celebration of the winter solstice. The coming of light in the darkest time. — Robert B. Parker

The Winter solstice (you haven't lived if you haven't seen us running around in our skivvies, banging on pots and pans, shouting "Come back, sun! Goddammit, come back! Come back! — Joanna Russ

Many Americans celebrate both Christmas and Xmas. Others celebrate one or the other. And some of us celebrate holidays that, although unconnected with the [winter] solstice, occur near it: Ramadan, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. — John Silber

On the night of the winter solstice, when the dead get their annual reprieve, they go up to the 24-hour donut shop and wedding chapel to get hitched. Marriage is a good and proper pursuit for dead people. For a while, it relieves the dark, shuddering loneliness of the afterlife. — Rachel Swirsky

Bright Blessings for this Winter Solstice, — Angelica Jayne Taggart

Winter solstice: the darkest time of the year. No sooner has he woken up in the morning than he feels the day beginning to slip away from him. There is no light to sink his teeth into, no sense of time unfolding. Rather, a feeling of doors being shut, of locks being turned. It is a hermetic season, a long moment of inwardness. The outer world, the tangible world of materials and bodies, has come to seem no more than an emanation of his mind. He feels himself sliding through events, hovering like a ghost around his own presence, as if he were living somewhere to the side of himself - not really here, but not anywhere else either. A feeling of having been locked up, and at the same time of being able to walk through walls. He notes somewhere in the margins of a thought: a darkness in the bones. — Paul Auster

The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light. — Joseph Campbell

The zeal of the stupid in her, Chris began turning pages as if it were the winter solstice gift catalog, earmarking pages and cooing in delight at the new possibilities. — Kim Harrison

Please - please just do this for me," Tamlin said, stroking his stallion's thick neck as the beast nickered with impatience. The others had already moved their horses into easy canters, the first of them nearly within the shade of the woods. Tamlin jerked his chin toward the alabaster estate looming behind me. "I'm sure there are things to help with around the house. Or you could paint. Try out that new set I gave for you for Winter Solstice. — Sarah J. Maas