Long, long, long ago… when the Earth was an infant planet, the inner solar system was full of the detritus from planet formation… the solar afterbirth if you will…
The baby Earth had already started its “never-ending” journey around its mother star Sol when another solar child wandered in the path of baby Earth. They got closer and closer until, in a TITANIC CRASH, they collided!!! That impact hit our earth so hard, that our solar sibling was utterly destroyed and a sizable chunk of baby Earth, later known as “Moon”, flew off and started its own orbit around its new mother planet … Earth!
Not only did baby Earth loose a lump of itself, but it could never travel straight again! It was forever tilted at the propitious angle of 23.45º off its axis and THAT made all the difference!! Now during one part of its great oval orbit around the sun, the baby Earth’s tilt made the portion tilting towards mama Sol hotter and the portion tilting away cooler. During the exact opposite part of the eternal oval, the hotter and cooler portions reversed! In all the parts in between, temperatures shifted accordingly.
Later, after baby Earth settled down, life arose and fit itself to this cycle of change with adaptations to the periods of hot, cold and in-between. Later, some life developed language and called these variously warm & cold periods “seasons”.
Just as the heat from Mama Sol changed along the great oval, so did the position of sol in the sky for those creatures that would gaze upward and wonder. Of the various solar positions in the sky, winter solstice is an important one for those attentive creatures.
The winter solstice is the time when the earth’s pole is tilted furthest away from our sun, with sol’s light falling on earth for the shortest time… thusly, on that day the night is the longest. The human creatures of the earth always attached significance to this day as the symbolic death and rebirth of the their mother star Sol. Many festivals and ceremonies were attached to this special point in the celestial motions of our now much older earth. The latest of which is another death and rebirth ritual … this time calling this day near the solstice …
Christmas.
pepitothinking 