- Feb 5, 2002
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Tomorrow is the winter solstice. How do pagans celebrate—and what are they missing?
During our journey through Advent towards Christmas, we experience the changing of seasons. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, tomorrow is the winter solstice, when we finally complete our annual descent into darkness and begin to experience the return of increasing sunlight.
As someone who lives in the frigid upper Midwest, I can say with real certainty that this is a cause for celebration! Pagans think so, too. But whereas Christmas is the focal point for me and my fellow Catholics, the adherents to paganism, New Age, witchcraft, and so on place an abundance of meaning on the solstice itself. This is a time, they say, of introspection, quiet, and celebration. True, it is, but whereas we have, through Our Lord, the full picture of this season, pagans miss the mark.
The practices of pagans and New Age—gathering with loved ones, giving thanks for our blessings, giving gifts, feasting, taking time off from work, decorating the home—are things that Christians the world over do during the Christmas season. (For anyone who wants to parade out the overused and much-misinformed argument that Christmas is a rip-off of pagan holidays, just stop. It isn’t.) But where these practices and traditions point could not be more different. Where pagans’ end is the created natural world, ours is the Creator of that world. That’s the problem.
Continued below.
Pagans and the Winter Solstice
Tomorrow is the winter solstice, and modern pagans are coming out to celebrate. How do they do it—and what are they missing?
