Only the first sunshine of the Winter Solstice can shine into the inner chamber of the tomb.<\/strong> The most popular way to celebrate Winter Solstice here is the annual lottery draw, and the only 60 lucky fellows can enter the Newgrange tomb at sunrise to welcome the only sunshine of the year.<\/p>\n![\"Newgrange](\"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/newgrange_aerial.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
It was not until 354 AD that a Festival of the Nativity was documented which eventually became Christmas.\u00a0 So Christmas is a relative recent holiday this time of year.<\/p>\n
So no matter what your beliefs or traditions, the winter solstice is an indication of the coming of spring and that is a reason to celebrate!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As our ancestors huddled around their fires on dark and cold winter nights, some of them noticed patterns in the sky that repeated as the seasons changed.\u00a0 One of the patterns noticed was days grew shorter and nights longer as winter progressed and then reversed.\u00a0 Over time they measured this phenomenon and created observatories to … Continue reading “The Reason For The Season”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5289,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions\/5289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Winter](\"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Earth-lighting-winter-solstice_EN.png\")
As our ancestors huddled around their fires on dark and cold winter nights, some of them noticed patterns in the sky that repeated as the seasons changed.\u00a0 One of the patterns noticed was days grew shorter and nights longer as winter progressed and then reversed.\u00a0 Over time they measured this phenomenon and created observatories to mark when this moment of reverse happened.\u00a0 They held feasts and celebrations to mark the day the sun would return to melt the snow, grow their crops, and warm them.<\/p>\n