Embrace the Solstice Season!
By Andrea Laszlo, Forest Bathing Guide
Decreasing daylight and growing cold can feel discouraging. But winter and the winter solstice can also offer opportunities for both celebration and quiet reflection.
When the Earth’s axis tilts at its maximum distance from the sun, we in the Northern Hemisphere experience the winter solstice – our shortest day and longest night of the year (the Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice occurs in June).
We often think of the winter solstice as taking up an entire day, but the actual solstice lasts only for the moment when a hemisphere is tilted as far away from the Sun as possible (this year, our Northern Hemisphere “moment” is December 21st at 9:03am central time).
Throughout history, people have celebrated this time of year with traditions we still perform today such as gift giving, gathering around a fire, and decorating homes with greenery and light. Without comforts like indoor heat and grocery stores, the cold and darkness were obviously harder for ancient people. So, it makes sense that they came up with both practices provide some physical relief as well as traditions to help make meaning of the darkness.
One way for us to celebrate the winter solstice is for us to gaze up at the sky and ponder mystery as our ancestors did. In November of last year, I visited Newgrange in Ireland, a mound of dirt and stone built around 3200 BCE and currently thought to be among the oldest human-made structures on Earth. Newgrange is best known for its mysterious alignment with the winter solstice sunrise. At dawn, from December 19th to the 23rd, a narrow beam of sunlight shines through a small opening above the entrance and gradually fills the inner chamber with dazzling sunlight for about 17 minutes. Its accuracy as a time telling device is incredible given that it was built 500 years before the Great Pyramids and more than 1,000 years before Stonehenge!
Feeling adventurous? Next September you can enter a lottery at newgrange.com to be one of the 20 or so people chosen to gather and wait for the dawn at the winter solstice just as people did 5,000 years ago.
In the meantime, here are some simpler ways to embrace this time of year:
You’ve heard it before but bundle up and head outdoors! Consider trying a new-to-you forest preserve in our area and enjoy either the snowy landscape or particular beauty of the bare branches around you. For suggestions, visit dupageforest.org for a list and locations of our county forest preserves, as well as activities from cross country skiing to snowshoeing, and events ranging from holiday candy making to volunteer workdays – which are not only fun but help keep Glen Ellyn and DuPage County “green” too!
Help our feathered friends through the winter by making pinecone birdfeeders and then distributing them on one of your walks. While this is a great green family craft, anyone can enjoy this simple project! All you need are pinecones, peanut or sunflower butter, twine for hanging and birdseed to roll the pinecones in after spreading the nut or seed butter. I just did this by myself, and it made me feel more connected to the land I am a part of.
Make a fun goal to check out at least one new-to-you indoor space this winter. You might plan a trip into the city to visit the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (in December they offer Butterfly Haven Yoga!) or check out something smaller and more local like the DuPage County Historical Museum or the Naper Settlement.
Ready to come inside? If you have children at home, gather some winter-themed books from the library and enjoy a relaxing afternoon reading and drinking hot chocolate or cider and hosting your own family book club. Those of us without kids in the house can search for winter poetry (Mary Oliver has written some lovely ones) and be inspired by beautiful writing. And we get to drink hot chocolate too!
Take advantage of more time indoors by using winter as reflection time. Look at photos from this past year and write down the joys and challenges you’ve experienced in 2025 as well as some hopes for 2026. Combine this with the ancient practice of lighting a fire and perhaps toss a list of things you’d like to leave behind into the flames.
Consider the simple joys of your own neighborhood. Just an ordinary walk with fresh eyes can be a lift. As Charles Dickens wrote:
“He went to the church and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk – that anything – could give him so much happiness.” - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
