Happy Solstice. Merry Christmas. Happy Yule. Good Saturnalia. Feliz Navidad. A Beneficial Winter. Happy Hanukkah. Enjoy Sol Invictus.

And Festivus for the rest of us.

The Winter Solstice is the reason for the season and is the true beginning of the "new" year. The day is the shortest one of the year but tomorrow, it will be a minute longer; light begins to gain the upper hand and will do so until the Summer Solstice.

Above the equator, before there was a Christ or Christmas, before there was Santa Claus, there were numerous winter festivals to celebrate the death of the Sun on the Winter Solstice and its rebirth the day after. It was, and is, a reaffirmation that life will go on, that even in the depths of the cold, hope can hold out for spring and the return of warmth and plenty.

Even in warm lands, the people hailed the rebirth of the sun because without it, what would the earth be?

But it is also the first day of winter, and we feast in winter because we fear hunger and the cold. We feast in winter to remind ourselves of the spring and summer past. We feast in winter in memory of the earlier harvests. We feast in winter to celebrate the return of the Sun. We feast in winter in hope of that which is yet to come: the end of hunger and cold, the advent of spring and summer, a plentiful harvest, and longer days.

We will long continue to feast and celebrate in winter; our beings are saturated with the echoes of faraway times and places--even if we don't consciously remember them. But it is also a time for contemplation, to muse over the past year and to anticipate the coming year.

And we hail the rebirth of the sun. May you never hunger. May you never thirst. May the cup be passed to you always full and the plate always piled with cakes. In these cold days of winter, remember Shelley's words, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"