{"id":18253,"date":"2025-12-21T06:00:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/?p=18253"},"modified":"2025-12-21T07:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T12:09:13","slug":"merry-solstice-to-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/merry-solstice-to-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Merry Solstice to All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-18254\" style=\"border: 0px; margin: 1px 2px;\" src=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-01.jpg 360w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-01-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-01-113x150.jpg 113w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Today is the day of the Winter Solstice. Four hours and three minutes from now, at 10:03 AM EST, the sun will be as far from Earth as it ever gets, and the sunlit portion of our days will start becoming longer. I believe that the first time the mention of Winter Solstice appeared on this website was in 2014, when I attended an event at Serpent Mound one day before departing on my Christmas Escape Run and included it in <a href=\"http:\/\/dennygibson.com\/cer2014\/\">the journal for the trip<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It next appeared in 2019 in a blog post on the day following the Solstice. 2019 was the first year I attended the sunrise gathering at Fort Ancient. The image at right is of a poster I bought that day. It is from a painting by <a href=\"https:\/\/marylouiseholt.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mary Louise Holt<\/a> depicting what a Solstice sunrise might have been like back when the Hopewell ran the place we call Fort Ancient.<\/p>\n<p>This blog is published every week on Sunday. That 2014 Serpent Mound Solstice event was on a Sunday, but Solstice wasn&#8217;t even mentioned in the day&#8217;s blog post. Instead, the post described a quartet of museum visits I had made the preceding week. It is <a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/cincinnati-the-exhibitionist\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-18255\" style=\"border: 0px; margin: 1px 2px;\" src=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02-150x113.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-02.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-18256\" style=\"border: 0px; margin: 1px 2px;\" src=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03-150x113.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ws25-03.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today is the first time the Winter Solstice has fallen on a Sunday since 2014. I obviously can&#8217;t actually report on it since it hasn&#8217;t happened yet, and I really don&#8217;t have any new thoughts on the event in general since that 2019 blog post: <a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/a-cosmic-reason-for-the-season\/\">A Cosmic Reason for the Season<\/a>. I have copied and reused that post twice (<a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/a-cosmic-reason-for-the-season-redux\/\">2020<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/a-cosmic-reason-for-the-season-reredux\/\">2021<\/a>) with new introductions added. This post&#8217;s opening image shows what things might have looked like 2000 years ago. The pictures at left show what things actually did look like six years ago.<\/p>\n<p>I hope to post photos of a gathering today at a different mound in the <a href=\"http:\/\/dennygibson.com\/cer2025\/\">journal of the trip just begun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the day of the Winter Solstice. Four hours and three minutes from now, at 10:03 AM EST, the sun will be as far from Earth as it ever gets, and the sunlit portion of our days will start &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/merry-solstice-to-all\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-18253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","tag-holiday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WE0S-4Kp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18253"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18262,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253\/revisions\/18262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}