The difference between Yuletide and Christmas
21 Dec 2018
Dear LPG
I was looking online the other day with Christmas on my mind and a couple of clicks got me asking myself about the winter solstice. The first obvious, but rarely thought of fact that I learnt is that while we, who are situated on the top half of this planet are in the midst of winter, the people on the bottom half are having their summer. It is all about the tilt of our planet rather than its closeness to the sun apparently.
We hear a fair amount of news each year about druids celebrating the summer solstice at places like Stonehenge, but they do actually celebrate on December 21st too. I found out that Yule and Christmas are completely different celebrations even though we do tend to bunch them both together and they usually fall four days apart.
Perhaps this is because the Yuletide cards and Christmas cards are sold at the same time of year and the High Street shops start trying to help us spend our christmas money earlier and earlier each year. Halloween has barely passed before the Christmas cards and Yuletide cards start to appear in shops and the TV adverts are pulled out of their boxes for another year.
This is the time when we in Lewisham and the rest of the UK will experience the shortest day and the longest night of the year and, although that is always depressing, we know that the days will start getting longer again.
Many Christians say that Christmas is a pagan celebration and this has to be why they don’t celebrate, but I believe that, as long as we remember what we are commemorating and even if it is not exactly when Jesus was born, we should have a day to celebrate his birth.
PF, Bellingham
LPG has found some information on the winter solstice
