The word solstice means 'sun stands still' from Latin - sol = sun and sistere = to stand still (thanks for this root word from wikipedia). If you mark where the sun rises every day and/or where it sets every day (and different cultures did one or the other or both), you will notice that the sun does not rise or set in exactly the same place every day. Today many people do not realize how much farther north the sun rises and sets in summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) as compared to the winter (in the NH) where it sets south of west (and rises south of east). (I'll just talk about the sun setting from now on, but the same principles apply to the sun rising. Also, I'm going to assume we're in the Northern Hemisphere, since everyone I know lives there, but the seasons are the opposite times of year in the Southern Hemisphere.)
As you get towards the winter solstice, Dec 21 or 22, the sun seems to slow down in its path towards the south. What I mean by that is that if you marked the position of the sunset every night from the autumnal equinox (Sept 20, 21, or 22, depending) through the winter solstice, you would notice that the sun sets farther south every night, but that the distance between the positions gets smaller and smaller. Finally, on the solstice, the sun seems to set in the same place for several days in a row - it is standing still. On about December 25, a careful observer will be able to notice that the sun has started moving north again from its 'winter house'. This is a reason for celebration for those who worship the sun as a god. (I would love to learn more about modern celebrations of this pagan holiday.) The ancient belief was that sun was happy with the people and had decided to return to the north. This meant that there would eventually be a thaw and springtime would come again. Without the thaw, there would not be a chance for planting again and the people would die. (Clearly they didn't live in CA, because people living in CA would not have died if spring never came again.)
The Christian celebration of Jesus' birth on December 25 probably came about as one of the two following scenarios: 1) early Christians, fearing persecution or death from being found out, celebrated quietly while the surrounding pagans celebrated loudly and they blended in or 2) early Christians wanted to convert pagans to worshiping Jesus from worshiping the sun, so they convinced them to worship the Son of God instead of the Sun on this day. In any case, there is NO archeological evidence that Jesus was born on Dec 25, or even in winter at all. The shepherds certainly would not have been standing out in a field with their flocks in freezing weather.
The 'star' that is glorified in modern Christmas carols, some going so far as to say that it shone day and night and told individuals about Jesus' coming, was probably not a single 'star', but a conjunction of planets gathering in the constellation of 'the people.' The ancient Israelites, like many peoples, had a set of the signs of the zodiac (groupings of stars that the sun and planets travel through). Having more than one planet in a single constellation at a time is noteworthy. Having two or three together in the sign of the people was important enough that even the 'wise men,' probably astrologers from Persia, would have recognized the significance. If there was a 'star' that shone day and night, King Herod, even being a bit slow, would have been able to find it on his own and would not have had to consult with the foreign astrologers (see Mark 2 in the Bible). No conjunctions have been found (using software that can replicate the motion of the planets backwards and forwards for thousands of years) that occurred in the wintertime, or in 1 BC. The probable dates for Jesus' birth are between 4 AD and 6 BC, probably in the springtime. Here's one article from earlier this month saying that it was June 17, 2 BC: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
That's enough for today. I'll do a piece on equinoxes soon.
Merry Christmas! (Does it really matter what day we celebrate it? There's plenty of archeological evidence that Jesus certainly existed and the Christ-idea is with us always.)
