Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

December 22, 2025
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.

Celebrate, celebrate, dance…

Wait, not so fast. What exactly are we celebrating now, at the end of December?

Winter solstice, the slow return of the sun from its annual journey south?

Hannukah, commemorating the Maccabean victory over the Seleucids in which they won Jerusalem back?

Kwanzaa, a new version of ancient West African harvest festivals?

Or Christmas, honoring the December 25 birth of Jesus?

All of those—or none, depending on one’s point of view. No one on this Earth knows exactly what day Jesus was born. Hannukah marks an ancient battle that 99 percent of Americans have likely never heard of. Kwanzaa was created in modern times to provide a secular holiday for people of African descent.

Most human cultures have long had a midwinter celebration around solstice. Saturnalia was the Roman version; Yule, the Nordic iteration, a name that has come down through millennia to attach itself to Christmas. Ancient Persians celebrated Mithras, the god of light, honoring the return of that without which there is no life. Borrowing and adapting, amending and shifting are also ancient human customs. As King Solomon put it, there is nothing new under the sun.

That does not call into question the meaning of the Christmas season—for one thing, the universe grants us all free will and we can assign any meaning to anything that we wish, just as we can choose to overlook the commercial frenzy the season brings now.

What matters is taking the time to honor the inward-homeward familial character of late December. Across the world friends and families gather to celebrate the simple bonds that join us today just as they did 5,000 years ago and more. We are 8 billion now, we humans. Best that we take time to love, thank and bless ourselves and the wondrous planet that is our home.

Native Hawaiians have a dawn ceremony in which they thank the sun for returning… every day. Our solstice holidays bring the opportunity to thank the universe for all of it—the daily sun, the seasonal sun, the heart to give it all meaning. For that is life.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

And by the way, if you have chestnuts and an open fire, as in the words of the very best Christmas song, get a cast iron skillet and roast some yourself. It’s rich and warm and just perfect.

—Eric Lucas

more articles