Although Winter in general can be a difficult period, with cold and ice and snow and constant darkness dampening the spirit, it does nevertheless possess its particular beauties. One of those is the Winter Solstice, the one day of year when the day is at its shortest, and the night at its longest. After December 21 the days will slowly start to become longer, and more and more light will once again begin to infuse our world.

There is a strange joy at this time of the year. Part of it is Christmas, which is inextricably woven into the ancient, Northern European pagan festivals surrounding the Winter Solstice. For those who have their ancestry in the Northern, (Slavic, Celtic and Germanic) world, there is some deeply embedded memory of the old customs that our forefathers celebrated this time of the year and in times and places now far off and nearly vanished.

“Look at that dim, late afternoon sun,” my grandfather once said to me years ago on a frigid day in late December while traveling through his old farmland in Pembroke NH, a land his family had lived on since the early to mid 1600’s. It must have been a sentiment expressed by many an Anglo-Saxon, Germanic man for millennia. Such a sentiment was part of his historical DNA.

The New England forests, and the hard, Yankee life of earlier generations was similar in many way to the ancient lives of ancient peoples in Northern Europe. Cold, ice and snow, a harsh climate and limited growing season were many of the hardships people had to endure to survive. The darkness of Winter, the isolated farmer eking out a meager living, and the strength of family bonds in such an environment were part of the overall atmosphere that permeated such worlds as Northern Europe or traditional Yankee New England.

So yes, the Winter Solstice offers many kind of beauties, and one of those is the knowledge that it is a time, and a festive time at that, which has been appreciated and celebrated by countless of our ancestors for countless centuries.

Let’s make sure in this age of toxic Cultural Marxism which seeks to destroy all that is good, true and beautiful, and wipe heritage America from all historical memory, that we do our best to defend and preserve our historical heritage.