This year the Winter Solstice occurred on Saturday, December 21. Winter Solstice, with the least number of daylight hours in the year, makes me shiver when I think about the cold and dark, but this special day heralds the slow return of longer daylight hours.
In olden times, joyous celebrations for the return of light and warmth would have occurred. Today, most of us don’t focus on the Winter Solstice; instead, we celebrate one of several major worldwide holidays that fall around midwinter. For many households, ours included, that holiday is Christmas.
I remember what it was like to be a “sort of” only child at Christmas. My sister was ten years my senior, and while she was good to me and bought me cool gifts, Christmas Day in my preteen years was often a letdown as I thought about my friends playing games together and showing each other their presents. There weren’t even any good Christmas TV specials back then, maybe a grainy black and white rerun of “Peter Pan” with Mary Martin as t...