Learning Nothing Standing Still*

Do you feel the heaviness?
Do you long to curl up in your cave? Are you depressed? Or are you just in harmony with the seasons?
For 3 days the sky will freeze. For 3 days, the royal court astrologer prepares us for the end of the world. But really it is just the beginning. We wait in glum harmony for the return of the sun,

Unless you live in at the equator where the sun strolls across the sky for 12 hours or the Antarctic Circle's permanent blinding grin for 24 hours.

Well as long as I am standing still, lets pretend to learn something. Or at least make wild suppositions.

I always associate the Solstices with the Celtic. Maybe because of my Irish and Dutch heritage. But apparently it really belonged to the Persians but I guess Southwest Asia isn't really that far for customs to have spread. They were all a little nomadic back then. Follow the food. Escape the conflict. Create the conflict. Etc. Cultures were always moving & mixing, warring & capturing.
So perhaps the Celts got it from the Persians**. Part of the Celts mythology surrounding the solstice involved the fight between the "Oak King" and the "Holly King". They were twins, pitted against each other in a never-ending fight for supremacy. As cold weather approached the Holly King had won out, as it were, as the incarnations of his twin brother (the oak) had shed all their leaves and stood naked in defeat. But on the winter solstice the Oak King rallies -- albeit imperceptibly -- and begins to establish his renewed supremacy.

The first civilization to celebrate the winter solstice were the Ancient Persians, deriving from their Zoroastrian religion.
Zoroastrianism (or Zarathustrianism) is a very interesting religion. Also very hard to find some one to talk to about it, its only got about 140,000 members, so this is where I go making wild suppositions.
Perhaps the Celts got Oak and Holly from the basis of the Zoroastrian religion. The battle for balance. And from the concept of Metaphysical dualism (Holy and Evil spirits). Twins? I don't know. I couldn't find much about their idea of solstice but that it was celebrated as the birth of the sun.


*The word solstice is from Latin solstitium, from sol 'sun' and sistere 'to stand still,' as it is regarded as a point at which the Sun seems to stand still. The word was first used in English around 1250.

** other intresting connections