12/21/2025
Happy Winter Solstice and the start of a new season! There are two times each year when one of Earth’s poles is tilted the most toward the Sun, and the Sun lies directly above one of the tropics. These moments are the solstices. In many cultures, including those of the Southwest, these are the times to spend with friends and family, sharing food, music, and stories. The December solstice marks the "lowest southerly point of the Sun" after which the days slowly get longer in the Northern Hemisphere. In any given year the winter solstice occurs sometime between December 20 and 23, and this year, the winter solstice occurs today, December 21, 2025.
Through many generations of observation, the Ancestral Pueblo people gained a deep understanding of the natural world. They incorporated their knowledge of astronomical events into the construction of the great houses by aligning walls and other features with annual solar and lunar events. As the Ancestral Pueblo people left no written records, we can only speculate about their winter solstice rites, but the alignments of walls, doorways, structures, rocks and natural landscape features with solar cycles indicate they certainly had significant connections to the sun’s movement.
Additionally, potential alignments are visible within the Great Kiva. The locations of "doorways of light" during well-known solar and lunar alignment days have long inspired park rangers, visitors and archeoastronomers alike to wonder if these potential alignments held great importance to the ancestral Pueblo culture living here centuries ago. Although the Great Kiva is reconstructed, the original doorway locations were well documented during the excavation by Earl Morris.
From here on out, as the Earth rotates on its axis on our orbit around the Sun, spring and summer will slowly return to the northern hemisphere and fall and winter to the southern. We wish everyone a very happy Winter Solstice and celebrations of the lighter days ahead.
Photo credit: Andy Bleckinger
Images: 1. A long sandstone wall appearing behind an illuminated rabbitbrush shrub and the sun peeking out from behind the western corner of the wall. 2. A rectangular opening with wooden lintels at the top of the opening perfectly framing another opening on the opposite wall with a beam of light shining through it.
