When the Sun Stands Still: Winter Solstice, Meaning-Making, and Well-Being

As the calendar approaches the winter solstice, we arrive at a quiet yet profound turning point. The word solstice comes from the Latin solstitium, meaning “the sun stands still.” Astronomically, it marks the shortest day and longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere—a moment when daylight reaches its minimum before slowly beginning its return.

While the solstice is a scientific event, it has never been experienced only through measurement and data. Across time and cultures, human beings have paused at this threshold, sensing that something deeper than astronomy is unfolding. The winter solstice has long invited reflection, ritual, and meaning-making—practices that remain essential to human well-being.

A Shared Human Fascination with Light and Darkness

Ancient civilizations carefully observed the movement of the sun, recognizing that survival itself depended on its rhythms. The Maya developed remarkably precise solar calendars. In England, Stonehenge was constructed to align with the sun during the solstices, a design that continues to draw thousands of people who gather—both in person and via live stream—to witness the sunrise on this sacred day. In Peru, the Torreón served a similar purpose, marking the sun’s annual progress and anchoring communal life in cosmic order.

Across Europe, winter solstice traditions took on symbolic and communal forms. In Austria, people still travel to Hollabrunn to observe Krampus processions, where figures dressed as half-demon, half-goat move through the streets. Historically, such rituals allowed communities to externalize fear, darkness, and moral tension during the year’s bleakest season—making space for collective reckoning and release.

Christian traditions also absorbed solstice symbolism, particularly the theme of light emerging from darkness. Early Christian interpretations aligned the birth of Christ with this seasonal turning point, emphasizing light as a spiritual metaphor for hope, renewal, and divine presence.

Across cultures and centuries, the message remains consistent: when the world grows dark, humans gather, tell stories, create ritual, and search for meaning.

Why Meaning-Making Matters

Meaning-making is not a peripheral or optional activity; it is a core human process. Contemporary research in psychology and well-being increasingly affirms what ancient cultures intuitively understood: people flourish when they can situate their experiences—especially hardship, uncertainty, and transition—within a broader narrative.

The winter solstice provides a powerful container for this work. It names what many people feel in their bodies and lives during winter: contraction, fatigue, grief, and quiet. At the same time, it holds the promise of return. Even when the night is longest, the light has not vanished—it is simply waiting.

Recent scholarship on well-being emphasizes the importance of re-centering the person, honoring lived experience, personal meaning, and subjective interpretation rather than reducing well-being to productivity or performance. When individuals are invited to reflect on what a season represents for them personally, they move from passive endurance to intentional engagement with their inner life. This process supports resilience, emotional regulation, and a deeper sense of coherence.

Solstice as a Practice of Integrated Health

At She. Fully Alive, well-being is understood as whole-person health—mental, physical, social, and spiritual. The winter solstice speaks to each of these dimensions:

• Mental health: It legitimizes rest, reflection, and cognitive slowing, countering cultural narratives that equate worth with constant output.

• Physical health: It honors the body’s natural need for restoration and reduced stimulation.

• Social health: It reminds us that humans have always gathered during darkness—connection itself is a protective factor.

• Spiritual health: It offers a sacred metaphor: even in stillness, transformation is quietly unfolding.

The solstice teaches that pause is not stagnation. Darkness is not failure. Waiting is not wasted time.

Standing Still, Together

As the sun “stands still,” we, too, are invited to pause—not to disengage from life, but to release unnecessary striving. This season invites us to notice what has been lost, what is being mourned, and what may be quietly gestating beneath the surface.

Meaning-making does not erase difficulty, but it allows us to hold it with greater compassion and wisdom. In doing so, it becomes a vital pathway to well-being—one that connects us to our ancestors, our communities, and ourselves.

May this winter solstice meet you gently. May you trust that even now, the light is returning.

References

Burga, S. (2023). What you need to know about Winter Solstice 2023. Time.

Loendorf, L. L., & Conner, S. W. (2020). Winter solstice and buffalo. Archaeology in Montana, 61(1), 53–65.

Nissen, A. T., & Beck, E. D. (2025). The joy is mine: Re-centering the person in the study of well-being. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 19(5), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.70058