WINTER SOLSTICE time to celebrate the return of the SUN!

Today the sun crossed the sky at its lowest trajectory as seen from the Northern Hemisphere, and so its apparent trek from rising to setting will be quick. Result: the shortest day of the year and the longest night.

On the bright side, starting Tomorrow the days will begin getting longer.

Where most of us live in the mid-latitudes, daylight ranges from about 15 hours around the summer solstice (when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun) to around 9 hours close to the winter solstice. The opposite happens in the Southern Hemisphere, and as such, summer gets its official start there this week.

With less sunlight hitting us, temperatures drop. However, the Earth is actually closer to the sun during winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It's the tilt that gets us.

And in fact the coldest days of the year are yet to come. Though the days will get longer during January, Northern Hemisphere oceans continue to cool in the relative lack of sunlight, and ocean temperatures drive much of the weather on the continents. READ MORE

Top 10 Amazing Moon Facts

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No 'Dark Side'

Contrary to what you might have heard, there is no "dark side" of the moon. There is, however, a "far side" that we can't see from Earth. Here's why:

Long ago, the Earth's gravitational effects slowed the moon's rotation about its axis. Once the moon's rotation slowed enough to match its orbital period (the time it takes the moon to go around Earth) the effect stabilized.

So the moon goes around the Earth once and spins on its axis once, all in the same amount of time, and it shows us just one face the whole time.

Pagans celebrate the winter solstice, on December 21st
Christmas pagan? Do the celebration of December 25th, the Christmas tree, the giving of gifts and other Christmas traditions all have their root in the pagan mystery religions of the ancient? Or is all of this stuff about a "pagan Christmas" just a bunch of nonsense?
CHRISTMAS NOW

The celebration of the birth of commercialism.. CHRISTMAS PAST A holiday that originally was supposed to be for the birth of Christ. When the Catholics/ Christians took over the pagan peoples, they replaced their holiday with their own Birth of the Son, (as in of God) to make the transition to Christianity's traditions easier. The idea of Santa Claus and his reindeer was created in the 1800s, and is loosely based on St. Nicholas, who gave random presents to people. The idea of a christmas tree dates back to German celebrations of Christmas thousands of years ago. They used an evergreen tree to symbolize life and hope in dark times, and hung apples on it. THE ORGINAL CHRISTMAS A celebration of humanity dating back thousands of years. It originated as a pagan celebration of the birth of the Sun, as it was celebrated on the winter equinox, and after that point, days got longer.