Friday Etymology Lesson: solstice

This is the last one of the year!  Maybe I’ll start up again in the New Year with a blog or something (oh hey look, I did!). 

As the Winter Solstice is on Sunday, today’s word is solstice.  From Latin, sol meaning, “sun,” and sistere meaning, “to make stand still,” solstice literally means “the point at which the sun is made to stand still.”  The ancient Celts called it Yule, from the Norse word Jul, meaning, “wheel.”  They believed the goddess Frigga wove the fate of the world at her spinning wheel, and she labored long through the darkest night to birth the light. 

The Egyptians believed Isis labored and birthed Horus at the solstice.  In Persian myth, the warrior god Mithras was born at the winter solstice, as was Jesus of Nazareth, Saturn, Quetzalcoatl, and Sarasvati, the Hindu queen of heaven.