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Saturday is the winter solstice. Make the most of the shortest day of the year
People soak up the sun on deck chairs in the Allgäu region of southern Germany in 2020. Saturday is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Benjamin Liss/dpa/AFP via Getty Images
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Benjamin Liss/dpa/AFP via Getty Images
Saturday is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s not only the shortest day of the year, but the official arrival of astronomical winter.
“At 4:20 a.m. EST, the solstice marks the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere,” NASA says on its website.
That means from now until the end of June, each day will get a little bit longer — and brighter (no matter what any famous animal prognosticators may predict).
In the meantime, there’s plenty to cherish during the cold season, and we’re not just talking about the December holidays.
Here are some ideas for how to celebrate the solstice and welcome winter:
Try out traditions from around the world
The winter solstice has long symbolized a time of renewal and ritual for people all over the world, as NPR has reported.
In Iran and many Central Asian countries, people gather to eat (especially red fruits like pomegranates and watermelons), drink and read poetry through the night. Some Japanese traditions include taking a hot bath with the citrus fruit yuzu and eating foods that contain the “n” sound (like udon) for good luck.
To learn more about winter solstice celebrations from both hemispheres, click here.
Stream the sunrise at Stonehenge
Each December and June, visitors flock to the ancient monument in England to celebrate the solstice.
The rock formation was built to align with the sun on those days, making for a dramatic view. On the winter solstice, the sun sets to the southwest of the stone circle (as opposed to the summer solstice, when the sun’s first rays shine into the heart of the monument).
The site allows entry — free of charge — for several hours on Saturday morning. If you can’t make the trip in person, you can catch a free livestream of the sunrise on the English Heritage YouTube and Facebook pages. It’s best suited for night owls or early birds, since it starts around 2:30 a.m. ET.
Enjoy the best of the Paul Winter Consort’s solstice concerts
Fittingly named saxophone player Paul Winter has been ushering in the winter solstice with a special concert for decades.
Since 1980, the Grammy winner and a slew of special guests have gathered in New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine to mark the occasion with music and dance. The event has found new homes since the COVID-19 pandemic, this year touring 10 acoustic venues throughout New England.
The sun rises over a snow-covered landscape in Denderhoutem, Belgium.
Hans Vandendriessche/BELGA/AFP via Getty Images
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Hans Vandendriessche/BELGA/AFP via Getty Images
NPR’s broadcast of Winter’s concerts has become a beloved seasonal tradition in itself. Last year, Winter combed through the archives and picked out his favorite moments from four decades of solstice celebrations. You can listen to them here.
Read The Shortest Day and hear an interview with its award-winning author
Susan Cooper’s children’s book The Shortest Day, released in 2019, is a celebration of light returning after the winter solstice.
The text of the book is actually a poem she wrote in the 1970s for The Christmas Revels (an annual celebration of the solstice), and it has been read at such events for more than four decades. Cooper, herself a Newbery Medal winner, partnered with Caldecott-honor illustrator Carson Ellis to bring its colorful imagery and wintry atmospherics to life.
Read or listen to NPR’s story on the beautiful book, and hear snippets of Cooper reading it out loud.
Prepare to do some “wintering”
Several recent works offer sage advice on how to “winter” — which essentially means embracing the season, not just weathering it.
This year, health psychologist Kari Leibowitz published How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days. It examines how people in places with extreme winters — from Scandinavia to northern Japan — have positive attitudes about the season, and the book offers practical tips for those who want a warmer outlook.
As Leibowitz told NPR, those tips include bundling up to reclaim a summer activity in the winter (like a beach barbecue or park picnic), making a list of winter things you look forward to and trading your home’s “big light” for cozier candles and lamps.
Another helpful manual is Katherine May’s 2020 book, Wintering. The English author acknowledges that winter can be a painful and isolating time — but also one of transformation. Her book, which involved traveling to far-flung, freezing destinations, explores how to confront the season head-on.
“Every time we winter, we develop a new knowledge about how to go back into the world,” May told Morning Edition that year. “We learn about our tastes and preferences. We learn about what makes us happy.”
The sun shines between snow-covered branches at the Hareskoven forested area near Copenhagen, Denmark.
Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
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Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
Cozy up with the year’s best books, shows and films
With winter weather closing in, it’s a great time to pick out your next entertainment obsession, from a TV series to binge with your family to an album you can play on loop while defrosting in the car.
NPR has you covered with recommendations in every category, thanks to staff members who consumed culture in every possible form all year long. They’ve put together a complete guide to the best of 2024.
NPR’s annual book recommendations engine is back with over 350 new titles (plus all of those from years past, going back over a decade). Critics compiled their favorite shows and movies of the year — searchable by both genre and where to watch it.
NPR Music has pulled together a few lists of its own, including the 124 best songs and 50 best albums of the year. Plus, check out NPR’s favorite games of the year, sortable by platform and genre.
Take care of yourself
Maybe darker days are making you crave better sleep or have you feeling stuck in a rut. Perhaps you’re looking for tips on protecting your home from winter weather, your car from icy roads and your family from COVID-19. You could be curious about the benefits of cold plunging or how to dress for a winter workout.
Enter NPR’s Life Kit, with expert advice for all sorts of physical and mental health topics. Whether you’re looking to get a head start on your New Year’s resolutions or just taking winter day by day, here are some resources that can help:
A version of this story originally published in 2021.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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