It’s no secret that our holiday season in Truckee/Tahoe can be a quintessential winter wonderland. For many, these early winter months are marked with the joy of falling snow, twinkling downtown lights, and our favorite folks gathered around what my mother would call “a rip-roarin’ fire.”

“… IT’S NO COINCIDENCE THAT SO MANY WINTER CELEBRATIONS CLUSTER AROUND WHAT MAY JUST BE THE MOST MAGICAL TIME OF THE YEAR: THE WINTER SOLSTICE.”

In the weeks before Christmas, trees parade like proud passengers atop family cars, gelt (the foil-wrapped chocolate coins given as gifts and game tokens during Hanukkah) reappears on grocery shelves, and elementary school students huddle around craft tables to make ornaments for downtown displays.

As a child at Truckee Elementary, I distinctly remember these ornament-decorating parties. One year, we transformed sheets of white paper into supersized snowflakes; the next, we marbled the inside of transparent globes with acrylic paint and glitter. And while most of our holiday activities centered around Christmas traditions, our teachers still carved out spaces for others. In kindergarten, we munched on latkes and gelt while playing dreidel. For our winter holiday recital, we sang classic Christmas carols side-by-side with “Kwanzaa is Here.”

While nearly all of my schoolmates celebrated Christmas, and nearly none celebrated Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, power remained in the simple practice of acknowledging multiple holiday traditions. That same strength lies in recognizing that our holidays, despite their differences, share important throughlines such as joy, light, renewal, generosity, and gathering.

And it’s no coincidence that so many winter celebrations cluster around what may just be the most magical time of the year: the winter solstice.

For millennia, humans have marked this season with celebrations around the solstice. It’s unclear when exactly these “holidays” began, but archeological sites around the world showcase human architecture intentionally aligned with the path of solstice sun. Stonehenge, for example, marks both the summer solstice — when the sun rises behind the Heel Stone in the northeast to shine its first rays into the structure’s center — and the winter solstice, when the last moments of sun cast long rays directly through the circle’s heart. And predating Stonehenge by over 6,000 years, Karahan Tepe in Turkey was similarly built to cast solstice sunlight on key statues and structural elements throughout the site. Ancient Rome and Greece greeted the solstice with exuberant parties, and Yule festivities celebrated by Germanic peoples came to shape many of the beloved rituals we now associate with Christmas: decorating evergreen trees, feasting, gift-giving and lighting candles to illuminate this short-sunned season.

It’s possible that the timing of contemporary Christmas was also gleaned from solstice celebrations. Early religious scholars showed little interest in pinpointing the day or season of Christ’s birth, and it wasn’t until 336 C.E. that emperor Constantine declared December 25th as Christmas. Because the date of this newly declared “Christmas” lined up so closely with solstice celebrations such as Yule and Zoroastric celebrations of Mithra — god of the sun, whose birthday had long been celebrated on December 25th — its timing is popularly attributed to an effort of the Church to adapt pre-existing celebrations.

And just as Christmas absorbed and reshaped solstice traditions, Hanukkah also transformed, particularly in the United States America.

While of minor religious importance within Judaism, Hanukkah became culturally amplified in the 19th and early 20th centuries as Jewish-American communities sought to establish and distinguish their celebrations alongside the growing prominence of Christmas. Gift giving, not traditionally a component of Hanukkah festivities, was widely adopted to liven the Jewish holiday in hopes that it could metaphorically (and literally) hold a candle to the cultural phenomenon that American Christmas had become.

Kwanzaa, meanwhile, was founded in 1966 by American activist Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga to acknowledge African American and Pan-African heritage, community, and culture. Its name was derived from the Swahili phrase meaning “first fruits,” inspired by the harvest festivals celebrated across the African continent, many of which are held in December near the southern hemisphere’s summer solstice. In India, Hindu celebrations of the solstice take part in January with regionally distinct names and iterations.

Local indigenous communities including the Wašiw, or Washoe, tribe have tracked astronomical movement since time immemorial, developing keen understandings of how the moon, stars, and planets move across the sky. Features throughout Wašiw land indicate a deep-seated understanding of the winter solstice.

With this context — far from exhaustive, yet reflective of our celebrations’ interconnected histories — we come back to our snow-dusted corner of the world.

“AS THE DAYS BEGIN TO LENGTHEN, WE CAN CARRY THIS LIGHT FORWARD WITH THE SIMPLE TRUTH THAT THERE IS MORE UNITING US THAN SETTING US APART.”

The lampposts in downtown Truckee wear candy cane stripes, and carols drift through the evening air in Incline Village as Jennifer Street comes to life with holiday light shows. True to form, the North Tahoe Hebrew Congregation is getting ready for a Hanukkah après ski, complete with hot chocolate and latkes. Coffee shops are brimming with cider and pumpkin spice. Garlands of oranges and cranberries and popcorn drape over door frames. At home, my menorah waits on the coffee table with anticipatory candles.

On Christmas morning, I’ll sip a Bloody Mary. Your kids may be snacking on Santa’s leftovers – after all, how often do they get to eat cookies for breakfast? And many of us will end our night among our favorite people, wrapped in sweaters beside a rip-roarin’ fire.

Whatever individual celebrations are in store for us, we’ve arrived at this season as one community. Together, we’ll move through these shortened days. Beneath the snow, seeds for next spring’s flowers lie waiting, ready to endure a hardy winter. If we’re lucky, this season will offer each of us moments of joy, connection, and reflection.

And, even when the holidays come to an end, this early-winter season remains a rallying cry to bring our community closer still. Each day we will be gifted a touch more light and gain a little more time in the sun. If we allow it, this prodigal light can be its own kind of celebration, a quiet call to action. As the days begin to lengthen, we can carry this light forward with the simple truth that there is more uniting us than setting us apart.

May this returning light remind us that we are at our strongest when we honor the many threads that make the Truckee/Tahoe tapestry whole. As the sun lingers a bit longer each day, we can choose to retain the warmth that makes this season feel special. We can choose to look out for our neighbors, to notice what we share, and to step into a new year connected — to one another and to this place we call home.