Winter Solstice Quotes That Explain Some of Our Winter and Holiday Traditions

These inspirational Winter Solstice quotes and sayings will remind you of all the things you love about winter.

What do Christmas and Yule have to do with winter and Pagan holidays? Quite a lot, actually. You see, the Pagans used to celebrate the Winter Solstice, and in those days, they referred to it as Yule. The reason they celebrated it is that the Winter Solstice is the day when it is darkest for the longest period.

The celebration honored the Moon Goddess. After that day, the sun becomes “reborn” and the time that there is daylight becomes longer. It is no wonder that so many Winter Solstice quotes are inspirational. Some of these Winter Solstice quotes also reference the spiritual reasons behind the celebration, while others just remind us of all the things we love about winter!

The traditional Yuletide celebration of the Pagan era was twofold. It honored the Moon Goddess but also celebrated and welcomed the return of the sun. Historically, many societies around the world held festivals and ceremonies, marking the winter solstice or the day of the ‘sun’s rebirth’. Most often, these parties and celebrations honored the symbolism of fire, light, life, death, the rising sun, and the moon.

Keep reading to learn more about what Winter Solstice and Christmas have in common!

Don’t forget to also check out these winter quotes to get you through the coldest yet magical season of the year.

Winter Solstice quotes about wintery things like snow

1. “Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.” — Mary Oliver

2. “A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.” — Susan Orlean

3. “We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.” — Walter Scott

4. “The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?” — J. B. Priestley

5. “At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare, and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow.” — Gary Zukav

6. “Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.” — Andy Goldsworthy

7. “Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.” — Sara Raasch

8. “With luck, it might even snow for us.” — Haruki Murakami

9. “Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people’s legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.” — Sarah Addison Allen

10. “When it snows you have two chocies: shovel or make snow angels.” — Unknown

11. “Snow isn’t just pretty. It also cleanses our world and our senses, not just of the soot and grime of a mining town, but also of a kind of weary familiarity, a taken-for-granted quality to which our eyes are all too susceptible.” — John Burnside

12. “Snow brings a special quality with it—the power to stop life as you know it dead in its tracks.” — Nancy Hatch Woodward

Winter Solstice quotes about Christmas and Pagan holidays

13. “The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light.” — Joseph Campbell

14. “The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians.” — George Monbiot

15. “Now, near the Winter Solstice, it is good to light candles. All the nice meanings of bringing light to the world can be beautiful. But perhaps we are concentrating on lighting the world because we don’t know how to light up our own lives.” — Ralph Levy

16. “The days have been growing shorter, imperceptibly but inescapably darker…. Heading into the night of the winter solstice, every spiritual tradition has some kind of festival of light. We’re all just whistling in the dark, hoping against hope that someone up there will see these little Hanukkah candles and get the hint.” — Lawrence Kushner

17. “I celebrate the spirit of Christmas. It’s the winter solstice celebration, rebirth and new possibilities.” — Ian Astbury

18. “Ancient sun worshippers believed the sun died at the end of the winter solstice and then three days later it would be reborn at the start of its cycle – December 25.” — David Icke

19. “We should celebrate the soul of Christmas as it is the time for the celebration, rebirth, and new possibilities of winter solstice.” — Unknown

Funny Winter Solstice quotes

20. “Winter is nature’s way of saying, ‘Up yours.'” — Robert Byrne

21. “You can’t get too much winter in the winter.” — Robert Frost

22. “Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.” — Bill Watterson

23. “Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.” — Sinclair Lewis

24. “One should consider winter as a promising time as there is slight to do.” — Unknown

25. “A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.” — Markus Zusak

26. “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” — Carl Reiner

27. “Noses are red, fingers are blue. I’m tired of winter, how about you?” — Unknown

28. “Dear Winter, I’m breaking up with you. I think it’s time I start seeing other seasons. Summer is hotter than you.” — Unknown

29. “Can anyone tell me where the ‘delete winter’ button is?” — Unknown

30. “My favorite winter activity is going back inside and putting my pajamas on.” — Unknown

Winter Solstice quotes comparing winter with other seasons

31. “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” — Hal Borland

32. “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'” — Lewis Carroll

33. “My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.” — George R. R. Martin

34. “Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.” — Pietro Aretino

35. “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” — John Steinbeck

36. “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

37. “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” — Andrew Wyeth

38. “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” — Anne Bradstreet

39. “They who sing through the summer must dance in the winter.” — Italian Proverb

40. “Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.” — Elizabeth Bowen

Other inspirational Winter Solstice quotes

41. “People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” — Anton Chekhov

42. “While I relish our warm months, winter forms our character and brings out our best.” — Tom Allen

43. “The pine stays green in winter… wisdom in hardship.” — Norman Douglas

44. “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for a home.” — Edith Sitwell

45. “The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.” — Gary Zukav

46. “The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time — a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken.” — Frederick Lenz

47. “As it somehow always manages before the winter solstice, but never after. The early darkness was cheerful and promising, even for those who had nothing.” — Mark Helprin

48. “Winter Solstice is the time to forgive everyone for their past mistakes also to be forgiven and to start everything from the beginning.” — Unknown

49. “The winter solstice is as special as sterile darkness that results in flourishing future a far from one’s expectations.” — Unknown

50. “Winter forms our character and brings out our best.” — Tim Allen

Interesting and insightful Winter Solstice quotes

51. “Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

52. “I was just thinking if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime.” — Will Rogers

53. “Nothing burns like the cold.” — George R.R. Martin

54. “A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn’t mean in winter.” — Patricia Briggs

55. “I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.” — Bill Watterson

56. “I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes.” — Edward M. Purcell

57. “And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.” — Roy Bean

58. “The first snow is like the first love.” — Lara Biyuts

59. “Then comes Winter, with bluster and snow, That brings to our cheeks the ruddy glow…” —Gertrude Tooley Buckingham

60. “Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do – or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.” — Stanley Crawford

What did you learn from these Winter Solstice quotes?

So, other than the time of year, what do Winter Solstice and Christmas have in common? Well, the word Yule itself has made its way into Christmas stories and carols. So many of our beloved Christmas traditions are also pagan customs. Paganism comprised several cultures, and our Christmas traditions are incorporated from each of them.

For instance, the Romans celebrated Saturnalia from the 17th until the 24th of December. This holiday was in honor of the agricultural god, Saturn. The week was filled with feasting, drinking, gift-giving, and joyful merrymaking, which sounds an awful lot like how we spend Christmas!

What would Christmas be like without Santa and are stockings hung by the fireplace with care? You can thank the Germanic pagans for this tradition! Odin, an old man with a long, white beard, rode his 8-legged horse called Sleipnir through the sky. This deity came during the winter and children would fill their booties with carrots and straw, before leaving them by the chimney for Sleipnir to feed on. As a reward, Odin would fill their booties back up with little presents.

Do you know the origins of some other Christmas traditions? How do you celebrate the Winter Solstice? Feel free to leave them in the comments below!