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Photos show winter solstice traditions around the world as celebrations mark 2023’s shortest day
The 2023 winter solstice arrives on Thursday, Dec. 21, with the Northern Hemisphere marking the shortest day of the year, in which most people in the U.S. will get only about 9 or 10 hours of sunlight, and in parts of Europe even less.
Known also as the “longest night,” the solstice this year is at 10:27 p.m. Eastern Time, according to the National Weather Service.
While the solstice typically occurs on Dec. 21 or 22, it can be as early as Dec. 20 or as late as Dec. 23, the Weather Channel explains. This happens because our calendars aren’t an exact match for the solar year.
As the longest night fades, more sun will be in the forecast as the days begin to get longer bit by bit, until the longest day of the year six months later. The Southern Hemisphere has opposite seasons, so those regions will not observe the winter solstice until June.
The annual event is marked by winter solstice traditions around the world, including parades, festivals, spiritual gatherings and other observances, and thousands of people flock to Stonehenge and other neolithic monuments.
What does the winter solstice signify?
The winter solstice is the moment when the Earth is the most tilted away from the sun, University of Massachusetts astronomer Stephen Schneider told CBS News in 2017. The closer you are to the Arctic, the shorter the day will be.
There is a long history of ancient celebrations for the winter solstice, as CBS News previously reported. In ancient Persia, the event marked the birthday of the Sun King Mithra, a mythological deity. In the Roman Empire, it was honored with a feast day known as Die Natalis Invicti Solis, or “The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.”
Saturnalia, a sort of Thanksgiving, was also celebrated around this time in ancient Rome.
Many celebrations also include the exchanging of gifts.
Winter solstice traditions in pictures
Across the world, the solstice is celebrated with festivals, parades and more. Some of the largest celebrations are held at England’s Stonehenge, a neolithic monument that was built to align with the sun on solstice days. On the winter solstice, the sun sets to the southwest of the stone circle.
About 8,000 people attended a summer solstice celebration at Stonehenge in 2023, with over 145,000 more watching on live stream. A similar livestream will be set up for the winter solstice, said the English Heritage charity, which cares for historical sites in England.
Revelers also gather at smaller neolithic monuments like the Newgrange, an ancient burial monument in Ireland. The 5,000-year-old monument was constructed in such a way that sunlight only enters the inner sanctum on mornings around the winter solstice. The central chamber of the monument is lit by the sun as it sets for just 17 minutes a year, according to the monument’s website.
People can enter a lottery for a chance to celebrate the solstice there, and like Stonehenge, the festivities at Newgrange are livestreamed on digital channels.
Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the solstice is celebrated with the “Burning The Clocks,” a community event that includes a parade and bonfire on the beaches of Brighton. The event is meant to celebrate the shortest day of the year and “provide an antidote to the excesses of Christmas,” according to its website, and has taken place almost every year since 1993.
In Riga, Latvia, the winter solstice is celebrated with a parade and a log-dragging event where a log that represents negative thoughts and misfortunes of the past year is dragged through the city’s Old Town and burned. The burning is accompanied by folk songs and dancing, according to local media.
In Toronto, Canada, the Winter Solstice is celebrated with the Kensington Market Winter Solstice Festival, an annual event that has been going on since 1988. The festival incorporates theatrical elements, street performances and more to create a community event that welcomes the return of the sun.
Architecture and ancient monuments constructed in alignment with the solstice sun patterns will be aglow. In Egypt, the Karnak Temple, a 4,000-year-old shrine to a sun god, will be lit up by the rising sun and illuminated throughout the day.
At the Pömmelte ring sanctuary, also known as the “German Stonehenge,” dozens of wooden pillars, first constructed 4,000 years ago, will be illuminated by the sun.
How Southern Hemisphere celebrates the winter solstice
It’s currently summer in the Southern Hemisphere, where winter solstice won’t arrive till June. But the date is still marked in a variety of ways.
In El Salvador, people gather to burn offerings and take part in other celebrations.
In Bolivia, the solstice will mark the beginning of a new year in the Andean Amazon calendar. Priests present gratitude ceremonies to the sun and the earth, according to a site outlining tourist attractions in the country; such ceremonies include chants, rituals and burnt offerings.
There is also a night walk from La Paz to see the sunrise in Tiwanaku, where the solstice is observed. The event is also celebrated at archaeological sites around the country.
In Cusco, Peru, an event known as the Inti Raymi Sun Festival is held each year to celebrate the solstice. Cusco was once the center of the Incan empire and is near Machu Picchu, which was built by the Incans in 1450 to honor the solstice.
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Most U.S. homeowners hit by Hurricane Helene don’t have flood insurance
Homeowners whose properties were swamped by Hurricane Helene’s torrential rainfall face a serious problem beyond drying out: how to pay for the cleanup.
That’s because most Americans, including in the communities ravaged by the massive storm, lack flood insurance.
As the aftermath of the hurricane’s ruinous and deadly route across the Southeast illustrates, the alarming lack of flood insurance coverage among an overwhelming majority of people impacted serves as a cautionary tale for the rest of us, experts say.
Along Florida’s barrier islands that run from St. Petersburg to Clearwater, mansions, single-family homes, apartments, mobile homes, restaurants, bars and shops were completely destroyed or heavily damaged by the storm in minutes. In hard-hit Pinellas and Taylor counties, victims with storm coverage ranged from 25% to 5%, respectively, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
Outside of the Sunshine State, the picture is even more dire, with just 1% of homeowners who sustained flooding from Helene holding flood insurance, the institute said.
One underlying factor is that flooding is not covered by a homeowner’s policy and must be purchased separately, often from the federal government. Flood insurance is required on government-backed mortgages for homes in areas classified as high risk by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Many banks mandate flood insurance in high-risk zones as well, but that doesn’t prevent some homeowners from dropping their coverage once their mortgage is paid off.
Calculations on how many homeowners are at risk and how many are covered vary, but all are disconcerting.
FEMA estimates only 4% of homeowners across the country have flood insurance, even though 99% of U.S. counties have been impacted by flooding since 1996. The Insurance Information Institute offers a slightly higher count, stating that about 6% of U.S. homeowners have flood insurance, with most, or 67%, covered through the National Flood Insurance Program run by FEMA, and 33% via a private insurer.
People have “a false sense of security”
When buying or renting a place to live, most people’s main consideration in deciding whether or not to buy insurance for flooding is whether the property is in a high-risk zone. But that creates a “false sense of security,” according to Georgina Sanchez, a faculty fellow and research scholar at the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University. “This perception can discourage residents from flood insurance,” as occurred in western and northern North Carolina, Sanchez told CBS MoneyWatch.
Sanchez’s center has coordinated its research with the Brooklyn-based nonprofit First Street, which compiled a flood database that allows people to look up individual locations nationwide to access the present and future risk of property flooding in those areas.
“Many of our homes, businesses and infrastructure are situated within 800 feet, or roughly two city blocks, from the edge of the 100-year floodplain,” areas viewed as susceptible to being inundated by floodwaters and used to set insurance rates, said Sanchez.
A recent nationwide study found 24% of locations where people are building to be located in that buffer zone, or immediately outside the 100-year flood zone. “We all love to live near water,” she said. “But we’re at a point where we have to ask, do we want to keep putting people in harm’s way.”