The Winter 2025 issue of Food & Dining Magazine is now available in all the familiar places: Louisville area eateries and food shops, newsstands and online. Click here to check it out.
For the record, the winter solstice date and time for 2025 is Sunday, December 21 (10:03 a.m., Eastern Time).
The shortest day of the year typically falls on the winter solstice…the winter solstice is the beginning of astronomical winter. It is caused by the Earth’s tilted axis so that half of Earth is pointed away from the sun and the other half is pointed towards it.
Speaking as one who does not adhere to religious belief in any “organized” fashion, the winter solstice remains a source of fascination with respect to its impact on human culture.
The celebration of the winter solstice is an ancient tradition that dates back over 4,000 years and has served as a basis for our current holiday celebrations, such as Christmas and Hanukkah. These celebrations centre around ceremonies that include food, sharing abundance, and sending positive messages about health for the colder months to come.
The preceding paragraph introduces an informative essay by Dani Renouf, writing from the Kidney Community Kitchen in Canada: “No matter where you are and how you celebrate, one theme that remains the same through time is gratitude for the food and meals we share.”
Winter Solstice Celebrations: Bringing Ancient Food Traditions Into Our Modern Day
Saturnalia, the ancient Roman festival, is the most likely to be linked to our modern Christmas celebrations. This festival, marking winter solstice, focuses on the planting season. It includes a variety of foods and courses: grape juice cake as an appetizer, a honey wine made with several plants and spices (Mulsum), chicken with hazelnuts and squash as the main course, and a peppered honey cake with hazelnuts for dessert. The similarities between foods and the table settings for Saturnalia indicate that it inspired some of our festive traditions today, like including poultry in holiday meals. Try our Cranberry Margarita, Roast Turkey and Apple Cranberry Cake for a traditional Canadian Christmas meal.
I’ve chosen to highlight Saturnalia because, for many years during my previous career as a pub owner in New Albany, one of the year’s holiday highlights was our Saturnalia “seasonal” beer promotion. I’d explain it like this:
Many of our contemporary winter holiday traditions derive...Read more
