I posted this last year, and decided to repost it again today.
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Today marks the winter solstice.
The solstice has been honored and celebrated for millenia by cultures all over the world -- the ancient Egyptians, Celts, Persians, and Norsemen just to name a few -- as the birth of the new year and the return of the sun.
There many sources for histories of solstice traditions, one of my favorites being this one. It's fascinating to read about how ancient solstice traditions originated, and how they have been co-opted and assigned new meanings in modern times.
But for today, rather than going into any detail about the origins of the midwinter holiday currently known as Christmas, I'm simply going to re-tell my own personal favorite winter solstice myth, which is a story from Pacific Northwest Native American tradition.