Hey friends, welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast.

This is the weekly highlight reel of videos that I have put out on YouTube.

So in case you don't know, you can go over to YouTube and watch all my videos.

The channel is History and Coffee, And you can just search for my name as well, Heather Tesco, History and Coffee.

And you will get it. And you can subscribe there. Thank you to the many people who already subscribe.

And then what I've started doing is weekly highlight reels of some of the videos that have

gone out on YouTube that would be of interest to the podcast listeners as well. So thanks for

listening. And you can also, like I said, go over and join me on YouTube history and copy and

search for Heather. And there I am. So let's get right into it. Today is the winter solstice,

and we are going to talk about how our tutor friends would have been marking that day. What they

might have done, are you off to any solstice celebrations? I would love to know. Leave me a comment

and tell me. All right, so December 21st, it's the winter solstice.

It's when the days in the northern hemisphere, at least, start to get longer, the longest night

of the year, the shortest day, all of that. It is for our tutor friends and for us today, a time

of reflection of ritual and in Tudor England, a little bit of storytelling.

While the Tudors didn't mark the solstice as a formal holiday, it was deeply woven into

their seasonal rhythms, blending ancient customs with their own traditions. For centuries,

midwinter celebrations had been about surviving the dark and the cold,

and also about community and hope and light returning.

So let's start with the basics.

The solstice marks the moment when the sun appears at its very lowest point in the sky,

and then the days start to grow longer.

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