How to Seattle
The sun will rise at 7:55 a.m. and set at 4:20 p.m. on Dec. 21, giving Seattleites just a precious 8 hours, 25 minutes and 25 seconds of daylight to enjoy on winter solstice. It’s the shortest day of the year, as the Northern Hemisphere reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun, but it also kicks off the gradual return of the light. Sunsets will continue to inch later and later in the days to come.
Around Seattle, some community members mark the astronomical shift with community walks, sunset watches and meals or personal rituals of reflection and intention setting. We talked to event organizers and asked Seattle Times readers about the ways they celebrate the changing seasons to compile just a handful of the local traditions you can take part in — or get inspired by.
Darkness and light, at community solstice walks
Many like to experience Mother Nature’s shift outdoors, carrying lanterns and luminaries through the evening darkness during community solstice walks.
On Bainbridge Island, Bloedel Reserve’s winter solstice walks (Dec. 18-22, $5-$25) begin with a reading of the Jan Richardson poem “Blessing for the Longest Night” before the group, often about 200 people carrying lanterns, embarks on a 1.5-mile stroll. The tradition gives visitors a chance to experience the gardens (which usually close at 4 p.m. during the winter) in the darkness, illuminated just by the lanterns, fire pits and a handful of areas with outdoor lights.
For a natural wonder like Bloedel, the solstice is “an important yearly milestone … [it] signals the spring eventually coming and the season of growth,” communications manager Etta Lilienthal said.
In Seattle, about 300 luminaries will illuminate a half-mile loop at Washington Park Arboretum’s winter solstice walk (Dec. 20 and 21, $30, ages 21-and-older only). The evening of activities will also include live, acoustic guitar music, gin made from botanicals from the arboretum and a craft activity: making holiday gift tags.
More local walks include: the Winter Solstice Celebration Night Market and Luminary Walk in Graham, Pierce County (Dec. 21, $3 to enter the luminary walk, $8 for more activities); Everett’s Evergreen Arboretum and Gardens’ Solstice Luminary Walk with a story time and songs (Dec. 21, free); and the Snohomish Winter Solstice Walk (Dec. 21, free) where participants follow the lights along the River Front Trail.
Watch (and learn about) the sunset
Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year … but why, exactly?
South Seattle College astronomy professor and NASA volunteer Alice Enevoldsen has explained the astronomy behind solstices and equinoxes at free public events for the past 15 years. “One of the core misconceptions of all of astronomy is how seasons work … it works sort of differently than we would think,” she said.
Her educational sunset watch parties at Solstice Park (held for each solstice and equinox) have become a community staple, attracting anywhere from about 20 people to over 100, she estimated.
This year’s winter solstice gathering will run 3:45-4:45 p.m. on Dec. 21 at the West Seattle park.
Enevoldsen will talk about Solstice Park’s construction, with stones indicating where the sun sets on solstices and equinoxes. After the sun dips below the horizon, she’ll lead a visual astronomy lesson, explaining the solstice with a globe on a stick and a volunteer from the crowd to represent the sun. The kinesthetic demonstration shows how the Earth orbits around the sun at an angle, with the winter solstice coming when the Northern Hemisphere is at its most extreme tilt away from the sun.
There are also plenty of other spots from which to admire the year’s earliest sunset, weather permitting. Reader Meredith Sessions sometimes goes to Seattle’s Sunset Hill Park for the solstice, where there’ll often be others gathered for the same reason, she said. Seattle’s Golden Gardens, Alki Beach and Carkeek Park, Shoreline’s Richmond Beach Saltwater Park and Burien’s Seahurst Park are known for prime sunset watching, too.
A time for reflection
During the short, dark days surrounding winter solstice, some local residents take time to rest and reflect — whether at community events or on their own.
Linh Le combines aspects of her Vietnamese heritage, traditional Chinese medicine and Western traditions to hold tea ceremonies and other rituals around Seattle throughout the year, including a pair of winter solstice workshops Dec. 21 and 28 this year ($75).
She likes tying rituals to seasonal changes “because it’s something that as humans, we’re all going through together,” Le said. In a typical Seattle winter, for example, “it’s really dark early, it’s cold, there’s less to do,” she said. “This is a beautiful time to just be really introspective of your own life and ask yourself what’s really important to you.”
The theme of reflection shows up in a number of local events: Seattle’s Center for Spiritual Living will hold a Dec. 22 winter solstice service emphasizing introspection, and the community group Gathering Ground will host a Dec. 21 bonfire at Carkeek Park, which involves time for contemplation.
Some may prefer to reflect while nesting at home. One of Le’s favorite wintertime traditions entails taking a plain taper candle, reflecting on something you want more of in your life (for example, love or time to rest) and carving that intention into the candle with an old pen before lighting it and “[releasing] all attachments to the outcome of your wish.”
Elise Wulff, a Seattle artist who often works with cardboard, also uses candles for an intention-setting tradition she does with her husband. After putting their phones away and lighting a bunch of candles, the pair will talk, laugh and reflect on the past year, each crafting their own lists of things they want to let go of and things they want more of.
Using toilet paper rolls, they make cardboard crafts resembling candles (watch Wulff’s tutorial at st.news/solstice-candle), tuck the “let go” lists into the crafts, and toss them into a fire in their backyard fire pit.
“It always surprises me how powerful the physical act of writing and crafting is,” Wulff said.
Neighborhood gatherings, family dinners and more
In addition to public events, Seattle Times readers shared their own, personal solstice traditions — many of which involve gathering friends, family or neighborhoods together around a meal.
Becky Wiess has invited over about a dozen neighbors on the solstice for the past 20 years. “At the beginning of dinner, everyone gets a piece of bread and a glass of wine (or whatever),” Wiess wrote in. “We turn out all the lights and sit in silence and darkness for a bit, then light one candle and continue in silence while we eat the bread and drink the wine. Then I declare the new solar year, the lights come back, and we feast.”
Meanwhile, Seattleite Ethylanne Larrimore’s solstice dinner welcomes back the sun in a different way. She and her family will eat a feast of orange and yellow foods — macaroni and cheese, carrot salad, squash, lemonade or orange juice, etc. — and sing and dance to songs like The Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine” and “Here Comes the Sun,” she said.
Bellevue resident Jeff Bogdan shared his unique custom, developed to honor his parents who both “lived lives of service,” including his optimistic dad who was known to emphasize on Dec. 21 that “every day after this will be longer.”
“My winter solstice tradition is to be in the shop from sunrise to sunset making something,” he said. “The only rule is that it has to be a gift for someone else. This year, my son Drew and I are making toy shelves for my 9-year-old niece and nephew twins, who lost their father, Rishi, to cancer in 2023.”
If you decide to celebrate the solstice for the first time this year, it just may become a tradition that expands to other seasons — as happened when reader Marilyn Allen invited a few neighbors over for a winter solstice bonfire a few years ago.
“The weather turned and it was 27 (degrees), but we persevered bundling up in blankets,” Allen said “This started a tradition to get together for a fire every equinox and now includes a large summer gathering with the whole neighborhood in June. It has definitely brought the neighborhood closer.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.