When is the solstice in winter?

Winter solstice is one of the 24 solar terms in a year. There are no fixed days in the lunar calendar 1 1 month, but this year is1February 2 1 day.

The earth moves around the sun. During the winter solstice, the sun shines directly on the tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere. At this time, the northern hemisphere has the shortest days and the longest nights. From winter to the future, the latitude of direct sunlight gradually moves northward, and the days in the northern hemisphere become longer and the nights become shorter.

In ancient times, Emperor Yao ordered the Ho brothers to calculate the sun, moon and stars, and set the solar terms at the age of. In the Zhou Dynasty, with the winter festival, the king would hold a ceremony to worship heaven on the solstice of winter. After the Han Dynasty, every winter solstice, there will be ceremonies to worship heaven, gods, ancestors and Hedong. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, sacrificial ceremonies were more grand, and grand ceremonies were held as usual in various places. There is even a saying that the solstice in winter is as big as a year. On the day of the Ming, Qing and Winter Solstice, every family will pack jiaozi to worship the gods and ancestors, and then the family will gather around jiaozi to eat, which is called "adding years", so it is a folk custom to eat jiaozi in the winter solstice to make them one year older.

In the past, in the agricultural society, one or two days before the winter solstice, every family began to prepare sacrifices for the festival and prepare to make dumplings. First, the glutinous rice is soaked in water, ground into rice slurry with a stone mill, and drained, and it becomes a "round rice wife". The night before, all the families got together and rolled it into a circle. The circles are divided into red and white. The red one is called "Golden Circle" and the white one is called "Silver Circle". On the day of the winter solstice, before dawn, women get up and make a fire to cook jiaozi, first to worship their ancestors, and then the whole family will eat jiaozi. Therefore, eating jiaozi on the solstice in winter means not only the gradual return of the sun, but also reunion. Modern people prefer to regard it as a symbol of perfection.