Winter Solstice Trivia
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This winter solstice trivia quiz has 46 free questions with answers and covers the shortest day of the year, from the astronomy behind it to the festivals people have held to mark it for thousands of years. It takes in Earth's axial tilt and why the seasons happen, the December and June solstices, the ancient monuments aligned to the solstice sun (Stonehenge, Newgrange), and the traditions around the world: Yule, Saturnalia, China's Dongzhi, Iran's Yalda Night, the Hopi Soyal and the Inca Inti Raymi. Early questions suit anyone who knows the solstice is the shortest day. Later ones reward people who know which monument is older than the pyramids and why Earth is actually closest to the Sun in January. Use it for a seasonal trivia night, a science-class starter or a holiday quiz. Every answer has been checked against a documented source shown under the explanation.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The winter solstice is the day with what?
The shortest daylight
The shortest daylight does not bring the coldest weather: land and sea keep losing heat for weeks, so the deepest cold usually arrives about a month later.
Q 02In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice falls on or about which date?
December 21
December 21 or 22: the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice almost always falls on one of those dates, drifting slightly year to year as leap years catch the calendar up with Earth's orbit.
Q 03At a hemisphere's winter solstice, its pole reaches its maximum tilt in which direction?
Away from the Sun
Away from the Sun: with its pole leaning back, that hemisphere sees the noon Sun climb less high than on any other day, so midday shadows are the longest of the year.
Q 04Which Nordic capital gets only about four hours of daylight a day in midwinter?
Reykjavik
Reykjavik lies at 64 degrees north, well beyond the other three, so in midwinter its Sun rises after 11 am and is gone by about 3:30 pm.
Q 05Earth's axis is tilted by roughly how many degrees?
23.4
23.4 degrees is Earth's current obliquity, and that lean alone, not distance from the Sun, is what makes winter and summer.
Q 06Earth is actually closest to the Sun in which month?
January
January: Earth reaches perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, in the first week of the month, so distance cannot be what makes the Northern Hemisphere's winter.
Q 07On midsummer morning at Stonehenge, the Sun rises behind which landmark of the monument?
The Heel Stone
The Heel Stone stands outside the circle, so the midsummer Sun rising behind it sends its first rays into the heart of Stonehenge; the midwinter sunset lies on the same line, the opposite way.
Q 08The Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland is older than Stonehenge and older than what else?
The Egyptian pyramids
The Egyptian pyramids: Newgrange went up more than 5,000 years ago, centuries before Giza; its doorway lay hidden until labourers digging the mound for stone uncovered it in 1699.
Q 09At Newgrange, the winter solstice sunrise shines into the inner chamber through what feature?
A roofbox above the entrance
A roofbox above the entrance lets the sunrise beam travel 19 metres up the passage to the chamber; so many people want to be inside for it that places are drawn by lottery each year.
Q 10Which Germanic midwinter festival was later merged with Christmas?
Yule
Yule kept its name after conversion: a saga says Norway's King Haakon the Good made a law moving the feast to the Christian date, and Yule lives on as another word for Christmas.
Q 11Which Roman midwinter festival began on 17 December with feasting and gift-giving?
Saturnalia
Saturnalia turned Roman order upside down for a few days: work stopped, gambling was allowed, and a mock king was chosen whose silly orders the party had to obey.
Q 12At the Chinese winter festival, families make and eat balls of glutinous rice called what?
Tangyuan
Tangyuan sounds like tuanyuan, the Chinese word for reunion, so sharing a bowl of the round rice balls is a way of saying the family is whole.
Q 13Midwinter Day, kept with a feast and an exchange of gifts, is a tradition of crews wintering where?
Antarctica
Antarctica: the tradition is credited to Robert Falcon Scott's 1902 expedition, whose men marked midwinter with paper decorations, plum puddings, mince pies and presents.
Q 21At the northern winter solstice, which place is midway through six months of unbroken daylight?
The South Pole
The South Pole sees one sunrise a year, in September, and one sunset in March, so the northern midwinter finds it in round-the-clock daylight.
Q 22In the far north or south, what is it called when the Sun stays below the horizon for more than 24 hours?
Polar night
Polar night grows longer the nearer you get to a pole: about a day at its outer edge, some six months at the pole itself, where the Sun sets just once a year.
Q 23The midnight sun, when the Sun never sets, happens north of which line?
The Arctic Circle
Q 14Which two red fruits are especially significant at Yalda Night?
Pomegranates and watermelons
Pomegranates and watermelons head the Yalda table beside nuts and sweets; their red is said to stand for the glow of dawn and the warmth of life.
Q 15The Soyal solstice ceremony, which opens the kachina season, belongs to which Native American people?
The Hopi
The Hopi open their underground kivas at Soyal to welcome the kachinas, spirit beings who stay with the villages until the Niman ceremony in July, then go home to the San Francisco Peaks.
Q 16The Inca sun festival Inti Raymi was centred on which city?
Cusco
Cusco, the Inca capital, held Inti Raymi in its main square until Spanish authorities banned it in the 1500s; since 1944 actors have restaged it at Sacsayhuaman above the city.
Q 17Which Japanese sun goddess hid in a cave, plunging the world into darkness?
Amaterasu
Amaterasu: in the Kojiki the sun goddess shut herself in the Heavenly Rock Cave after her brother Susanoo's rampage, and the gods lured her out with a mirror and dancing, restoring light.
Q 18In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter solstice falls in which month?
June
June: the seasons flip south of the equator, so midwinter there comes around June 21, and the Inca timed their great sun festival to it.
Q 19In Sweden, which saint is honoured with candle-crowned processions on 13 December?
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia: Swedish Luciadagen on 13 December features a girl in a white gown and a crown of candles; under the old Julian calendar the date fell within days of the winter solstice.
Q 20Which Norse god, known by scores of names, was also called Jolnir after the midwinter feast?
Odin
Odin: Jolnir comes from the Norse word for the midwinter feast, and poets used the same root for the gods as a group, a sign of how closely the feast was tied to them.
The Arctic Circle marks where the Sun can stay up for a full day; the line is not fixed, creeping north by about 15 metres a year as Earth's tilt slowly eases.
Q 24The Roman writer Macrobius said Egyptians showed the winter-solstice Sun in which form?
As an infant
As an infant: Macrobius wrote that the Sun looks tiny at midwinter, so its image was a baby brought out of a shrine; by midsummer, at full strength, it was shown as a bearded man.
Q 25Which Mississippian site in Illinois had a 'Woodhenge' of posts aligned to the solstice sunrises?
Cahokia
Cahokia's Woodhenge was found by accident in the early 1960s: digging ahead of a planned highway, Warren Wittry noticed big post pits lying in arcs and guessed they were a sun calendar.
Q 26'Yalda', a Syriac word that Christians also used for Christmas, means what?
Birth
Birth: 'Yalda' is Syriac for birth and was the Syriac Christians' name for Christmas; their Persian-speaking neighbours borrowed the word for their own midwinter night.
Q 27Newgrange overlooks which Irish river, also the site of a famous 1690 battle?
The Boyne
The Boyne loops past Newgrange and probably carried its building stone: the great slabs are thought to have come by sea and then upriver before being hauled up to the ridge.
Q 28Which Persian poet's verse is traditionally read aloud on Yalda Night?
Hafez
Hafez: on Yalda Night families open the Divan of Hafez at random and read the ghazal on that page as a fortune, a custom called fal-e Hafez.
Q 29Which cycles link slow changes in Earth's tilt and orbit to the timing of ice ages?
Milankovitch cycles
Milankovitch cycles: Milutin Milankovitch worked out the theory in the 1920s, and in 1976 deep-sea sediment cores showed the ice ages had kept time with the orbital cycles he calculated.
Q 30Stonehenge stands on which chalk upland in Wiltshire?
Salisbury Plain
Salisbury Plain was not where the giant stones came from: analysis published in 2020 traced most of Stonehenge's sarsens to West Woods, about 16 miles to the north.