On the day of winter solstice, many Native American communities will hold religious ceremonies or community events. The winter solstice is the day of the year when the Northern Hemisphere has the fewest hours of sunlight and the Southern Hemisphere has the most. For indigenous peoples, it has been a time to honor their ancient sun deity. They passed their knowledge down to successive generations through complex stories and ritual practices. As a scholar of the environmental and Native American religion, I believe, there is much to learn from ancient religious practices.

In 1921, in a Munich beer hall, newly appointed Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to an excited crowd. According to undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters cheered when Hitler condemned “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross” and swore “not to rest until the Jews…lay shattered on the ground.” Later, the crowd sang holiday carols and nationalist hymns around a Christmas tree. Working-class attendees received charitable gifts. For Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, this combination of familiar holiday observance, nationalist propaganda and anti-Semitism was hardly unusual. As the Nazi party grew in size and scope – and eventually took power in 1933 – committed propagandists worked to further “Nazify” Christmas. Redefining familiar traditions and designing new symbols and rituals, they hoped to channel the main tenets of National Socialism through the popular holiday.

In many parts of the world, Christmas and mistletoe are inextricably intertwined. So, as December 25 draws nearer, now is a good time to remind ourselves about what mistletoe is and why we associate it with plum pudding and Santa. There’s also been some recent discoveries about the role mistletoe plays in boosting biodiversity and improving ecosystem health.The whole mistletoe/Christmas connection predates Christianity, with mistletoe featuring prominently in the Druid’s ancient winter solstice rituals.

From the Neolithic to present times, the amount of sunlight we see in a day has had a profound impact on human culture. We are fast approaching the winter solstice for the Northern hemisphere, which takes place on December 21. This is the longest night of the year – once celebrated as “Yule” by the pagan people of Northern Europe before it became Christmas.Stonehenge and the nearby Neolithic site of Durrington Walls (circa 2,500 BC) were each built to be orientated to face the midwinter sunset and sunrise respectively. This focus on the winter solstice was an important time marked by feasting and possibly animal sacrifice.

On Friday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness. At hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of missions stretching from northern California to Peru, the winter solstice sun triggers an extraordinarily rare and fascinating event – something that I discovered by accident and first documented in one California church 20 years ago. At dawn on Dec. 21, a sunbeam enters each of these churches and bathes an important religious object, altar, crucifix or saint’s statue in brilliant light. On the darkest day of the year, these illuminations conveyed to native converts the rebirth of light, life and hope in the coming of the Messiah. Largely unknown for centuries, this recent discovery has sparked international interest in both religious and scientific circles. At missions that are documented illumination sites, congregants and Amerindian descendants now gather to honor the sun in the church on the holiest days of the Catholic liturgy with songs, chants and drumming.

Presented in an engaging manner, Witchdoctor Utu's impressive new book, Conjuring Harriet "Mama Moses" Tubman and the Spirits of the Underground Railroad, is an exercise not only in the spiritual elevation of heroic ancestors but also in the elevation of everyone who values and fights for freedom from enslavement. Utu asks us to put aside for a moment the usual history and understanding of the legendary fugitive slave turned conductor of the Underground Railroad and to focus on the empowering spiritual beliefs held by abolitionists and freedom seekers that played a vital role in their journeys to freedom. More than a grimoire of conjures, Witchdoctor Utu shares the rarely told stories of those who followed the North Star to freedom from the antebellum South to St. Catherines, Ontario, protective roots in hand. He brings to light a powerful Conjure tradition that, with a cairn and cross, guides the spiritual seeker towards a meaningful way to honor Mama Moses and the spirits of the Underground Railroad, and revere the bones of those still lying in unmarked graves.