Happy Winter Solstice Festival

Shiver, Shiver, Shiver...soooooo cold recently in Taipei without the rains, but it's colder! Why? haha..I bet Dec. 22nd, 2006 is the coldest day of the your place too. As it is Winter Solstic Festival, which is an important day for Chinese. This day will have the shortest daylight, the longest night time, which means the Sun will need to work harder and harder from tomorrow to June, the Summer solstic day. In Chinese's thought, it is the good day to rest and build up a strong body! But, as you know Chinese is good at eating and cooking! Everything about the festival, all involved with some special food. Yeah~ for this special day, we could have red bean with sticky rice porridge, or won-ton hot soup, or a sticky rice ball soup, all depends on where you live. Taiwanese are used to have sticky rice ball soup for Winter Solstic Festival. We called this food 'tangyuan' in chinese, you can try to pronounce it. Chinese people need to stay together at this day to have 'tangyuan', which means families is going to have a good next year, almost as thanksgiving day in western world. I had it last weekend with my families. It was very sweet to have this kind of festival, especially at this cold weather~

Well...as i'm not good at history...I found out some history about the Winter Solstic online for you, sharing with you:
'The Winter Solstice became a festival during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and thrived in the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279). The Han people regarded Winter Solstice as a "Winter Festival", so officials would organize celebrating activities. On this day, both officials and common people would have a rest. The army was stationed in, frontier fortresses closed and business and traveling stopped. Relatives and friends presented to each other delicious food. In the Tang and Song dynasties, the Winter Solstice was a day to offer scarifies to Heaven and ancestors. Emperors would go to suburbs to worship the Heaven; while common people offered sacrifices to their deceased parents or other relatives. The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) even had the record that "Winter Solstice is as formal as the Spring Festival," showing the great importance attached to this day.'