The winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year, marking the start of the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere Skyler Caruso is a Writer and Reporter of PEOPLE Digital ...

The exact moment of the winter solstice varies from year to year due to a slight misalignment between the Gregorian calendar and the actual rate of the Earth’s rotation around the sun.

It is never easy to get up from a warm bed into a cold and dark winter morning ... A poem for this very day, the solstice, the shortest day, what John Donne called the ‘year’s midnight ...

and staged at the "crack of dawn" on the winter solstice. Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable At approximately 7:42 a.m. local time, about 670 people jumped into the Derwent River ...