I know people who, for whatever reason, celebrate Solstice rather than Christmas.

So, to you who celebrate it, either as your winter holiday, or as one of them, a happy Solstice today. And today is the day when the daylength begins to get progressively longer - which I can imagine, in earlier cultures, was a vitally meaningful thing.

I often talk briefly about the whole history of this when I discuss climate and seasonality in my Ecology class...to think of people in Paleolithic times, how important it would be to see that warmth and light returning, how festivals could develop around this time. And of course, much later, the bishops, looking for a date on which the birth of Christ could be celebrated, chose a day close to Solstice (some of the evidence in Luke suggests Christ was actually born in the spring) because of the celebrations at that time.

I have known some neo-Pagans who are troubled by that, or feel that their holiday was "stolen." I have also known some Christians who did not celebrate Christmas because they saw it as being tacked on to a pagan holiday. I tend not to make such fine distinctions; I tend to prefer to come down on the side of live and let live.

This site has some of the history of solstice celebrations, and also on how Christianity has "adopted" (I prefer that to "stolen") some of the imagery, like holly and ivy.