Winter Solstice Word Search

Print Play

Forty words for the shortest day and the longest night of the year: the tilt of the Earth on its axis, the sunrise and sunset that come closest together, the low noon sun and long shadows, and the festivals people have held for thousands of years to welcome the return of the light.

The northern hemisphere has its winter solstice on December 21 or 22, when the sun stands overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn; south of the equator the same moment is the summer solstice, and their winter one comes in June. Because the Earth is tilted about 23.4 degrees, the north is leaning farthest from the sun. Oddly, the earliest sunset of the year comes in early December and the latest sunrise in early January.

At Newgrange in Ireland, built around 3200 BCE, the rising sun shines down a long passage into the central chamber for a few mornings around the solstice, and Stonehenge is lined up with the midwinter sunset. Romans held Saturnalia in late December, northern Europe burned the Yule log, and in China the Dongzhi festival is a time to eat tangyuan, sweet rice balls. In Peru the Inca festival of the sun, Inti Raymi, falls at the June solstice.

Free Winter Solstice Word Search Online Game

Play the Winter Solstice word search in your browser, on your own or head to head against a friend in real time. Nothing to install and no account needed – send someone the link and you are both looking at the same grid.

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Winter Solstice Word Search Printable Puzzles

Three sheets to choose from, free to print or download as a PDF. Pick a difficulty below, or open the printable Winter Solstice word search page to see all three together, generate a fresh grid, and check the full word list.

Puzzle Vocabulary Words

Below you can see all possible words that the topic Winter Solstice has.
Depends on difficulty level you select in the game amount of words hidden in the puzzle will be different.
In Easy game you have to find up to 5 words, medium game can have up to 15 words and hard puzzle can have up to 23 words.
Every time you start a new game - our word search generator will pick random words to build the puzzle.

• Solstice
• December
• June
• Shortest Day
• Longest Night
• Sunrise
• Sunset
• Daylight
• Darkness
• Noon
• Shadows
• Axis
• Tilt
• Earth
• Orbit
• Hemisphere
• Equator
• Tropic
• Capricorn
• Astronomy
• Calendar
• Stonehenge
• Newgrange
• Yule
• Log
• Bonfire
• Candles
• Lanterns
• Evergreen
• Holly
• Mistletoe
• Saturnalia
• Dongzhi
• Tangyuan
• Inti Raymi
• Frost
• Snow
• Cold
• Hibernation
• Return