Yesterday at 1:08 a.m. the winter solstice occurred. The Earth tilted 23 degrees away from the sun in our Northern Hemisphere, bringing us once again our shortest day and longest night.

Tonight, the full moon rises, the one called the Long Nights Moon because it is opposite the low-in-the-sky sun and so it has a high trajectory moving across the long night.

This year, it also happens to be near a larger-than-normal Mars. The red planet is closer to the Earth than it will be again until 2016. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, I'm beginning to wonder how a certain sleigh and reindeer might be reflected in all this celestial glow. It's a long night, but beginning today the earth starts to tilt back on its axis and each day gets a little longer, until next June 21 when we reach the longest day and shortest night. And so go the rhythms of planet Earth.

It was a trip to the land of my ancestors that brought home the significance of the winter solstice. The prehistoric Irish figured it out mathematically and astronomically with such precision that they captured the sun's rays in a way that modern man would never think of. While traveling from Tipperary, where Maria Martin, my paternal great-grandmother, came from, to Down, where my maternal great-great-grandmother, Ann Cleland, came from, my wife and I took the advice of a gracious B&B hostess who said we shouldn't miss Newgrange.

There on a hillside by the River Boyne, atop a circle of mammoth boulders, was an incredible, sparkling

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white edifice of interlocking rocks of quartz. A small door with a rectangular slit above it led down a narrow corridor to an inner chamber. Once a year, as the sun rose on the winter solstice, its light streamed through that slit, illuminating first the corridor and then flooding into the chamber. Built 5,000 years ago, 10 centuries before the pyramids of Egypt, archaeologists believe it is a burial mound and the inner chamber was for burial ceremonies this one day of the year when the inner sanctum received the sun's light.

We don't know who these Neolithic people were. It was long before the time of the Celts. Nor do we know what happened to them. But their industry and knowledge was phenomenal. It was a feat just moving multiton boulders into place above the river. But they were moved precisely, in a circle, leading to an entrance surrounded by quartz, that would exactly receive the light of the dawning solstice.

And so on this shortest day after our longest night, the marvels of man and the marvels of nature can send our thoughts soaring. If prehistoric societies can fathom the movements of the sun and the earth and literally capture the light from the sky, it should give us pause about our possibilities today. Newgrange is evidence of the creative human mind: scientific discovery and knowledge, imagination in architecture and design, faith and ceremony in honoring those among us who have passed away. The magic of the night sky and the inevitable coming of the dawn have always captured our attention.

What was the Star of Bethlehem that guided wise men? Tomorrow, our two grandsons come, the great-great-great-great-grandsons of Ann Cleland. We will share gifts and stories and good will. Then the Long Nights Moon will help guide their parents' drive home so the boys will be tucked in when that certain sleigh lands on their rooftop. It takes me back to a bedroom long ago, or was it just yesterday? The great moon was shrouded by clouds, but I could see large white snowflakes gently fall in the glow of the streetlight as I lay in my bed.

All was silent when in the distance I heard the jingle of bells. I listened again then whispered to my little brother, "Stevie, do you hear those bells?"

The little boy was sleeping soundly. I heard the bells once more. Then my eyes shut, too.

The dawn would come soon enough.

James H. Smith is the editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6325 or by e-mail at jsmith@ctpost.com.