'Tis the season for making merry and also the season to change seasons.

That's what we'll do Monday afternoon at 12:47, the moment of the winter solstice, the first day of winter and also the moment we start gaining daylight once again!

This time of year you've no doubt noticed the sun takes a very low arc across the southern sky, rising in the southeast and setting in the southwest, and not spending more than hours above the horizon. Monday is the day the sun reaches its lowest point in the southern sky. This low sun angle means we're not getting nearly the amount of solar power and radiation we get in the summer, and that's why you need to wear a hat when you're outside.

From now through late next June, the sun's arc across the heavens will get higher and higher and we'll eventually get warmer. However, the coldest weather of the winter is yet to come. That's an injustice! Blame it on the northern polar regions. There has been little or no sun up there for some time now, and super cold air has really built up. That cold has to go somewhere, and the general circulation of the global winds causes it to spill our way in intervals until early March. I call it the polar hangover effect.

Anyway, the sun's daily path in the sky is a reflection of the Earth's daily and annual motions. Since you were a little kid, you've known Earth's rotation causes the sun to rise in the east and set in the west. The Earth's orbit around the sun also affects how we see our home star in the sky, mainly because of the fact the Earth's axis is tilted to its orbit around the sun by a 23.5 degree angle.

On Monday, the day of the winter solstice, 3the northern hemisphere of the Earth where we live is tilted at the maximum angle away from the sun's most direct rays. The noontime sun is shining directly over the latitude line called the Tropic of Capricorn, which lies 23.5 degrees in latitude south of the Earth's equator. Does that 23.5 degrees sound familiar? It should. So in our Butler skies, the noontime angle of the sun will be as far south as it can be in our sky at less than 25 degrees above the horizon.

Six months later, on June 21, the day of the summer solstice, we'll be on the other side of Earth's orbit around the sun, and the northern hemisphere will be basking in the sun's most direct rays. That will be reflected in our sky as the sun takes a long, high arc from the northeast to the northwest horizon. On the day of the summer solstice, the noontime sun is at its farthest northern point in our sky that puts it at a high 71.5 degrees above the southern horizon. After summer solstice, everything goes in reverse; the sun's path in the sky gets lower and lower, and the days get shorter and shorter.

Ancient and not so ancient cultures were keenly aware of the sun's annual cycle in the sky, and many of them worshipped the sun. In fact, there was a lot of sun worshipping going on in Northern Europe. Ancient observatories like Stonehenge in southern Great Britain and the cavelike Newgrange in Ireland are examples of this.

It's no accident the early Catholic Church established Dec. 25 as Christmas Day, the day Christ was born. No one really knows the exact date of Christ's birth, but one of the reasons the Church chose Dec. 25 was to battle against the great pagan celebrations that occurred around the time of the winter solstice, when the sun was "reborn" and started its upward climb into the sky.

I want you to enjoy your holiday season to the maximum and also enjoy the sun's increasing power!

Special planet news

Over the next week or so, you can use the bright planet Jupiter in the low southwestern evening sky to see Neptune, the most distant planet in our solar system.

Neptune is just to the upper right of Jupiter, less than half a degree away from the largest planet in our solar system. Just take a small telescope or a really good pair of binoculars and see if you can see a little bluish green dot to the upper left of Jupiter.

That's it. That's Neptune, more than 2.8 billion miles away from Earth.

As an added attraction, the new crescent moon will be just to the lower right of Jupiter and Neptune, and on Monday night, the moon will be just to the upper right of the planet pair.

If you're up really late at night, you can see the bright planet Mars rising in the east. It's the brightest starlike object in that part of the sky right now and has a reddish tinge to it.

Late next month, Mars and Earth will be in what astronomers call opposition, their closest approach to each other. Stay tuned for more on that.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.