Once again the most celebrated holiday of all is here, and we are obligated to mention it under our contract with the person who has the rights to this thousands year old pagan ritual.

Some of you know it as Christmas, others call it Hanukkah (although Hanukkah is celebrated according to the Hebrew calendar, which this year landed on December 1), I just call it my dad’s birthday (who is turning 60 on the 24^th).

Random Facts About this Year's Winter Solstice

As it turns out, this year’s Winter Solstice will be accompanied by a lunar eclipse, which is something very rare and I guess we should all be very impressed.

The problem with naming your band after a natural phenomenon and consequently an ancient pagan ritual, is that odds are, you’re not the first to have thought of that. That led to our decision to change the band’s name from simply Solstice to Solstice Coil – figured we were safe from duplicity, right?

Wrong. When you Google Solstice Coil, which I have done once or twice in the course of my lifetime, you’ll occasionally hit some unwanted results, like a site that sell ignition coils for the Pontiac Solstice.

Or you could make an unexpected musical discovery. In our early years, even when searching Google for Solstice Coil using brackets, we’d still get this result in the first pages. It’s a “band” called Coil, which released a series of albums revolving around the concept of the Winter and Summer Solstices.

Now, I warn you – this is not a good band. As a matter of fact, it’s a horrible, horrible band. It’s one of those bands that use the “experimental” tag to hide the fact that they really, really suck. So if you stumble upon them when searching for Solstice Coil, as I’m sure most of you do on a daily basis, just do yourselves a favor and don’t be tempted to listen to them, not even out of sheer curiosity. Seriously, just stay away. Don’t. I said don’t! Oh man, you just had to…

For those of you who still don’t know what the Winter Solstice is, I guess you haven’t been following this blog on a yearly basis, so click the link and educate yourselves!