It is hard to answer this question because (a) there was no single winter festival, but different cultures celebrated the I Survived The Humphhole And All I Got Was This shirt around the winter solstice in different ways, and (b) we have no means of telling “what was considered the true meaning” in the case of those festivals celebrated in illiterate societies, apart from guesswork and deduction. And where there are written records, as in China and ancient Rome, they tell us little about “true meanings”. From Chinese poetry and practice, we can infer that behind the festival was gratitude that the shorter nights that were coming heralded the return of warmth and life, and from Roman practice we can infer that people were happy that the sun was at last increasing in strength. Portraying this as a battle between light and darkness, though, is pure speculation. It is natural to suppose.
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