Sol Ramirez began working with puppets at a young age.
“I’d recruit kids every recess for a puppet show,” Ramirez, now 21, says. He named his fledgling puppetry company—1,2,3 Puppetry—when he entered it in Hillsborough’s annual Handmade Parade and saw the option for an entry name. He was in kindergarten.
Ramirez has led the Chapel Hill-based youth company ever since. He draws inspiration from his Mexican-American heritage, he says and sees the puppetry company as a vehicle for creativity, storytelling, and social justice. He also credits the local community for support: He began working with the Paperhand Puppet Intervention in his early teens and at 15 became the youngest recipient of an Orange County Arts Commission grant.
Ramirez’s first commission came in 2019 when the Hillsborough Arts Council asked him to make the lead lantern for its annual Solstice Lantern Walk.
Thus was born the crescent moon lantern, a looming, glowing 25-foot lantern that has led the solstice walks in the years since (with the exception of 2020, when no solstice event was held). Each year it has evolved a little bit with simple modifications and new lights, waxing and waning like a real moon.
“It’s really cool to see all the creativity in Hillsborough and the surrounding areas,” says Ramirez. He’s currently a junior at the University of Connecticut in the Puppet Arts BFA program but will be back in town, he says, for the December 21 event.
A tradition comes to life
The small town of Hillsborough already has a preternaturally storybook feel, but if you’ve yet to attend a Solstice Lantern walk, just wait until you see downtown illuminated with thousands of lanterns.
When I attended, last December, embarking on a path that begins at the Farmer’s Market pavilion and winds along the river, the scene felt mythic and dream-like, as if several centuries had collapsed into one. Parents grasped the mittened hands of children and lovers linked arms. Lanterns bobbed in and out of view against a tinny of stringed music.
The lanterns themselves took many forms: There were creatures fashioned out of umbrellas, a giant cat face (accompanied by a small mouse), and several Star Wars lanterns that traveled among a solar sea of sun and star lanterns.
Tinka Jordy, a ceramic sculptor in Hillsborough, created the event in 2015, expecting only a few dozen participants to show up, according to event information provided by the Hillsborough Arts Council.
But the event has ballooned every year since: Ivana Beveridge, the programs & marketing director at the Hillsborough Arts Council, estimates that between 4,000 and 5,000 people turned out last year.
This year’s solstice event, which runs from 5-8 p.m., continues a tradition rife with creativity and enchantment. Attendees are encouraged to register ahead of the event, with a suggested donation of $5-$10. Live music begins at 5 p.m. and an adjacent artist’s market at the pavilion —you can find the list of vendors here—makes for a practical stop for last-minute Christmas gifts. Participants are encouraged to make a DIY lantern beforehand (there are some helpful instructions here).
Beveridge says that parking is limited, but people can try the town’s parking deck (beside Weaver Street) or find side street parking in the neighborhood streets off downtown.
“It’s a genuinely magical, really organic community experience of getting together,” Beveridge says. “I think people enjoy the invitation to do something creative.”
“A collective path toward warmer, brighter days ahead”
Because the Earth orbits the sun at an angle, the sun’s position in the sky varies by season. In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice on December 21 marks a turning point—a day where the sun’s position is lowest and the hours of sunlight are the shortest, ushering in the beginning of astronomical winter and the sun’s path northward, leading to longer days.
“Around the holidays, everyone has a different story and people have lots of different things happening in their lives,” Beveridge says. “This is a very Hillsborough tradition. It has a meaningfulness to it and a purpose to it.”
Both the winter and summer solstice held spiritual significance among ancient cultures. Today, the event is largely considered an opportunity for hope and reflection—a time to travel, per the Hillsborough Art Council’s website, in a “collective path toward warmer, brighter days ahead.”
The chance to create light in darkness factors prominently across traditions: yule logs, bonfires, and lanterns are all associated with the winter solstice.
Shortly after getting off the phone with Ramirez, I texted him to fact-check a few details and ask one outstanding question: Did he feel a special affinity to the event, given his name? (Sol means sun in Spanish.) To my surprise, he gamely responded that the association had never occurred to him—but he was pleased to consider it.
“I have always felt a strong connection to my name and its meaning, and love the fact that I am able to further that connection here with the solstice walk,” he wrote. “The sun is making the moon, in a way!”
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