Mo. North of the Arctic Circle, the sun never rises on the winter solstice. The low sun angle makes the days around the winter solstice the year's shortest, but from Dec. 23 on the sun will be just a little higher in the sky each day.
Days also begin growing longer, but very, very slowly.
Kansas City had 9 hours and 25 minutes between sunrise and sunset on Dec. 22. Hilo, Hawaii, which is in the tropics, had 10 hours and 56 minutes of daylight and the sun climbed 46.8 degrees above the horizon at local noon. The sun is low in the sky during the Northern Hemisphere's winter because the Earth's axis is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun on the day of the winter solstice. Winter's low sun angles and short days account for the season's cold. The times of daylight mentioned here are from the U.S. Naval Observatory's times of sun, moon rise and set in the U.S. World Wide Web page.