css and dynamic(ish) colours

Style sheets have hash colour values all through them, often with a single colour being used repeatedly. Is there a way in CSS to define a set of custom colours at the top of the sheet, and have these propagate down the sheet?

eg, define:
lite1:#FFFFFF
lite2:#DDDDDD
lite3:#AAAAAA
dark1:#000000
dark2:#333333
dark3:#555555

and then just use these values all through the sheet:
text-color:dark1;
border:solid 1xp lite3;
and so on, this way you only have to change the values ONCE in the sheet instead of copying and replacing them throughout the entire sheet.

I know this isn’t dynamic in that the colour values are selected from an external source, maybe that can be my next question. For now, I’d be happy to know how I can make this work

addendum: I once ran my own web server and I setup css to be process by the php engine and I constructed the css in php so that I could do this. Unfortunately there is an overhead doing this. This was some years ago and I’m wondering if CSS has moved forward in some way in this area.