Winter Solstice
The precise moment of the 2006 Winter Solstice will be
Dec 22 2006 00:22 UT .
The Earth is actually nearer the sun in January than it is in
June -- by three million miles. Pretty much irrelevant to our
planet. What causes the seasons is something completely different.
The Earth leans slightly on its axis like a spinning top frozen
in one off-kilter position. Astronomers have even pinpointed
the precise angle of the tilt. It's 23 degrees and 27 minutes
off the perpendicular to the plane of orbit. This planetary
pose is what causes all the variety of our climate; all the
drama and poetry of our seasons, since it determines how many
hours and minutes each hemisphere receives precious sunlight.
Solstice
means... standing-still-sun Such precision we have about it
now! Winter solstice is when... ...because of the earth's tilt,
your hemisphere is leaning farthest away from the sun, and therefore:
The daylight is the shortest. The sun has its lowest arc in
the sky. When it's winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere,
the sun is directly overhead at noon only along the Tropic of
Capricorn, on which lie such places as Sao Paulo, Brazil, southern
Madagascar, and areas north of Brisbane, Australia. Celebrated
among the ancients as a turning point. No one's really sure
how long ago humans recognized the winter solstice and began
heralding it as a turning point -- the day that marks the return
of the sun. One delightful little book written in 1948, 4,000
Years of Christmas, puts its theory right up in the title.
The Mesopotamians
were first, it claims, with a 12-day festival of renewal, designed
to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for one more
year. Many, many cultures the world over perform solstice ceremonies.
At their root: an ancient fear that the failing light would
never return unless humans intervened with anxious vigil or
antic celebration. Solstice celebrations: universal & perhaps
much older than we know. Scholars haven't yet found proof that
these peoples had the skill to pinpoint a celestial event like
solstice. Earliest markers of time that we've found from these
ancient peoples are notches carved into bone that appear to
count the cycles of the moon.
But perhaps
they watched the movement of the sun as well as the moon, and
perhaps they celebrated it -- with fertility rites, with fire
festivals, with offerings and prayers to their gods and goddesses.
And perhaps, our impulse to hold onto certain traditions today
-- candles, evergreens, feasting and generosity -- are echoes
of a past that extends many thousands of years further than
we ever before imagined.