Winter Solstsice

[Carol]

Carol wrote in
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/35521>:
> 
> << Carol, who has yet to figure out why people refer to Christmas
and New Year's as occurring in midwinter when winter has barely begun >>
> 
> Because the theory that seasons BEGIN on the Solstice or Equinox is
a big modern hoax. If the season is defined by length of day, with
winter having short days and long nights, then whatever length is
defined as  'short', there are an equal number of short days before
the Winter Solstice and after it. And there are an equal number of
long days before the Summer Solstice as after it, which is why
Mid-Summer Day approximates the Summer Solstice -- or do you complain
that the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is set when Summer has
barely begun?
> 
> The above is something I have always believed, but (unlike my
> conviction that putting the sentence's period inside the word's
> quotation marks is a LIE and mis-attribution because the period is not
> being quoted) it's not just my unimportant opinion -- a professional
> astronomer has the same opinion:
> <http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/badseasons.html>.
>
Carol responds:
Hi, Catlady. I'd say "big modern hoax" is stretching the point a bit,
but I see your argument and that of the person whose site you
recommended. However, as he conceded, people need a way to mark the
beginning rather than the middle of the season, and if we look at
weather (which I do, even in Tucson, where "winter" is as cold as fall
elsewhere), winter really does begin around the 21 o2 22 of December
(depending on whether it's a Leap Year). I remember in Flagstaff when
I was a child, we sometimes had a white Christmas but almost always
had a white New Year's Day. Why? Because winter had gotten into full
swing and was not just beginning. By the same token, the flowers in
northern latitudes start blooming in mid-to-late March (earlier here
in Tucson, of course, but that's a matter of elevation and latitude
combined), right around the time of the Vernal Equinox, and that's why
we celebrate the begining of spring, not Mid-Spring Day (no such
animal) at that point. I understand that the ancient Romans and Celts
were celebrating the lengthening days with Yule and Saturnalia, but
that doesn't make that time of year midwinter. If we look at weather,
as well as considering December 22 as the beginning of winter, I'd say
it's midwinter now, and those people (I'm not one of them) who are
driving on snow to work probably agree with me.

I see the logic of your position, but I don't agree with it.

Carol, who vaguely recalls wondering about the date of "Midsummer
Night" with regard to Shakespeare's play when she first read it, just
as she wondered about Christina Rossetti's "In the Deep Midwinter," a
Christmas hymn