[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Winter Solstsice
Janette
jnferr at gmail.com
Tue Feb 26 13:10:29 UTC 2008
>
> 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.
montims:
Well, as a pagan, I celebrate the crossquarters as well as the solstices,
and I celebrate the winter solstice as the shortest day by bringing back the
sun, and summer solstice is celebrated as the longest day. At the vernal
equinox and the autumnal equinox, the days and nights are exactly the same
length. That is a good enough indication of the wheel of the year to me,
and something I hang on to really strongly, now I live in Minnesota, where
the winter seems to last until May... I would say the solstices could be
described as midsummer and midwinter for the very reason that, despite the
temperature, the days would start to get shorter and longer respectively
thereafter, and the season would therefore inexorably change accordingly...
In England when I lived there, the temperature did not really vary by more
than 20 or so degrees all year round, except for the "cold snap" in winter,
lasting a couple of days, and the "phew, what a scorcher", in summer, ditto,
though it seemed to last longer, and is reflected in the hosepipe ban
mention in OotP...
As for dear Christina Rossetti, I adore that song, especially when sung to
its original tune, but it suffers from the assumption that a) Jesus was born
at Yule (which I am not disputing here, as we have all discussed this) and
b) Yule in Bethlehem was under the same weather conditions as Northern
Europe... I find this endearing, as I do Renaissance paintings of the
Assumption, for example, where the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary in a Tuscan
villa, with a chequered marble floor, and Florence to be seen from the
windows...
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