The winter solstice comes late tonight and I, for one, am cheering. It may not be a holiday exactly, but winter holidays cluster around it for a very good reason: the beginning of the end of the dark days.
Who wouldn’t drink to that? We who live up north are especially sensitive to the fact that the days that get dark almost as soon as they get light have finally peaked, and the lengthening of the days has begun. It’s no accident, no accident at all, that both of the winter holidays— Christmas and Chanuka (Happy Chanuka, by the way!)—are festivals that feature (literally) light in the darkness.
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Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
December 21st, 2011 at 1:09 pm
I hate winter. Everywhere, even here in SoCal, which effectively has no winter, I periodically have recurring sinus infections through the winter. That, and the short days, make for a lousy season.
Speaking of short days, it’s even worse in Europe. Americans don’t realize how far north Europe is. Boston is on the same latitude as … Rome. Amazing, no? In northern Europe (FR, DE, UK) the sun rises (IIRC) around 8:30, and sets around 3:30, and is feeble at best in between. Truly depressing. (Especially for a California boy!)
December 21st, 2011 at 1:34 pm
My days here are a bit longer that 8:30 to 3:30, but it is depressing, especially with drizzly rain. The good thing is that by mid January you notice them getting longer.
December 21st, 2011 at 4:06 pm
In Moscow daytime now is from 10:00 to 17:00. My remedy is to eat a lot of smoked salmon (plenty of vitamins most deficient when sunlight is limited). And, of course, lemons.
December 21st, 2011 at 4:12 pm
I look forward to this day every year.
December 21st, 2011 at 5:18 pm
We celebrate the winter solstice with an annual “Here Comes the Light” party. Its a good excuse to get together with our neighbors who we see less often during the cold Iowa winter.
December 21st, 2011 at 7:25 pm
It will be nice to be able to go for a run right after work (5) and not worry about it being dark.
I gotta admit, I love winter, of course living in CA helps, but it’s the time for the greatest sport on earth – ice hockey
I think I will celebrate the winter solstice by heading over to Buffalo Wild Wings when I finish up here in the office.
December 21st, 2011 at 7:30 pm
My remedy is to eat a lot of smoked salmon (plenty of vitamins most deficient when sunlight is limited). And, of course, lemons
What, no vodka?
December 21st, 2011 at 11:21 pm
If you care, the details about how the length of the day changes are not what you might expect. It’s not the case that starting tomorrow, the sunrise gets earlier and the sunset gets later. In fact, the sunrise will keep getting later through the first week of January. But the sunset has already started getting later — it started getting later about a week ago. Until today, the effect of the later sunrise was more than enough to offset the recent movement toward a later sunset; after today, the added sunlight at the end of the day will more than offset the decreased sunlight in the morning, so the day will get longer.
The same thing happens in reverse at the time of the summer solstice — the sunset keeps getting later for a couple of weeks afterward, but the sunrise is getting later too, and at a slighly faster pace, so the day is getting shorter, but it’s all happening at 5 am, when most people don’t notice it.
The rate of change in the times of both the sunrise and the sunset is pretty glacial around the solstices, so that the length of the day (in sunlight terms) is changing by less than a minute a day. At the equinoxes, on the other hand, the rate of change in the length of sunlight is at its maximum, changing by almost three minutes a day. That’s why you don’t really notice the days getting longer until late January or February — it’s barely getting longer for the next month or so. Similarly, it’s why you don’t really notice the days getting shorter until mid-August, because that’s when the rate of change really picks up speed.
Don’t ask me why I find this interesting, but I do.
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:07 am
This is one of my favorite days of the entire year as the light will begin to return TOMORROW! We have once again survived the departing of the light. Life is good.
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:15 am
Ryan . . . ice hockey rules! I am watching the Avs/Blues game right now. Avs win! Life is good.
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:30 am
I love the annual changing of the seasons.
Everything appears brown and dead now, but it is merely waiting.
Also, love the optic of the earth and sunlight. Good stuff.
Cure for the darkness? Wine. A good-hearted woman helps, too. Put them together and….create your own light!
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:42 am
“It’s no accident, no accident at all, that both of the winter holidays— Christmas and Chanuka (Happy Chanuka, by the way!)—are festivals that feature (literally) light in the darkness.”
Thanks, Neo.
According to the traditional Jewish sources, there are reasons why Hanukkah falls on its particular date (the 25th of Kislev, which the Hebrew calendar, unlike the Islamic one, guarantees will fall within two weeks around the end of December), but seasonal symbolism isn’t one of them. Winter in the Land of Israel could easily pass for summer among many of those “who live up north.”
Of course, “modern scholarship,” with its near-total consistency in opposing the traditional, Orthodox Jewish take on just about everything, has it that Hanukkah like the three major Jewish festivals (Booths, Passover and Weeks) is a monotheistic reworking of a previous pagan seasonal festivity. I’d better not write here what I think of that opinion; suffice it here for me to say that’s exactly the kind of spirit whose defeat Hanukkah prominently celebrates. One of the morals of Hanukkah is that those who no longer hold anything to be sacred will necessarily be defeated by those who still do.
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:35 pm
ziontruth: I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. I will explain a bit more because I merely alluded to it in my post without explaining.
I understand that Chanuka is a historical holiday whose date is not chosen because of seasonal variations in weather or light. But it also is one in which the historical event is celebrated in a certain manner, which is candle lighting at a time that happens to coincide with the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere. There could have been many other customs to celebrate (and, in fact, there are: latkes, for example, which are supposedly eaten because of the oil in the lamps; the dreidel that celebrates the miracle, etc.). The holiday could have stopped there, I suppose, but there is the lighting of the candles, which is also symbolic of the oil that lasted for light. I submit that it is no accident this observance has sprung up since the holiday happens to roughly coincide with the solstice, and it is certainly no accident that the candle-lighting has become popular even among Jews who are not observant otherwise. There are two reasons for the latter popularity: Chanuka does compete, timewise, with Christmas; and Chanuka comes at the time of the winter solstice (roughly) in the northern hemisphere and features light in the darkness.
In addition, although I completely agree that the winter weather in Jerusalem, for example, shows nothing like the contrast we see in Toronto, as another example, there is still contrast and in particular the sunrise/sunset times show a less strong but similar variation, with quite a bit of darkness coming at this time of year. That was my impression, but since I don’t live in Israel I looked it up and discovered that at this time of year sunrise occurs at approximately 6:30 AM there and sunset at 4:40 PM, whereas in July the respective figures are 5:30 AM and 7:45 PM. It’s certainly a difference and a contrast. The solstice is not about weather, it’s about light and dark.
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Neo,
“I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make.”
Nah, I think I was just indulging in writing about one of my hobbyhorses, that’s all. I never interpreted your post as suggesting the same idea as those “modern scholars.”
“I submit that it is no accident this observance has sprung up since the holiday happens to roughly coincide with the solstice,…”
This inordinate observance of a minor holiday even among non-observant Jews, yes. But of the origin of Hanukkah, traditional Jewish opinion explains its with loads of reasons except the seasonal one.
(Hanukkah is called a minor holiday because it’s not observed as a Sabbath, with all the rules of the Sabbath. Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesah and Shavuot are the major holidays, while Hanukkah, Tu BiShvat, Purim and Lag Ba’Omer are the minor ones.)
Today the times of sunrise and sunset in Israel are mucked up by political messing with Daylight Savings Time… a very Israeli kind of mess. Naturally, the disparity has always been there, long before this DST craziness. But there is in traditional Judaism a very strong desire to reject seasonal symbolism categorically, because it’s the bread and butter of paganism. The only concession a traditional Jewish believer might make concerning the origin of Hanukkah is that HaShem may have ordained it to fall around the winter solstice so the Jews won’t go celebrating some pagan festival out of envy or boredom or some other reason.
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:23 pm
ziontruth: once again, in the sentence of mine you quoted, when I wrote “this observance” I did not (and I think I made this clear this time) mean the total observance of the holiday. By “this observance” I was referring specifically to candle-lighting as opposed to latke-making or dreidel-spinning.
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:25 pm
ziontruth: I suppose they make an exception for Sukkot?
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Neo,
In the traditional Jewish view, lighting the candles stands for the renewed literal lighting of the Menorah in the Temple after the defeat of the Greek Seleucid rulers, and for the symbolic light of the Torah that banished the darkness of the Greeks’ rationalistic, anti-revelation (and therefore, ultimately, denying the divine authorship of the Torah) philosophy, which threatened to extinguish Jewish belief first with a gentle hand and later by persecution.
The coincidence of this all with the darkest time in the northern hemisphere is brushed off by traditional Judaism as just that: Coincidence.
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:44 pm
“ziontruth: I suppose they make an exception for Sukkot?
”
The connection between the three greatest holidays (Booths/Sukkot, Passover/Pesah, Weeks/Shavuot) and the seasons is fully embraced by traditional Judaism, but there it is distanced from the spirit of paganism by being a celebration of (among other things) HaShem’s providence upon His holy land. In other words, it’s not about the seasons themselves, it’s about the Land of Israel and how God relates to it when the Jewish nation resides in it.
Again in the spirit of Hanukkah: The traditional Jewish view isn’t averse to variations in opinion, but it insists they conform to the stance that the Jewish holidays (and the Torah, and other sacred things) are of divine origin or at the very least have God’s seal of approval. It’s when the moderns say they’re merely human, monotheistic palimpsests written over a previous foundation, that the upholders of Jewish Orthodoxy decry their opinions.
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:45 pm
ziontruth: I get it! I get it!
But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the light aspect has been emphasized in a holiday that coincides more or less with the solstice.
What’s more, I think the popularity of the holiday among the not-so-religious in northern hemisphere countries has at least partly to do with the light-in-the-darkness aspect. Naturally, gift-giving (which has been grafted onto the holiday to compete with Christmas) and good food don’t hurt either.