New Beginnings: Winter Solstice

Today is the Winter Solstice. Technically the solstice is a point in time when the north pole is tilted the farthest away from the sun that it will get in its yearly orbit. It occurs because the earth is tilted on its axis relative to its orbital plane. At this point in the earth’s orbit around the sun, the north pole leans away from the sun at 23.5 degrees. In summer, the north pole leans toward the sun the same amount. Surprisingly, the earth is actually closest to the sun during December and January and farther away from it in July and august. But the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth rather than its distance from the sun.

On Owl Acres, the event of the solstice will occur at 9:27 pm Central Standard Time. But this is not what we’ll notice about the winter solstice. We will experience the two shortest days of the year. Both December 21 and December 22 will have nine hours and nine minutes between sunrise and sunset. On the 21^st, sunrise is at 7:35 a.m. and sunset is at 4:44 p.m. On December 22, sunrise is at 7:36 a.m. and sunset is at 4:45 p.m. Looking at it from the other direction, it will be the longest night of the year, lasting for 14 hours and 52 minutes from sunset to sunrise.

Another thing we’ll notice is that the sun is as far south in the sky as it will ever get. Looking out across the yard, it appears to rise far south of the barn. If it’s not cloudy, our noontime shadows will be their longest, and because the sun is so low in the sky, sunlight will be pouring in through the south windows, underneath the overhang that usually shades them. The dogs will enjoy the pools of sunlight on the kitchen floor. 

Humans have studied and tracked the sun as it moves through the sky for thousands of years. Although our ancestors may not have had the same understanding of celestial mechanics as our astronomers do today, they were well aware of the sun’s role in the seasons. Ancient astronomers tracked the sun’s course, creating their own charts to mark the sun’s changing position in the sky. Today, if you take a photo of the sun at the same time and in the same place every day for a year, and then compile the photos into one, you’ll see a figure eight of suns showing you the sun’s path over that year. The image is called an analemma. Analemmas are often depicted on globes, and illustrate the latitude on earth where the sun’s rays will be vertical for the specified date.

I’ve always thought of the winter solstice as marking the beginning of winter, the coldest, bleakest part of the year. The term solstice means the sun stopping. On Owl Acres, the sun gets as far south as it’s going to, lingers for a couple of days, then begins its trek toward the north. By the vernal equinox in March, it will be half way back towards its northerly limits.  

Many cultures world-wide have, and continue to celebrate the winter solstice. They don’t see it as the beginning of cold and dark. Instead, they see it as the beginning of light returning to the earth. It marked the point where the days begin to get longer and promised the rebirth of the natural world. Many examples exist of ancient constructions designed to channel sunlight on the day of the solstice. One of the oldest, dating back at least 5,000 years, is at Newgrange in Ireland. For a few days around the winter solstice, a shaft of light shines through an opening illuminating the interior of the ancient gravesite.

The one closest to Owl Acres was built by the Kahokia in Illinois near St. Louis. Over a thousand years ago, these indigenous people built temple mounds strategically placed in relation to a circle of large wooden poles. On the solstice, the sun aligns with the poles and the top of a temple mound some distance away. At the summer solstice, the alignment is with a different temple mound. Similar alignments celebrate the winter solstice at Stonehenge in England, the Temple Karnak in Egypt, the Sun temple at Machu Picchu, Pueblo Bonito and the Sun Daggers in New Mexico, and many other ancient structures around the world.

Celebrations, rituals and festivals accompanied these structures, including Northern Europe’s Yule which was celebrated in Scandinavia and Britain, giving us the term yule or yuletide. Today winter solstice festivals and celebrations continue throughout the world, celebrating the victory of light over darkness.

Here on Owl Acres, we will use this day to celebrate Heartland Safari and to announce a change. Beginning January 1, we will change the cadence of publications from twice a week to once a week. We still have lots of life to celebrate on Owl Acres.

Photo from Wikimedia.org by Giuseppe Donatiello Alt text: A narrow Figure 8 in the sky. Think of a gently twisted loop, like a rubber band, viewed edge-on.  This is an analemma of the sun, a composited photo of about 85 separate images, taken at the same time of day and at the same place for a year. The composite photo was then placed on a single, daylight image of the location to complete the work. It records the position changes of the sun in the sky due to Earth’s movement on its orbit. The high and low ends of the figure mark the solstices, and where the lines cross, the equinoxes.