Winter solstice

“ On this subject Walter Kelly says:—"In the gloomy season of the winter solstice the Ribhus" (demi-gods, who aid in the ruling of the lightning and storms) "sleep for twelve days in the house of the sun-god Savitar; then they wake up and prepare the earth to clothe itself anew with vegetation, and the frozen waters to flow again. It appears certain, from some passages in the Vedas, that twelve nights about the winter solstice were regarded as prefiguring the character of the weather for the whole year. ”

“ Heaven, Thou dost look down on us and givest us the nation. All-seeing and all-hearing, everywhere, yet how near and how close: We come before Thee on this winter solstice day when the air assumes a new life ”

“ In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice day has the most daylight hours, and the winter solstice has the fewest daylight hours each year. The tilt of the axis allows differential heating of the Earth’s surface, which causes seasonal changes in the global circulation. ”

“ We consequently find the winter solstice, which occurs at the close of December, is practically set aside by all agricultural people as an occasion of a great festival in which sun-worship is dominant. ”

“ Taking, indeed, a broad view of festivals throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and seeks to assist it; [130] the vernal equinox, the period of germination and the return of life; the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its height; and autumn, the period of fruition, of thankfulness, and of repose. But it is rarely that we find a people seriously celebrating more than two of these festival seasons. ”

“ In most nations of ancient or modern times, the period of what is popularly called the winter solstice appears to have been recognized as a season of rejoicing. The deepening gloom and increasing sterility which have followed the downward progress of the sun's place in heaven would generally dispose the minds of men to congratulation at the arrival of that period when, as experience had taught them, he had reached his lowest point of influence with reference to them ”

“ In a climate like that of Mexico and Central America, however, where the year divided itself naturally into a dry and a rainy season, it is evident that the winter solstice would be less observed and that the ardently-desired recurrence of the rainy season, after a long and trying period of drought, should be regarded as the annual event of utmost importance. ”

“ The position of the sun at midsummer and midwinter, rising or setting, is associated with most important events; the winter solstice indicates the time when the fields should be prepared for cultivation ”

“ Now it passes into southern regions about the time of the winter solstice, now it returns to the sign of the equinox; from thence it betakes itself to northern regions during the summer solstice, and keeps up by this imperceptible passage a pleasant temperature throughout all the world.
Let the learned people see if they do not disagree among themselves. The water which the sun consumes is, they say, what prevents the sea from rising and flooding the rivers ”

“ The frequency with which the season approaching to Christmas, or that of the winter solstice, is distinguished by the occurrence of weather peculiarly mild, insomuch that, almost every year, the period is marked by observations upon what is annually called the extraordinary and unseasonable genialness of the weather, cowslips blooming, leaves budding, and birds building their nests ”

“ The winter solstice always falls about the 22nd of December, the spring equinox about the 21st of March, the summer solstice about the 21st of June, and the autumnal equinox about the 23rd of September.
But (as has been suggested) the Accadian year was a sidereal year, and its months maintained a constant relation to the twelve star-marked divisions of the ecliptic, or, as they are called, the constellations of the Zodiac. Nisan always corresponded (as closely as a lunar month might) to the time during which the sun traversed the constellation Aries ”

“ Halcyon Days, in antiquity, implied seven days before, and as many after, the winter solstice—because the halcyon laid her eggs at this time of the year, and the weather during her incubation being, as your correspondent observes, usually calm. The phrase was afterwards employed to express any season of transient prosperity, or of brief tranquillity—the septem placidae dies of human life:
The winter solstice just elapsed ”

“ Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow? Or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated? ”

“ But with us, hot summers are things known by tradition only (as this great winter may be) ; we generally have more moisture, especially in July, than we well know what to do with. I have known a fog for a fortnight at the summer solstice, and farmers talking in church about it when they ought to be praying. ”

“ The state of the weather, whether hot or cold, is extensively affected by this trade current. As we have already suggested, the mere presence of the sun in its summer solstice, or its absence in winter, is not an adequate cause of all the sudden and various changes to which we are subject. ”

“ They did not think of fleeing from winter any more than from the summer solstice, and consequently they enjoyed a certain contentment of mind that is absent from modern life. We are more intelligent, and therefore more discontented and unhappy. We are always trying to escape winter when we are not trying to escape summer. ”

“ The earth, in summer, is as quickly dried as the cheek of a child. At that period of the solstice, the light of full noonday is, so to speak, poignant. It takes everything. It applies itself to the earth, and superposes itself with a sort of suction. ”

“ Now, the trees reared their bare dark branches aloft, for the season was a late one; and Winter, driven from his throne for a few sunshiny days, was returning with increasing force to chase back the approaching Spring. From the gray lowering sky above the snow-flakes were beginning to fall, and, before Flora reached the place of her destination, a brooding storm was wrapping the world in premature night. ”

“ Those who know the country only in summer, know it scarcely at all. From the first November snowstorm to the last drift melting before the winds of late March on the northern side of a pasture wall, the winter season is a perpetual revelation of subtle colour harmonies, of exquisite compositions, of dramas on the trodden snow, of sweet, close-companioned hours before wood fires that crackle, shut into “a tumultuous privacy of storm.” ”

“ To the thought that we should logically place the middle of the cold season at the solstice, when the earth receives the least sunshine, it may be replied that there is a lag in meteorological phenomena which is the interval between certain causes and the effects which follow. ”

“ A week of spring days bright in every hour, without a stain or thought of the storm, came in glorious colors, giving still greater pledges of happy life to every living creature of the spring, but a loud, energetic snowstorm possessed every hour of yesterday. Every tree and broken weed bloomed yet once more; all summer distinctions were leveled off; all plants and the very rocks and streams were equally polypetalous.
This morning winter had everything in the valley. The snow drifted about in the frosty wind like meal, and the falls were muffled in thick sheets of frozen spray. ”

“ For it is one of the dangers of the retrospective habit that it incapacitates us for the realization of the present hour. Much dwelling on last year's snow will make us forget the summer flowers. Dreaming of fair faces that are gone, we will look with unseeing eyes into the fair faces that companion us still. To the Spring we say: "What of all your blossom, and all your singing! Autumn is already at your heels, like a shadow; and Winter waits for you like a marble tomb." ”

“ What can exceed the dazzling splendour of a rising sun, on the trees and bushes, after a night of rain and freezing, when every branch appears like a shining crystal? A prospect grand indeed!
The severe frosts of Winter, with the agitated atmosphere, dispel the sickening fumes which arise from heated and stagnant pools, and decaying vegetation.
This gives health and vigour to the body, and an it were, new spring to thought. Who but has observed the lively sensations of body and mind on a clear frosty morning in winter? ”

“ Which thy own season paints, when nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.
And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch—
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost—
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless ”

“ There is something very fearful in this kind of wintry feeling in a summer night. The cold, the darkness, followed by intense heat, and a pale, meteoric lightning, seemed to unite the mingled evils of the various seasons, and to trace their sad analogy to life,—whose stormy summer allows youth little to enjoy, and whose chilling winter leaves age nothing to hope. ”

“ Are we to suffer any longer from the seasons being upset by the effect of the divine wrath, on account of the atrocious perfidy of the pagans, which disturbs the equilibrium of nature? For what is the cause that now the spring has no longer its ordinary beauty, that the autumn no longer furnishes a harvest to the laborious workman and that the winter, by its rigour, freezes the soil and renders it sterile? ”

“ Season-words yield a further hint of a northern Continental home, with a more or less humid climate in which the welcome change from the long ungenial winter was as the burst of sunshine through the cold and mist of a gloomy night, and the dawn of gladsome spring was merged in a too short summer day. Time was measured by the moon, of little service otherwise in that wolf-haunted forest-land, and therefore playing but a small part in primitive mythology. Day is the reign of divine, life-giving light, as night is the waning of Nature's powers in a death-like gloom. ”