Tomorrow, I guess, is the Winter Solstice. There was some discussion on the subject on Dennis Prager’s show today, and the conclusion seemed to be that the solstice came on the 21st last year, but will be on the 22nd this year. Sounds fishy to me. I suspect it’s a plot by the Global Warming conspiracists, intended to give them an excuse to release fiery press releases tomorrow, condemning the Bush administration for delaying the rotation of the earth for the benefit of Haliburton.
I’ve always been happy that we have a holiday featuring lots of colored lights at this particular time of the year. I go to work in the dark, and come home in the dark. I need colored lights. I’m confident any competent health professional would agree.
Incidentally, this is St. Thomas’ Day, the anniversary of the killing of Erling Skjalgsson, hero of my novel, The Year of the Warrior. It was a dark day when Erling died, not least for St. Olaf Haraldsson, who had some culpability in his death. But that’s a story for another novel, which (alas) will probably never be written.
The days are even shorter in Norway than here in Minnesota, this time of year. The Norwegians used to think of Jul (Christmas) as an old woman who came to visit now. Today she took a seat in the chimney corner. Tomorrow and the day after she would sit in two other kitchen corners. Christmas Eve she got the “high seat,” the best seat in the house, where she would be the guest of honor all the way to Epiphany. It was believed that there was no point doing any work today. If baking was done, the dough would rise wrong. In the oven, the cakes or cookies would move around, and you’d never get them out again. So give Mom a break.
At the precise moment when the sun “turned” (it was believed), the horns of the cows would loosen—but just for that moment. Also at that moment, all water turned to wine, then to poison, and then back to water again.
You’ve been warned.
I like colored lights too, and I am not a competent health specialist.
And this Mom only has two more things to bake and then she’s done (corn bread, and an apple pie for her father-in-law), and will sit (collapse) in any corner she’s pointed to.
Sometimes I wonder if no one back in the old days ever thought to say, “Water to wine then to poison, eh? Prove it.”
Probably Thomas Paine thought of that once or twice.
It seems to me that, since there are almost always two calendar dates in progress on either side of the International Date Line, that the Winter Solstice would almost always happen on both the 21st and the 22nd, depending on where you are.
It also seems that the Winter Solstice is being stolen by the pagans, so since God created it we should steal it back somehow.
So why did that comment look like spam? Too much cholesterol?
Could the shift in solstice come from the divinely inspired lack of perfect syncronization between the earth’s rotation, the moon’s orbit of the earth and the earth’s orbit of the sun that results in the occasional leap year?
Of course, that’s too technical for most modern products of government education to grasp. It’s much easier to blame Bush.