Another orbit around the sun

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What else is there to live for in winter if not the celebrations.

Victor

It's basically a week away from the solstice, still. A little more than a week. It's exactly a week from Christmas Eve, which is what many countries (like where I live) celebrate as "the" Christmas. It's pretty clear still, to me at least, that we celebrate this time because of the sun returning to higher distances above the horizon.

Victor

Bro I fucken hate Christmas as an adult. So much stress attached. Stressing about gifts for like 1-2 months of the year. Heck to the no. This year I just said no thanks to all gifts, asked all my relatives to donate to a charity of their choice instead, and that I would not be giving gifts. Best Christmas in a couple decades, seriously.

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I figure the solstice would be a far better tradition to bring back. Party twice a year? Peak and summer the low of winter. Sign me up

Liz

The Julian calendar, the predecessor to the modern Gregorian calendar, didn't quite fully account for leap year shenanigans, and so drifted be about 1 day every century. The Gregorian calendar changed the way leap year works, but didn't reset the beginning of the year. It just froze the drift where it was at the time.

Gregorian calendar - Wikipedia

(en.m.wikipedia.org)

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My wife and I do this. Not all of our friends are up for it (some think it's too sacrilegious, but like everything I do is I'm not sure why they haven't got that yet)

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January 1st is defined, but it's still pretty arbitrary. It would make more sense if it were the solstice 10 days earlier or the spring equinox or summer solstice etc. because at least that's the start/end of "something"

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bring back

Uh... it hasn't gone anywhere. Just because you haven't celebrated it, doesn't mean others haven't.

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I said "passing", not "end". The end of the year is roughly aligned with mid-winter, a.k.a. the winter solstice.

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Why just solstices? I maintain that secular society would probably enjoy the cardinal (solstices and equinoxes) and ordinal (halfway points) holidays that modern pagans tend to celebrate far better than the Christian ones. They're evenly spaced out and correspond to changes in light and temperature

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Yeah and second is a 60th of a 60th of a 24th of a day. We just found the number of times cesium vibrates in that amount of time. 60 and 24 seem arbitrary to us now, but in addition to giving nice and useful chunks of time, they're numbers that wouldn't feel as arbitrary to ancient folks

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This is why we need to go back to the roots of what Christmas was co-opted from.

Gimme my winter solstice festival!

Summer Christmas is less magical