Just give me a couple minutes…
It is fairly common knowledge that the shortest day of the year is during the winter, December 21st, in fact. I have heard this called midwinter (the BLEAK midwinter, if you ask me), Winter Solstice, and Hibernal Solstice (which is quite fitting for those of us who want to stay indoors like Punxsutawney Phil).
The northern hemisphere is at its very furthest from the sun and tilted in such a way that the days are shorter, and the shadows are longer.
Yet, December 21st, the bleak midwinter, is THE single, most exciting day of the year in my opinion. I have been looking forward to it for weeks.
“Why??” you ask? How can the shortest day of the year, where the night is the longest and darkest, be the best?? It has nothing to do with the holidays or winter sports…
This is the greatest day, in fact the single greatest moment at exactly 4:19am, December 21st, because it is at this very minute that every single day after for the next six months has more sunlight than the day before.
Luckily for us southern folk in the northern hemisphere, we get a decent amount of time added to our daily sunlight. At first, each day is longer by only a minute or two – BUT, by the middle of January, each day is up to 2 minutes more of sunlight than the day before…2 minutes and 19 blessed seconds more to be exact, every single day. This is glorious news to me and to all of the other daylight and sunshine worshippers out there.
Those folks that live in the north have my respect but can happily keep their extreme hemispheric lives. I, myself, would dread living in a place like Alaska for example, where in the winter there IS NO SUN. Ok, well, for 3 hours and some change in southern Alaska there is a mere suggestion of low sun, but in the northern-most region of Alaska, NO SUN for two whole months. What?!
I read a quote online by wildlife ranger in Alaska who said “To walk long and hard in snow, winter hush and low light—over frozen rivers, across narrow willow bars and through the heart of silent forests, moonlight pulling at the edges of your awareness—is to know the very essence of being human.”
Um…thanks, but that’s a hard NO for me.
I prefer warm breezes no less than about 70 degrees and rays of sun shining on my skin until 8:30pm, thankyouverymuch.
The days lengthen from December 21st to the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice, June 21st. Here in North Carolina that gets me to about 14 hours of magnificent, Vitamin D-filled sunlight. Not too shabby.
The passing of the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice is a lovely 6-month journey to longer, warmer, sunnier days to enjoy. Yes, please, I’ll have that.
I wonder how the folks in Norway get along. Norway, a.k.a. the Land of the Midnight Sun, incredibly has over 70 days of straight 24-hour sunlight in the summertime. I can’t imagine. That’s extreme to be sure. Perhaps Norwegians feel deserving after having suffered through their long dark winters of no sunlight in the Artic Circle.
For now, in my little place in the northern hemisphere, it is January, dark and cold for this North Carolinian. But just give me a couple of minutes – a couple of minutes every day, in fact. I am well on my way, literally, towards the sun.
