On this episode of Our Island Universe: The winter solstice and promise of longer days and shorter nights.
Host: Shanil Virani, Director of the John C. Wells Planetarium Harrisonburg, VA.
Follow on Twitter as shanilv
Transcript:
At 11:48p EST on Monday, December 21, winter arrives in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. For us north of the equator, the time around the winter solstice is identified with short daylight hours and long nighttime hours. The night of the winter's solstice is often referred to as the longest night of year.
We now know the cycle of the seasons is caused by the Earth's tilt on its axis as the planet revolves around the Sun. Our ancestors decoded the pattern of the seasons but struggled to explain why. nevertheless, celebrations at this time of the year were common in many cultures as they celebrated the lighter days to come and dealt with the season of dormancy, darkness, and cold. Christians all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day but there is little evidence that December 25 was actually Jesus's birthday. Instead, we know that pagan celebrations like Saturnalia and Natalis Invicti occurred during this time. A word associated with Christmas, Yule, is derived from the Norse word jól which again refers to a pre-Christian winter festival. So its likely Christmas was chosen to occur on December 25 to offset these pagan celebrations. Nevertheless, it is clear that celebrations of the lighter, warmer days to come and nature's continuing cycle were common in many cultures.
For me, the arrival of winter signifies the arrival of the constellation Orion in our nighttime sky. This one constellation demonstrates the cyclical order of the cosmos as its home to both a stellar nursery and a star that is ready to explode.
So as you're stargazing on this longest night of the year, remember, when you see our closest star, the sun, there are longer days to come.