Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is at 9:30 pm today in Seattle. Now the slow crawl back to summer daylight starts, although longer days won't be noticeable until about February. Folks living up here in the dark northern lands like to leave their outdoor lights up into January, which is both a cheerful and lazy thing to do. By the time we get around to taking them down, the first signs of spring are stirring in the Northwest. You can cut a few forsythia branches on the way in to force in a jar of hot water.

Time to wake up!

The date of the solstice varies from December 20 to December 23, depending on the year in the Gregorian calendar. Next year the solstice will be on December 21, 2012. We can look forward to a big scary buzz, because 12/21/12 is a speculated date for the "end of the world." The Mayan calendar finishes one of its cycles in December 2012, so this fuels countless theories about the big end, as if the Mayans knew something we don't.

You will be relieved to hear NASA scientists have been thoroughly studying and analyzing the possibility of the Earth ending in 2012, and have concluded that 12/21/12 will be nothing more than a normal solstice. There is simply no scientific evidence to support any claims of an apocalypse on Earth in December 2012. I'm glad there are still a few scientists left to reassure us about these things, not that anyone is listening.