Shedding Some Light on Solstice

In winter I get up at night and dress by yellow candlelight.

In summer, quite the other way; I have to go to bed by day ...

--A Child’s Garden of Verses

. . . and let us be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas.

It is , you know. Christmas Day. Today. You could look it up.

By no coincidence, it is also the Winter Solstice, official beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. (Summer, Down Under.) For the purist, winter began at 1:46:15 a.m. today.

In 1987 (which, in all probability, is 1989), Dec. 22 is what is popularly but erroneously called “the shortest day of the year.” There is, of course, no such thing.

Long and Short of It

Darryl F. Zanuck was pulling our leg when he titled his epic “The Longest Day.” Harry Belafonte, on the other hand, was right on: “Day,” he declared definitively, “is a day-o.”

Winter or summer, north or south, year in year out, a day lasts 23 hours 56 minutes and change--the time it takes for Earth to rotate on its axis.

The “shortest day” is simply the one with the least sunlight: 9 hours, 53 minutes today in Los Angeles. It is the day when the sun rises directly above the Tropic of Capricorn. As seen from the Earth, the sun will not go any farther south--a blessing for which we can thank the Chumash Indians, among others (see below). At 1:46:16, the sun began to head back toward Los Angeles, where it belongs.

Thus on Dec. 23, we will enjoy two minutes more sunlight. From now until June 22, 1988, the days (as opposed to the nights) will get progressively longer.

On March 22--the Vernal Equinox, the start of spring--the sun will be directly over the Equator. A splendid occasion, widely ignored. Call it International Equality Day: the day when everyone on God’s Green Footstool--black or white, male or female, Republican, Democrat or godless Communist--shares precisely 12 hours of light, 12 of darkness.

On June 22, the sun will lave Los Angeles for 14 hours 26 minutes, five hours more than today. Unjust though it may seem, though, the sun is never directly above Los Angeles. An angle of 79 degrees is as high as it gets, in contrast to 32 1/2 degrees today. You like your sun straight up, move between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

So Near, Yet So Cold

At any rate, this is “the shortest day,” consequently one of the coldest: something of an irony since, as Griffith Observatory astronomer John Mosley points out, we’re about as close to the sun today as we’re going to get all year.

Why isn’t is warmer, then? Because of the tilt of the Earth vis-a-vis our mother star, explains Suzy Gurton, another Griffith astronomer: “The sun isn’t beating straight down on us; it’s only 32 1/2 degrees above the horizon at noon, so it’s glancing off us, the rays diffused by the atmosphere.”

In other words, it’s not the proximity, it’s the angle? “Right,” Gurton says. “If we were just sitting on our axis like a planetary couch potato, if we were perpendicular to our orbit, we wouldn’t have seasons. Boring.”

(Being closer to the sun in winter, though, does have its advantages. In its elliptical orbit, Mosley explains, the Earth travels faster the closer it is to the sun, so seasons are uneven in length; Northern Hemisphere summer is 4 1/2 days longer than its winter. Eat your heart out, Sydney!)

Anyway, today is the Winter Solstice and Christmas Day as well, though as usual we’ll be celebrating the latter a few days late.

Christmas marks the day of Christ’s birth, as well it should. The problem is, no one is quite sure just when Jesus was born. Malcolm Cooper, a Griffith lecturer, is among many who peg the date as March or September of 2 BC. (Ergo, it is 1989, though few among us would willingly add two years to our ages, let alone miss the Olympics.)

The date of Christmas, then, is arbitrary, though the time of the Winter Solstice, from which Christmas sprang, is easily calculated.

The solstice has been celebrated for millennia, long before Christ. Ancient peoples, realizing that the sun was slipping away, getting lower in the sky, pulled out all the stops to arrest its descent: voodoo, ritual, sacrifices . . .

Stepping Out

Among them were the local Chumash, who, on what was then “Christmas Eve,” danced clockwise about a bonfire, symbolizing the sun. At precisely midnight, the dancers reversed course, counterclockwise--in effect asking the sun to cut short its winter vacation and come back home. The ritual was performed annually, and while none of the ancients is around to ask why, one can imagine the answer: “Hey, it works , doesn’t it?”

Solstice Celebration

The Druids, naturally, did their own thing (including something weird involving mistletoe). So did the Romans, who never passed up an excuse for a good old-fashioned orgy. The Romans called their solstice celebration “Saturnalia,” and a good time was had by all--at least up until AD 325.

In 325, the Christian church of the day threw one of its periodic clambakes, this one called the Council of Nicea. At Nicea, it was decided to standardize observance of Christmas, which up to then was a kind of floating holiday.

Saturnalia was already a widespread jubilee, deplored by the church fathers. Why waste a perfectly good holiday, they reasoned; let’s preempt the day as our own. Furthermore, Dec. 25 was the Winter Solstice--a historic time of hope, of renewal.

Dec. 25 was the solstice on the Julian calendar, that is. When the world went Gregorian (a calendar far more accurate), the solstice found itself on Dec. 22 (or 21 or even 20, as the world turns). Christmas, though, got stuck on 25, possibly in recognition of the obvious need for three more shopping days.

Other Effects

(Gift giving, as many another “Christmas” tradition, was borrowed from solstice/Saturnalia days. The ignoble Caligula, given a Saturnalia present, dug the idea and decreed an instant tradition. The church fought long but vainly against turning Christmas into a revel. In Colonial Massachusetts, for example, sniffers were employed to detect telltale kitchen odors. Penalty for feasting was jail. Whence the expression “Your goose is cooked.”)

Scarcity of sunlight aside, does the Winter Solstice, the “shortest day,” have any other effect on our lives?

“Climate-wise, no,” says Art Lessard, meteorologist-in-charge at the U.S. Weather Service in Los Angeles.

The solstice, then, is not responsible for our recent rotten weather? “No.” Who can we blame, then? “Me,” Lessard said.

“The short days affect me,” astronomer Gurton confesses. “I kind of go into hibernation. Everybody’s biological clock is tied in some way to the motions of the sun and moon. I’m not nearly as active in the winter. My body just wants to snuggle in.”

It’s silly season, too, even at the observatory, where astronomers wile away darktime in speculation: What time is it on the poles, where all the time zones converge? Does the water swirling down your wash basin really change directions when you cross the Equator? (Yes; it’s the Coriolis Effect.)

Winter Peaks Today

Even with only nine hours of sunlight, though, Angelenos are far better off than, say, the Laplanders, whose six-month winter peaks today.

Several Januaries ago, in Pohtimolampi, Finland, Mika, a lovely native with see-through skin, was asked how she and her friends got through the winter.

“Mostly,” she said, “we go to the movies.”

“All winter?”

“Just about,” Mika said. “The late show gets out about half-past March.”