By now it may be commonly understood that the winter solstice is not the hidden signal for humans to start building igloos. Indeed, Sunday, the day of the solstice, was warmer than average in D.C.
In Washington, Sunday seemed a day without obvious meteorological distinction. The high temperature reached into the 50s, not overly warm, but not a reading likely to generate shivers and shudders.
It did not go far into the 50s, reaching only 51. But it was four degrees warmer than the normal high temperature in the capital on the 21st of December.
As of 8 p.m. the day’s coldest temperature was 34 degrees. That is the normal low temperature in the District for Dec. 21, a date on which the solstice frequently falls.
So no great drama, certainly not of a thermal nature. No rain or snow or great wind seemed to accompany the arrival of the solstice at 10:03 a.m. Sunday. It was not particularly warm, but not extremely cold.
In addition, it was often cloudy and overcast. However, the brilliance of the moments when sunlight shone through, and the skies turned bright blue, seemed to compensate. The clouds appeared to be far above, and indeed they were, located five miles up.
Pale gray or pale white, seemingly fragile and delicate, Sunday’s feathery clouds seemed to exist in a world of their own, a frosty realm of little warmth, a world of spreading, silvery, crystalline ice.
The true drama of the solstice lies in the apparent motion of the sun. Apparent, of course, because it is more widely recognized that it is the Earth that moves, orbiting the sun, while the sun itself is fixed.
The sun only seems to move. But at the solstice, after sliding lower and lower for six months, the sun stops. It sinks no further.
For weeks and months, with the decline in the elevation of the sun, nights have been growing longer and longer, daylight shorter.
But at 10:03 a.m. on Sunday, there was an end to that. It was not something readily observed without the aid of instruments. But as it does around this time each year, to astronomers the sun seems for a moment to stop in its flight from the Northern Hemisphere.
It stands still, then seems after an instant, and imperceptibly at first, to reverse course. It begins to climb in the sky and, over weeks and months, to create more daylight and less darkness.
But the moment of the solstice, 10:03 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday, the annual moment when it seems motionless, at its lowest point in its daily path from sunrise to sunset has been designated as the start of winter.
Over the past weeks and months, so much of the heating power of the sun has been lost, so much has darkness overtaken daylight, that weeks of cold weather almost invariably follow the solstice.
January arrives in only a few days, and January is generally cold, colder than was Sunday.
But perhaps paradoxically, many have found reason for optimism or at least consolation in the arrival of the solstice and of winter. Not because cold days are in store, but because it is necessary to withstand winter to reach the days beyond.
In English, this optimism was perhaps most famously expressed in the line that closes a celebrated 19th century poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
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