plan to celebrate Winter Solstice tomorrow

Connect with the natural world for a day. This year our calendar day of December 21st will be the shortest. From this day forward the days will grow longer and longer until the turnaround at the summer solstice.

Montana sunrise will be 8:11 am; sunset 4:44 pm; length of day 8 hours 33 minutes; night 15 hours 27 minutes

The sun’s steady disappearance from our world will make a turnaround. This is worth celebrating, marking in some way big or small. I plan to work in my greenhouse, perhaps put some seeds into pots and onto a germinating heat mat (that we have yet to dig out of whatever clever storage site we found for it). Maybe you can start a jar of alfalfa sprouts. 😉

The South Pole is leaning as far towards the sun as it will until this time next year.

I have been looking forward to the end of the shorter-and-shorter days cycle and beginning of the longer-and-longer days – I have a warm relationship with our sun… and daylight.

The obfuscators like to considered this day as The First Day of Winter in the northern hemisphere. As if some small print they place on our calendars can and should control our thinking. Don’t be misled. Find some way to celebrate The Winter Solstice.

Take a look at sunrise and sunset for the next few days. Note where they strike your house, where they shine in the windows, what areas of your yard get the most southern warming exposure. From now to June, those points will gradually move north before the Summer Solstice marks the next turnaround.

As long as people have paid attention to their physical world in an organized fashion, there have been a multitude of Winter Solstice celebrations in all cultures. It is noteworthy in many ways and helps tie the seasons together.

This is one day of the year that no political or religious calendar can change.

It simply and irrefutably just IS.

It’s kind of nice to have something that solid come along every now and then.