A Full Day Of Winter

Today is the first full day of winter in the northern hemisphere. Personally I don't look forward to cold temperatures, ice, assorted freezing slop, and black snow lining city streets for the next two months. On the other hand, the thought of lengthening days that arrived with yesterday's solstice brings a big smile to my face. This rebirth of the sun has brought happiness to humans for quite a long time. 

The Newgrange Tumulus in County Meath, Ireland, is a nice illustration of this long-standing respect for the rebirth of light and warmth to a culture.  The burial mound has a passage that aligns perfectly with the winter solstice sunrise.  People have observed the illumination of the keystone at Newgrange long before Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids existed.

For the next six months the sun will climb a bit higher every day in the Northern Hemisphere. We won't notice heat from the "rebirth" of the sun until a month or so into this cycle. While we experience, perhaps enjoy, a world at quiet rest the lengthening days can give us hope that the "dead season" will soon come to an end.