I don't believe in being politically correct, in fact I find the idea pretty silly, especially when it's carried to extremes. Does it make sense for airport security to frisk little old ladies? Do I really have to call Canaan's third selectman a selectwoman? Can't we enjoy ethnic jokes any more? I think some of the funniest ones are about us WASPs. This year most of the Christmas cards we've gotten don't mention Christmas. They just have Santa saying Season's Greetings or Happy Holidays.
Over the years I've written a lot of Christmas columns, not Holiday columns. This year I've decided to write about the winter solstice, but not to be politically correct. I just don't feel very Christmassy. Two days after I post this column on the web it will be December 21st, the magic date when the sun finally stops its plummeting path south and starts its ascent toward warmer weather. The youngest Taylor daughter, Tamar, was born on this date. In second grade she learned about the summer and winter solstices and came home looking woebegone. When I asked what was wrong she wailed mournfully "My birthday is on the shortest day of the year." It took a bit of explaining before she understood that the 24-hour day did not grow longer or shorter, but she still felt cheated.
I don't blame her. These short days and long nights can be pretty depressing. Many of Mother Nature's flora and fauna are affected by the amount of daylight they get, from chrysanthemums that refuse to bloom to twittering sparrows that gather in the locusts each fall to discuss the best route south. I, too, am a creature of nature, and go down hill fast when deprived of sunlight for too long. This syndrome, known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, with the delightfully appropriate acronym of SAD, can be cured by sitting in front of a fluorescent that emits the full spectrum of light found in sunshine. Since I am too cheap to buy this light and have never been diagnosed as a victim of SAD, I should probably hibernate like a bear until spring.
Despite the winter solstice's turn-around date, January's sun doesn't really show much improvement over December's, offering us sunlight as cold as moonlight. February's sun is not much better, too weak to defrost an icicle. By March, however, the sun starts to warm up and amount to something. Like a good kindergarten teacher, it begins to prepare the earth for spring growth, encouraging maple buds to swell with confidence, luring snowdrops and crocuses out into the open, waking up the pussy willows.
The sunrise seen from Locust Hill on December 21st appears in a totally different place than it does on June 21st. Now the sun is poking up so far to the south it is beyond the notch into Norfolk. By mid-summer it rises north of the Robbins Battell Memorial tower on Haystack.
The speed at which these changes occur seems to vary tremendously. In summer I think the sun gets lazy with the heat, rising and setting with little change in either position or time schedule, smiling down on Locust Hill for almost two-thirds of the day. Once the autumnal equinox has passed and the sun's rays begin to lose their heat, it seems our daylight shrinks all too fast until we're down to a mere nine hours.
Why does the sun change its pace from a gentle stroll across the sky to a sprint? A few years ago I decided to do a little research so I could explain it to all you sun worshippers. As it turned out, I did a lot of research. There are way too many things involved in figuring out the sun's speed. I got totally mixed up trying to understand the tilt and rotation of the earth's axis, calculating distances and changes from the Tropic of Cancer to Capricorn, worrying about latitudes, longitudes and daylight-saving time, not to mention declination of degrees and minutes (angular distance from the celestial equator) and taking into consideration the effects of twilight and leap year.
I almost gave up, but this year, with the help of a friend with a scientific bent, I got an explanation and learned that my theory was quite incorrect. The sun's speed changes more slowly as we head to and from the solstices, about two minutes each day, but as we near each equinox, it speeds up to a six-minute difference each day. The other big difference, however, is the reason the sun appears to move faster in winter than in summer. It's in the percentages. The watery winter sun's position changes by 25.28% each day as we whistle in and out of winter, but only makes a daily change of 20.18% as we loll into and out of summer.
I'm not sure just what all this proves, but I've spent so much time on it, I felt I had to use it for a column. And like Tam and her "short, dark birthday," I still feel cheated. Once the sun has passed the winter solstice it ought to hustle right along and get us to spring as fast as possible.
Have a sunny Christmas or Hanukah or whatever you're celebrating, and a great New Year.
