What is the Winter Solstice?
May 16th, 2009 | by myarticlenetwork |In the olden days the Chinese people celebrate Dong Zhi (Winter Solstice Festival) much like Chinese Lunar New Year by visiting relatives and friends. There is the usual feasting and businesses will take a break on that day. On this day, people will gather around to eat “tang yuan” (glutinous floor balls) which is symbolic of family unity and harmony.
What do we mean when we use the term “winter solstice”?
A solstice is an astronomical term used when describing the day of the year when the sun is furthest from the equator. Two solstices exist, consisting of one solstice during the summer, which lengthens the day to the maximum, and another solstice during the winter, which shortens the day to the minimum during the year. Timing of these vary depending on which particular hemisphere you are focusing on.
Solstices happen when the earth turns away from the Sun at the greatest distance for that hemisphere. The earth orbits around the sun while, at the same time, rotating on its axis. The sideways turn results in one hemisphere being nearer the sun, bringing summer, but the other hemisphere is turned far away, bringing winter.
The term solstice actually come form the Latin word solstitium. They derived the word solstitium from sol meaning the sun and stitium, which means to stop. During the solstice, the sun appears to do exactly that. It reaches almost the same elevation everyday at noon for the several days before and after the solstice.
In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice falls on either December 21st or 22nd each year when the sun appears directly above the tropic of Capricorn. For the southern hemisphere, the 20th or 21st of June is the winter solstice, which takes place when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Cancer.
The shortest day and longest night of the year are celebrated by the Winter Solstice. This day is considered to be the mid-point of winter by many societies on their calendars. Amazingly, in the past 3,000 years, the date of the solstice has moved only one day.
A lot of older civilizations observed the winter solstice as a period of being reborn, because the sun looks like it is regenerated and the daylight lasts longer.
Today, festivals of light are still celebrated by some cultures. In addition to the Chinese Dong Zhi festival, the Germanic cultures celebrate Yule and Hindus celebrate Diwali, a festival of light.
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