A Yearly Rant

[talon]

Every year, at this time, I rant about the Solstice.

It is Midsummer's Day, not First Day of Summer's Day. The first day of summer, speaking of the yearly solar jaunt and not about local weather patterns, is May 1st. The weather can vary widely from place to place due to air and water currents, mountain ranges, nearby deserts and lakes, and so on and so forth and is no indication of the solar season.

The solar season is a simple one not affected by puny planetary and sub-planetary fluctuations in weather. It's cyclic, so really, we can begin anywhere. The middle or height of each season is marked by a named Quarter Day - the Solstices and Equinoxes: Midsummer's Day, Midwinter's Day, Spring Equinox, Fall Equinox. The beginning of those seasons is marked by a named Cross-Quarter Day, which are half way between the Quarter Days and have many different names: Candlemass, St, Brigid's Day, Walpurgisnacht, Beltane, Halloween, All Hallow's, Lammas, Lughnasad, Mabon...

The season changes every 12 weeks (the Cross-Quarter Days) and reaches the midpoint 6 weeks later (the Quarter Days, aka the Solstices and Equinoxes).

The point is, Midsummer's Day is not the beginning of summer, it's the middle of summer, just as noon is the midpoint of the day. Just as the hottest part of the day usually starts after the noon hour, so the hottest part of summer begins after the midpoint of summer. So, yeah, up here in the Northern Hemisphere, we're about to hit the hottest 6 weeks of the year - the so-called Dog Days of summer.

I wish the media would get it right and stop perpetuating a falsehood. If they can't get this one simple thing right, how can we expect them to get anything else right?