The Shortest Day
The Winter Solstice - The Day One of "The Long Midwinter"
Today we celebrate the turning of the year with the first day of the “Long Midwinter” (a nice explanation of which, follows this verse):
My best wishes to all readers as we welcome the lengthening days and start down the road to spring. Thank you for your support.
Richard
The Long Midwinter
I think the following account covers very nicely the way J and I celebrate this time of year, starting today and, the traditional twelve days later, ending on New Year’s Day. We had been calling it Wintermas, but The Long Midwinter is far better.
5000 Years Ago …
Newgrange Tomb, in Northern Ireland, is among the oldest buildings in the world – it predates the pyramids by five centuries. The late archaeologist Michael J O’Kelly found a slit above the entrance to a vaulted inner chamber that contained the bones of four adults and one child. His theory was that the slit was put there to let in the rays of the rising sun to wake the spirits of the dead. But only on one day of the year, the Winter Solstice.
“The first shot of orange-red light penetrated right to where I was sitting,” O’Kelly said. “It gradually widened to a 17cm band that illuminated the whole interior. I could feel the spirits of the dead all around me … and then a point came after 17 minutes, a sudden cut-off. Darkness.”
… mind-boggling to think that 5,000 years ago, without the aid of mathematical tools, stone age builders had arranged this aperture to be perfectly level with the horizon when the sun casts its first rays, on only one day a year.
Article in The Guardian 16 December
