Every year around the time of the Winter Solstice I find myself getting frustrated at people mistakenly saying that the evenings and mornings will start getting lighter after the date. It is a common mistake to think that the earliest sunset and latest sunrise occur on the day of the solstice, but is not true; they are offset. As this is Dorset Eye, I have used the data for Weymouth, which happens to be where I live, but you could look it up for your exact location.
The earliest Sunset will actually occurred on the 11th or 12th December, whereas the sunrise continues to get later until 30th or 31st December. The Solstice is merely the minimal differential, hence shortest day, but the sunrise still continues to get later for 10 days after the Solstice. This information was obtained from www.timeanddate.com, in fact it even says the dates of the earliest sunset and latest sunrise and there is even a link to an explanation. If you look at the time of the earliest sunset you will see that there are 8 days ( 8 to 15 December inclusive) when the sun sets within the minute of 16:05. This is because it is only varying by a few seconds ever day, whereas, conversely, the sunrise has become 7 minutes later in the time. The latest sunrise is at 8:11 an it is within that minute for 10 days from 26 December until 4 January. In that time the sunset has move on 8 minutes and nearly quarter of an hour from its earliest date.
By the end of January the sun is setting past 1700, almost an hour from its earliest setting time, whereas the sunrise has only moved 25 minutes from its latest time. This is why people tend to comment about the evenings getting visibly lighter at the end of January or early February. My comment are obviously based on the Winter Solstice here, but you can equally show that the opposite phenomena applies in Australia, where they are celebrating their Summer Solstice on 21 December and around our Summer Solstice in June.
The ancients used to think that the sun stood still for 3 days after the Solstice and only started to move again on the 25th Dec, hence a pagan festival: hmmmm the SUN is born on the 25th Dec ( where have I heard that phrase before). Even more interesting, the sun is located over the Tropic of Capricorn so it is also in the Southern Cross. ‘The SUN dies on the cross and is then born again 3 days later’. I’m sure that I have heard that phrase before as well!!! It seems that we have the Christmas story and Easter story being played out by the Sun. The pagans, of course, celebrated this time as a festival of light which why we light candle and burn a Yule log to bring warmth. I will be bringing a log home from our Christmas Eve forest walk and doing exactly that, as I do every year. May your holiday season be filled with love, light and warmth.
Happy Yuletide!
Dr Gary Heald
