this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Here’s the issue I have. The Winter solstice (Dec 22nd) marks the start of Winter. Christmas is 3 days later, yet people expect it to be in the middle of winter, so people keep trying to move the season up. Realistically they should be trying to celebrate it in late January rather than pushing it back into Autumn. But they had to go and steal Yule and then keep wanting more time.
Only true in some places. It's not a universal fact. Lots of places don't even have winter. Yet, Christmas is still celebrated. You're making arguments about Christmas everywhere based on your own location's individual climate.
wtf are you on about? The Winter Solstice is very much a verifiable fact (it’s actually the 21st so I was a day off) and marks the start of Winter in the northern hemisphere. Christmas is usually (I say usually so you can’t be pedantic about the minority outliers) celebrated on December 25th. That’s still only a few days after the solstice like I was saying.
This comic is talking about the Christmas season, creeping into Halloween and fall festivities, which is very much true in the northern hemisphere. I see your on an NZ instance which, yes the seasons are flipped there, but don’t go getting butt hurt if you can’t read context clues from the comic just because it doesn’t line up with you.
I just want to point out that "the solstice marks the start of the season" is not a universal fact. Here in Aus, we mark the start of summer as 1 December, and so if I were to take my perspective and apply it to the northern hemisphere, I would say that for you, Christmas is about a third of the way through winter.
The difference here is technically referred to as "meteorological" vs "astronomical" seasons. I've always thought meteorological seasons make far more sense because they much better reflect reality. Winter is defined by cold weather and short days. The winter solstice is already very cold and it has the shortest day. It is absurd to put the shortest day at the very beginning of winter. If you wanted to have an astronomically-based calendar, the solstice should mark the very midpoint of winter, with the season starting precisely halfway between then and the autumnal equinox.
But also, as the other user mentioned, some places have entirely different season systems. Seasons are, fundamentally, a human creation. The notion that weather patterns change throughout the year is a universal fact, but what we call those changes and how many categories we separate it into is human. Many cultures have their own systems with more or different seasons. Many tropical areas have traditionally only observed "wet" (or monsoon) and "dry" seasons. In ancient Egypt, the flooding of the Nile marked an important seasonal change. And South Asia uses a variety of different 6-season systems, such as the Hindu, Bengali, and Tamil calendars.
It sounds like you and drag agree that the winter solstice is only in December in the Northern hemisphere. You've taken on drag's correction and understood drag's point. Thank you for being so reasonable and open minded.
Drag would also like to clarify that the winter solstice does not mark the start of winter in climates that don't have winter. For example, in places that have a six season calendar.