It has been a busy week. Last holiday shopping and shutting down the government.

It has been looking tired, and probably needs a break. There were other events in the strife and chaos in The Swamp. Prison Reform and the Farm Bill were passed by the Congress and signed by the President, who in his spare time also decided to pull US forces out of Syria and easing out Jim Mattis as SECDEF.

Busy, busy, busy.

It looks like there are not enough votes to pass (another!) Continuing Resolution to keep the Government open over the holidays, so I expect much of our fractious legislative branch will attempt to head out for home around the time Winter arrives. That will be shortly after 2:00 PM, EST. The solstice marks the shortest day of the year. More on that in a minute, but safe to say, from here out there will be more light until Spring arrives.

(Stonehenge in Snow. Picture courtesy Paul Robinson via BBC).

I always irritate Old Jim at the Amen Corner at Willow when this happens each year. It goes like this: I note the arrival of the Winter Solstice. Jim doesn’t have a problem with orbital mechanics or any of that, he just is precise in his grammar. When I would start out with noting it is the “shortest day of the year” he fulminates that it is not the shortest day of anything.
“The Winter Solstice is the day when there is less daylight and more darkness!” he says with authority. “the Days are always the sam length!” Of course he is completely correct, though even the Wiki makes the same mistake. Jim is a stickler for precision, and I don’t blame him.

See, the axial tilt of the globe and the gyroscopic effect of the earth’s rotation keep the axis of rotation pointed at the same point in the heavens. As the Earth follows the orbit around the Solar giant the same hemisphere that faced away from the Sun, experiencing winter, will, in only half a year, face towards the Sun and experience summer.

As this solstice arrives, I can’t believe Jim is gone, and the happy place where Willow provided such merriment is still vacant after two years. I drove by to check yesterday. Still empty.

So after cocktail hour tonight we start that long march back into the sunlight and warmth, which coincidentally is the reason for the season. It is, of course, also about the birth of the Christ Child, even if there is some controversy over whether the Savior was actually born on the 25th of December.

(Emperor Constantine on a good day. Photo courtesy digitalapoptosis.com).

That day was not selected for the observance until 336 AD (I am not going to dignify that “CE” nonsense) in the time of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor. It happened to coincide with the pagan mid-winter festivities the human animal requires to steel itself against the cold and dark, and the “Saturnalia” and “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti” (Literally, “the birthday of the unconquered sun”) and I will let you draw your own conclusions.

I am not one of those to bash the Christian Faith when there are so many others that need a good reformation, so I will leave it at that.. The wreath is up. I am ready.

Merry Christmas!
Copyright 2018 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com