Today is the Winter Solstice
Today marks the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. It doesn’t officially begin until 6:03 p.m. Easter Time, 3:03 on the West Coast. Sunrise was at 6:48 a.m. this morning and sunset takes place at 4:47 p.m.
From now until June 21, 2015, the days will start to get longer; sunrises will be earlier and sunsets will get later, until the Northern Hemisphere is pointed at its closest distance to the sun for the Summer Solstice — June 21, 2015.
Some people will celebrate the holiday of Yule, the rebirth of the sun. Most people won’t partake in a weeklong celebration like that of Saturnalia in Ancient Roman times, but people around the world will mark this occasion with feasts.
This is also the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere where, in most parts of this nation, people will endure a winter filled with snow, ice storms and sub-freezing temperatures.
The next seasonal calendar celebration will be the Spring Equinox, March 20, 2015, in which the day and night are both twelve hours long.
Happy Winter Solstice from the Baltimore Post-Examiner.
Baltimore Post-Examiner is run by a creative cadre of dedicated journalists – some who worked at the Washington Post, Baltimore Examiner and other regional and national publications. It’s the Post-Examiner because we love the play on the word “Post” but we are also hoping to answer that question: What’s next after newspapers? We see a lot of websites come and go – and many simply are not making it for various reasons. We have been a model of success since we launched in 2012 with “a little bit of everything” and we aim to continue to break that cycle of websites coming and going.