Did You Miss the Winter Solstice?

Stylized picture of the sun setting over mountains above snowy pine forestI did. A mention on the radio towards the end of the day brought it to mind. It used to be that I would really look forward to Dec. 21 as the day when we’d start gaining instead of losing daylight. This attitude was especially true back when I was working full time. It was so depressing to drive home in the dark! You don’t have to participate in some kind of pagan ritual to take note of this day and to celebrate it in some small way, even if it’s only to remind yourself of its significance and to start noticing the earlier and earlier time of sunrise and the later and later time of sunset.

I wrote about Garry Kasparov’s book on Vladimir Putin yesterday, and what he said about winners and losers also applies, in a sense, to the idea of the solstice. The minute you win, you start losing. The minute you lose, you start working to win. So it is with the two solstices: the summer solstice, June 21, is the longest day of the year, so where do you go from there? Only towards the darkness of winter. In the midst of winter, though, you hit that longest, darkest day–and there’s no place to go but up, nowhere to go but spring.

And isn’t the illustration for today’s post seriously cool? I get my images for the most part from a site called Pixabay. Their images are totally free. (You do have to be sure you don’t click on the images marked “sponsored images,” which are from a company named Shutterstock, I’m guessing a parent company. You do have to pay for those. I got the image for this website’s header from Shutterstock.) If you need images for a website or other application, give them a try.

​And pay attention to the seasons!

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