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The days have been getting shorter for months, and now we've finally reached the winter solstice, which means it is the shortest day of the year.
The solstice marks the moment the sun shines at its most southern point, directly over the Tropic of Capricorn.
It been celebrated by pagans for thousands of years, and many of the traditions now associated with Christmas had their roots in winter solstice celebrations - including the Christmas tree.
(Image: Getty)
The world might look pretty grim now, but remember: as soon as the solstice has passed, the days will start getting longer again and you can start looking forward to Spring.
Here's your guide to the darkest day of the year - and a few reasons to be cheerful about it.
What is the winter solstice?
The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the official beginning of winter.
The solstice itself is the moment the sun is shining farthest to the south, directly over the Tropic of Capricorn.
(Image: PA)
When is the Winter Solstice?
The date of the winter solstice is different every year, falling between December 20th and 23rd.
This year, the solstice is on Thursday, December 21. The sun will rise in the UK at 08:03 GMT and set at 15:53 GMT, giving just 7 hours and 50 minutes of daylight.
Traditions and rituals
The winter solstice is a major pagan festival, with rituals of rebirth having been celebrated for thousands of years.
Every year revellers gather at Stonehenge to watch the sunrise on the shortest day.
(Image: PA)
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Many of the traditions we now think of as being part of Christmas - including Yule logs, mistletoe and Christmas trees - have their roots in the pagan celebrations of winter solstice.
Wait, the Christmas tree was originally a winter solstice tree?
Sort of. The Druids - the priests of the ancient Celts - used evergreen trees , holly and mistletoe as symbols of everlasting life during winter solstice rituals.
Cutting them down and putting them in their homes would have been too destructive to nature.
But when Saint Boniface, also known as Winfrith of Crediton, found a group of pagans worshipping an oak tree in 8th Century Germany, he cut the tree down.
Some say he then planted a fir tree on the spot after the pagans converted - others that a fir tree sprang up on the spot.
Myth has it the converted pagans in the region returned the following year to decorate the fir tree.
Will the days start getting longer again?
Yes. After the solstice, the days will gradually get longer until the summer solstice on Thursday, 21 June 2018.
Google doodle
Google has created one of its special doodles, to mark the shortest day of the year.
It depicts a mouse ice skating on a frozen lake before falling into a snow drift.
The mouse then rolls into its burrow covered in snow, before shaking its off and scampering down a tunnel.
(CNN) Thursday is the winter solstice -- the shortest day of 2017.
December 21 also marks the first day of astronomical winter -- although meteorological winter began December 1. In the Northern Hemisphere, where most of the world's population lives, the winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night.
The good news for sunlight seeking Northern Hemisphere natives is that the days start getting longer beginning Friday -- and they can start counting down to spring.
It's the shortest day of the year because, during the winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun and the sun's position is at its most southerly point, directly over the Tropic of Capricorn -- right across the middle of Australia.
Solstice celebrations
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View Images Revellers gather at Stonehenge to see the sun rise as part of a winter solstice ceremony in 2015.
Photograph by Matt Cardy, Getty Images
Shortening days and falling temperatures are heralding the arrival of winter across the Northern Hemisphere.
This year, the northern winter solstice falls on December 21 at 11:28 a.m. ET. The solstice happens at the same moment around the world, though its local time depends on which of the 24 times zones you call home. And south of the Equator, the December solstice marks the onset of summer.
What is a Solstice? What is the definition of a solstice, and when do they happen? Is the winter solstice always the first day of winter? Find out what causes these bi-annual astronomical events, as well as how they bring about the shortest and longest days of the year.
For people in the north, is the year's shortest day also the official beginning of winter? Why does the solstice occur anyway, and how have people observed it over the ages? Read on for everything you need to know about the December solstice.
When Is the First Day of Winter?
The reason for the solstice—and the seasons—is that Earth is tilted with respect to the sun at an average of 23.5 degrees. This means the Northern and Southern Hemispheres receive unequal amounts of sunlight over a year as we orbit our star.
Each hemisphere cools down during the part of the year it's tilted away from the sun. The winter solstice (December in the north, June in the south) arrives at the time when that tilt is at its most extreme angle.
This astronomical event appears on calendars as the first day of winter—but meteorologists have already gotten a head start on the season. By the time the solstice rolls around, climate scientists have been observing winter for nearly a month, says Greg Hammer of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.
“Meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere is always the months of December, January, and February, because those tend to be the coldest months of the year,” he says. “It's entirely based on the annual temperature cycle, rather than astronomically based.”
Considering sunlight's enormous influence on Earth's climate, why isn't the darkest part of the year also the coldest?
“Basically, it takes a while for water and landmasses to cool down from all the heat they have absorbed” during summer, Hammer says. “So, the minimum of daylight isn't followed by the coldest temperatures until about a month later. It varies from place to place, but around the third week in January tends to have the coldest temperatures of the year for most of the U.S.”
Meteorological winter more closely mirrors our civic calendars and the way most people actually think about the seasons, Hammer adds. “We think of winter being the coldest time and summer being the warmest time, with spring and fall being transitions.”
And for climate scientists, following meteorological winter offers important simplicity: “It just makes it easier in terms of calculating statistics and making comparisons from one season to another,” Hammer says. “The timing of the solstice can vary a bit. This way, we are comparing apples to apples when speaking seasonally, like noting that a certain winter was the coldest on record in a certain area.”
Earliest Sunset? Not on the Solstice.
Most of us see the year's earliest sunset a week or two before the solstice. That’s because the sun and our human clocks don't keep exactly the same time.
We've organized our days into 24-hour segments, but Earth doesn't spin on its axis that precisely. While the time from noon to noon is always exactly 24 hours, the time varies between solar noons, the moment each day when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. As we move through the year, the chronological time of solar noon shifts seasonally—and so do each day's sunrises and sunsets.
During December, solar noons can happen some 30 seconds after we would mark a 24-hour cycle. While the shortest amount of total daylight falls on the solstice, that day's sunset is actually a few minutes later on our clocks than it was earlier in the month.
In Washington, D.C., for example, sunset on the solstice will be at 4:49 p.m. ET—four minutes later than it was back on December 9.
Closer to the Equator, the year's earliest sunset occurs in November. To see it coincide more closely with the solstice, simply head toward the Arctic. Seasonal shifts in the sun's path across the sky are most extreme closer to the Poles, which makes sunset times at high latitudes match the solstice schedule more closely.
Can I See the Solstice?
It is possible to see the effects of the solstice by noting what happens in the skies overhead, as well as the changes in sunlight over time.
For viewers in the north, the sun's arc across the sky has been steadily dropping lower and becoming shorter since June. At the northern winter solstice, it reaches its lowest possible arc—so low that in the few days surrounding the solstice, it appears to rise and set in the same place. That phenomenon produced the Latin origins of the word “solstice,” which means “sun stands still.”
The sun's low angle means that your noontime shadow is the longest it will be for the entire year during the winter solstice.
Ancient Solstice Sites
In the ancient world, people built a number of monuments to commemorate the solstice. One example is Newgrange, a huge Stone Age tomb mound built in the Irish countryside around 3200 B.C., about a thousand years before Stonehenge. A tunnel facing the solstice sunrise runs to a main chamber, where the dead may have once been placed. A small window bathes the chamber in solstice light for 17 minutes
The Paracas people of Peru, who lived around 800 to 100 B.C., crisscrossed the desert with lines of earth and rock called geoglyphs that connect ceremonial mounds with the place where the winter solstice sun sets on the horizon. The famed Nasca Lines—awe-inspiring monkeys, lizards, and other giant figures etched into the earth by a subsequent Peruvian culture around A.D. 1 to 700—also feature alignments with the winter solstice.
Ancient Egypt's sprawling Temple of Karnak was constructed in alignment with the winter solstice at Luxor more than 4,000 years ago. Similar alignments can be seen at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Machu Picchu in Peru.
Christmas Connection?
For more than two billion Christians, the solstice has long been overshadowed by Christmas. But to historian David Gwynn of the University of London, the proximity of the two events may not be an accident.
According to Gwynn, one theory holds that Christmas was set on December 25 to replace a Roman holiday, which had roots in the pagan cult of Sol Invictus (“the unconquered sun”).
Other solstice traditions color today's winter holiday celebrations. Scandinavians once celebrated Juul, or Yule, a multiday feast marking the sun god's return. In Britain, Druids observed the solstice by cutting mistletoe.
Some ancient solstice celebrations continue in the present day. Iran's Yalda festival marks the day when Mithra, an angel of light, was thought to have been born. The tradition was adopted into Zoroastrianism and is still observed by staying up late and savoring treats like watermelon and pomegranate.
GETTY - STOCK IMAGE Winter Solstice 2017 is on December 21
The annual pagan celebration, also known as midwinter, signifies the astrological start of the winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It usually occurs on or around the December 21 of each year. The winter solstice takes place when the sun reaches its most southern point over the Tropic of Cancer, which is one of main lines of latitude around the Earth. The opposite is true in the Southern Hemisphere where the day is long because the sun will be at its highest point in the sky today.
Why is today the shortest day of the year? Unlike our ancestors, we know the astronomical phenomenon not to do with our distance from the sun but the tilt of the earth and how it orbits around the sun. Earth has a tilt of about 23.5 degrees and as it moves around the Sun, the Northern and Southern hemispheres face opposite directions. This affects how much warmth and light different places get. On winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is leaning the most away from the sun meaning it receives the least amount of possible daylight hours and the longest night.
When is the shortest day of the year? Today is the shortest day with seven hours and 50 minutes of daylight. Sunrise was at 8.03am GMT and sunset is at 3.53pm. While the cold weather will remain going forward, you should start to notice the days will be longer after December 21. There may be other subtle changes that you see today during winter solstice, according to astronomical website EarthSky. EarthSky said: “You might notice how low the sun appears in the sky at local noon. And be sure to look at your noontime shadow. Around the time of the December solstice, it’s your longest noontime shadow of the year.”
GETTY - STOCK IMAGE Winter Solstice 2017: There will be seven hours and 50 minutes of daylight today
