Happy Solstice, everyone!
I used to avoid celebrating the solstice, such is my disdain for the larping idiots who gather at Stonehenge every year. Well, ha!ha! they couldn’t do it this year, but you can watch sunrise at Stonehenge via English Heritage’s live stream. Spoiler: this is England. It’s completely clouded over. Go watch dark gray turn light gray, if you like.
I am told the Egyptian Temple of Karnak was built with a solstice alignment, as were some of the towers in Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In Peru, the Temple of the Sun in Machu Picchu has a window that the sun shines through on this day, illuminating a ceremonial stone.
The Roman Saturnalia was a solstice party, and how.
The Chinese have the Dongzhi Festival which, like most Chinese celebrations, revolves around food. Here I took a detour and looked up multiple recipes for glutinous rice balls or tang yuan. I made myself hungry.
In dusty places like Iran and Afghanistan, they have Shab e Yalda, the birth of Winter, on this day. They traditionally eat fresh fruit and think of Summer.
So have an extra helping of gruel tonight! The days are getting longer!
And where did I find this list of holiday delights? Oprah Magazine, of course. I’m not proud.
Posted: December 21st, 2020 under holidays.
Comments: 7
Comments
Comment from Uncle Al
Time: December 21, 2020, 7:07 pm
If we eschew activities in which idiots participate, there would be nothing left to do. Idiots are everywhere, dammit.
Comment from BJM
Time: December 21, 2020, 9:05 pm
The 2020 great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest since 1623 and the closest observable since 1226!
Ace has a pix up of a past conjunction over an ancient stone in Mitchell’s Fold which is um…suggestive.
Also the last meteor shower of 2020..so of course the Central Valley is fogged in solid.
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: December 21, 2020, 9:55 pm
Son #2 – defense contractor drone, informed me a government employee he has to interact with informed HIM that Christmas (Solstice) was “stolen” from the “pagans” by the Christians.
This ‘government employee’ it turns out is Wiccan ‘pagan’. A religion of long standing and tradition full of historical richness and truth, since it was created
a few decades before Kwanza was.
I have to tell you, I’m going to enjoy watching these people get everything they voted for (and forced on us with their no fraud robovoting), even if I have to ride the same leaky socialist ferryboat across the Styx into Hades with them to do it.
Comment from dissent
Time: December 22, 2020, 4:22 am
Had a decent view of the Jupiter Saturn conjunction yesterday. Pretty cool. But it’s been cloudy for weeks before this and looks like that was my only chance to see it myself.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 22, 2020, 1:48 pm
Oh, yeah. No chance for us. Cloudy as hell, as usual. Uncle B tried seeing the conjunction the day before, which was a little clearer, but there’s a hill in the way in the direction I think we were supposed to look.
Comment from BJM
Time: December 22, 2020, 4:55 pm
@Durned…yep they will run out of OPM right quick…then we shall see which chickens come home to roost.
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