Christmas Decorations?

  • Thread starter Thread starter milefile
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Actually, what we celebrate is the true holiday behind Christmas - the Winter Solstice, which falls this year on December 21, at 8:15 PM EST. For convenience sake (since we both get it as a free holiday from work, and the kids are off school as well) we have the actual party on December 25th, which also happens to be Isaac Newton's birthday.
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
Bah, Christmas has nothing to do with Christ anymore.
Click to expand...

I was just telling my wife, since niether of us are Christian, that we really do more of a Winter Celebration. The old Germanic tradition of the Solstice, the symbolism of the evergreen tree, etc. Yeah. It's really more a Winterfest for me, too. A celebration of life when everything seems dead.
 
Well, I know Dec. 25th was a god's/goddesse's birthday, "Mithra." I do not know how well that is connected to the solstice. I think Mithra was a Greek/Roman (or is it Greco-Roman?) or Persian deity. Is the Solstice Celtic or part of the other two?
 
Btw, if you really are a fan of the physics god, you should give him his proper title. I believe he's a Sir.
 
Correct. Numerous ancient peoples around the world had Solstice celebrations. Celtic and pre-Celtic people in the British Isles marked the time of the year in a number of ways. Opinions differ on exactly why and how, but Stonehenge among other stone circles can be used as a kind of astronomical calendar to mark the Solstices and Equinoxes (I believe) by charting where the sun shines through particular places and casts particular shadows.
 
More decorations...

Last night we made some candy cane candles. Man the whole house smells like a candy cane. But I mean that in a good way.
 
Heh, they were a helluva lot closer to it thousands of years ago than they were, say, 500 years ago...
 
Originally posted by Klostrophobic
Bah, Christmas has nothing to do with Christ anymore.
Click to expand...


True, true.

I thought some clever bod somewhere had worked out Christ was born in Febuary but the church "moved" Christmas to December to sod up winter solstice? Being the kind of guy he was though i don't think old JC would have minded too much. But there have been a number of different calenders used ove the last couple of millenia so i suppose record keeping would be a bit hit or miss. Certainly the Roman calendar only had 10 months in it at one point. I think it was changed when people got sick of the seasons not conforming with dates.
 
Well, the Roman calendar was actually pretty accurate, with September, October, November, and December as months 7, 8, 9, and 10. The extra months were actually added by Roman emperors who wanted to have their own months. That also drives the fact that some months have 30 days and some have 31, with poor February getting ripped. You are correct in that the extra 6 hours a year did push the seasons to different months over time. That was corrected by the Gregorian calendar I believe, which inserted the Leap Year day to make sure that drift was minimized.
 
Yeah i think that's it, school was a number of years back....


Isn't a day actually 23 hours 56 minutes long or something? Which is why it all happens?
 
Funny how humans find it easiest to divide everything by tens. Ones and tens are the foundation of mathematics. But in nature it is to be found nowhere. And if it can be mathematically interpreted at all, three is the number most represented, or pi.

Hmmm... what if we have it all wrong and pi actually is three?

The current calendar works nice because it aligns with lunar cycles better than a ten month calendar.

The history of (the measurement of) time is a fascinating topic.
 
Slip, the day is actually 24 hours long within milliseconds. The problem is that a year is a little over 6 hours longer than 365 even days.

milefile, it is very interesting. Smithsonian did an great article on this about a year ago.
 
There is also a book called The Seven Day Circle (or maybe Cycle ) by an Anthropologist named Zarabuvel. That's where most of my knowledge on the subject came from.
 
i remember seeing a link on this site to a site that had the history of time measurment and all that great stuff. now where the hell was it?
 

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