Saturday was the southern solstice, when the Sun aligns with the Tropic of Capricorn. That’s also known as the Northern Hemisphere winter solstice, or summer solstice for our readers in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
For those of us on the northern side of the globe, we are pointed as far away from the Sun’s rays as we will get — therefore, we’re having the shortest days of the year. The Sun appears to rise and set at the same position on the horizon (sol + stice, the Sun seems to stand still), and if you have not noticed yet, winter begins.
The short days and seeming remoteness of the Sun create what I call a compression effect, which is sensory (fewer hours of sunlight, cloudier days, standard time imposed on us), nutritional (vitamin D starvation, unless you like super chilly nude sunbathing or supplement heavily), plus emotional and psychic, as the Earth reaches an extreme of its annual cycle. The days fly by this time of year even more swiftly than usual. It’s not just because of the holidays.
Despite the cold weather, the Earth is actually closer to the Sun this time of year. This reminds me of Ali G’s interview with Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut who accompanied Neil Armstrong to the Moon the first time people went there in 1969.