Wednesday, Dec. 21 is often referred to as "the shortest day of the year."
Otherwise known as the Winter Solstice, Wednesday’s astronomical event marks the time and place “when the sun is at its absolute lowest point in the sky” in the northern hemisphere.
“Because, you know, the Earth is tilted and as soon as we are tilted at the maximum angle away from the sun, that’s what we define as the Winter Solstice,” Mike Murray of the Delta College Planetarium told WWJ’s Erin Vee on the latest edition of “All Over the Space.”
While the solstice isn’t exactly the same time and date every single year, it tends to fall on Dec. 21 the vast majority of the time.
Murray says that’s partially why so many of our holiday traditions were born.
“The solstice celebrations of long ago, you can find the origins of almost all of our popular holiday celebrations. A lot of the celebrations are around light and lighting candles and wreaths and trees, even bonfires and the yule log,” Murray said. “Almost all have their origins of the winter festivals of long ago that celebrated right around the solstice time.”
He says many of those celebrations “were meant to be very festive and a lot of revelry and lights because it was a celebration of the rebirth, if you will, of the sun” because the sun starts to slowly creep northward again.
Vee says that’s “a positive spin on the fact that it’s cold and I want to stay in my house.”
The pair also talk about the Ursid meteor shower and all the upcoming events at the planetarium, including a Northern Lights show debuting after the New Year.
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