Happy Winter Solstice

In the northern hemisphere today we celebrate the Winter Solstice; the day where the sun hits the lowest point in the sky, and stays there for a few days. December 25th is the day when the sun begins it's ascent (here in the northern hemisphere), an ascent that takes exactly six months to reach it's apex, on June 21st. The sun hit's the bottom spot on 12/21, has no movement for three days, and is resurrected--eh, returns--on 12/25, a kind of "birthing" day.

A theme that has repeated itself throughout the millennia of human religious thought is that of the death and the return three days later. In today's epoch the "controlling" narrative has split up the resurrection and the 12/25 significance, but we still get to celebrate the 25th. (Go spend money!) I'm ripping off Strong Bad and calling it Decemberween.

But, in any case, it has been posited that this year, 2010, a solstice has occurred on the same day as a total lunar eclipse (in certain areas), and that this is the first time that's happened since 1638.

After work at the night job some of us went up to the top level of the parking garage to check out the show, but a quick moving low-lying foggy business was obstructing the view most of the time. Sporadically an eclipsing moon would show up and we'd cheer, but it was gone as fast as it arrived.

Lunar eclipses happen twice a year, every year, and are the result of the way the moon rotates around the earth. I've seen a few, and they're pretty cool...the moon looks obfuscated, and then, at near total eclipse, it turns red, and stays that way until moving out of the way. The red is the result of the moon reflecting the sun's corona.

Since the "sol" part of the word solstice means "sun", I'd like to leave you with an image on this Winter Solstice of Amaterasu, the Japanese sun god, a lady who's been spooked into hiding by the behavior of her brother, only to emerge and return the day to all the other creatures: