Winter Solstice In Massachusetts: Shortest Day Of The Year

We've likely got a few more snowstorms to go and Christmas is still days away, but our long trek toward spring starts today. Thursday, Dec. 21, is the winter solstice, meaning its the shortest day of the year. Every day until the summer solstice on June 21 will see more and more sunlight.

That's an encouraging thought since Thursday's sunset will be at 4:14 p.m. in Boston, more than four hours earlier than what the sunset will be on June 21. We'll be getting less than 9 and a half hours of sun today.

We may be saying goodbye to obnoxiously early sunsets sooner than later. A state commission has recommended the switch to do away with daylight savings time and convert to Atlantic Standard Time.

The exact moment of the winter solstice Thursday will be 11:28 a.m., when the sun's rays will reach their southernmost point below the equator. What's cool about today is you'll be growing ... sort of. Your noontime shadow will be the longest of the year.

There's also a ton of cool solstice celebrations today. Dunkin' Donuts, for instance, is teaming up with Wormtown Brewery to launch DDark Roasted Brew. The beer's release is being timed to coincide exactly with the winter solstice at 11:28 a.m. Thursday.

If you really want to celebrate, maybe you can have a couple DDark Roasted Brew's before heading to Amherst to watch the sunset at the UMass Sunwheel at 3:30 p.m.

Some may head to Concord for the Musketaquid Arts & Environment celebration. It's free and open to the public, celebrating the longest night of the year carols and s'mores folk songs.

You can also go to Marshfield and take an evening hike up Hoyt-Hall Preserve, take a hayride in Plymouth, head over to Andover for a solstice stroll, or any other events nearby towns may be putting on.

Here are five things to know about the winter solstice:

1. The winter solstice is the oldest known winter celebration. In ancient times, it was both spiritually and scientifically important and marked the changing of the seasons. The best place in the world to observe the winter solstice is at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, believed to have been erected by ancient Celtic druids to line up the exact position of the sunset on the winter solstice.

2. The winter solstice may explain why Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus in December. The Bible isn't specific about when Jesus was born, and some people believe Dec. 25 may have been selected as the date of Christ's birth by Pope Julius I to replace the ancient pagan Roman midwinter festival called "Saturnalia" with a Christian holiday.

The late Harry Yeide, who taught religion at George Washington University for nearly 50 years and died in 2013, once told National Geographic that as the Christmas celebration moved west, "the date that had been used to celebrate the winter solstice became sort of available for conversion to the observance of Christmas."
Several of the rituals associated with Christmas — dinner feasts, gift-giving and decorative wreaths, for example — are rooted in pagan winter solstice rituals.

3. The earliest sunsets and latest sunrises don't occur on the winter solstice. It seems counterintuitive, but as Earthsky.org explains it, the key is understanding solar noon, the time of day the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. In early December, true solar noon occurs 10 minutes earlier on the clock than it does at the solstice. When true noon occurs later on the solstice, so do the sunrise and sunset times.

"It's this discrepancy between clock time and sun time that causes the Northern Hemisphere's earliest sunset and the Southern Hemisphere's earliest sunrise to precede the December solstice," Earthsky.org says. "The discrepancy occurs primarily because of the tilt of the Earth's axis. A secondary but another contributing factor to this discrepancy between clock noon and sun noon comes from the Earth's elliptical — oblong — orbit around the sun.

"The Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, and when we're closest to the sun, our world moves fastest in orbit. Our closest point to the sun — or perihelion – comes in early January. So we are moving fastest in orbit around now, slightly faster than our average speed of about 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) per second. The discrepancy between sun time and clock time is greater around the December solstice than the June solstice because we're nearer the sun at this time of year."

4. 'Tis the season for freaky long shadows. Because the sun is at its lowest arc across the horizon, it will cast long shadows. Shadows at noontime on the day of the solstice will be the longest of the year.

5. Full moons and the winter solstice rarely align. The Old Farmer's Almanac said that since it began tracking heavenly events and seasonal changes in 1793, a winter solstice full moon has occurred only 10 times. The next time it will happen is in 2094

Partially reported by Beth Dalbey/Patch National Staff

Photo by Hassan Maayiz on Unsplash