but happy winter solstice! :) Brett and Brian both think it was the 21st, but *I* thought it was the 22nd this year, and when I look online I keep seeing both dates come up, so who the hell knows. But according to timeanddate.com the 21st was apparently the shorter of the two days, at least in the Seattle area: we had 08:25:14 hours of daylight on 12/21, and 08:25:15 hours of daylight on 12/22.
Anyway, Brian sent our whole brood this poem yesterday, and I thought it was nice:
The Shortest Day
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!
So yeah...welcome, yule! He also mentioned that he thought it was kind of depressing, since it's the shortest day and all, and it's so dark and dreary. But what I said was that I'm always happy about winter solstice; it's summer solstice that I find depressing.
Winter solstice means that you've gotten through the worst of it! Sure we still have a few months of stormy darkness and drab gray skies ahead of us, but the days will just get longer and longer from hear on out, until we're finally stuck baking in the summer sun for almost 16 hours a day. :)
The summer solstice falls right around Brett's birthday, so we usually have a pretty big party around that time, and usually it's a BBQ that goes late into the night. It doesn't get dark until after 9pm on those nights, and I love that we can stay outside for so long without getting cold or feeling like it's too late. But that feeling of happiness always makes me remember that the REASON the day is so long is that summer solstice has either just happened, or is about to happen. Which means the long days are going away again. I dig the ups and downs of seasonal changes though, so it's all good.
Besides, the winter holidays rock my socks off. Making/buying presents is hard work, and I'm definitely feeling frazzled after spending the last three weeks doing almost nothing with my waking hours but shopping and making gifts, but it's almost OVER. And I'll finish up my remaining gifts tomorrow, and then I can start catching up on emails, working on art projects for ME, working out again, and (ugh) taking down all the decorations I spent hours putting up. Before we take down our X-mahweenukah decorations though (which I'll post pics of once I'm less busy), we still have one more holiday party to host (for Brett's family), and then we go to Seaside! :D
If there's one thing I like better than (or maybe equal to) giving gifts, it's RECEIVING them. We've already gotten a few (one of which was this bad ass motherfucker of a grill from my ♥Dad♥), but I expect that we'll get more gifts tomorrow, and then on Christmas day, and then when we meet up with some friends next week, and then we'll celebrate our SIXTH ANNIVERSARY (!!!) on Friday and give each other MORE gifts. Sweeet.
If you're stressed out like I've been and you're looking for a fun breather, or even if you're not stressed out and you just like awesome shit, you should check out one of my favorite Christmas specials of all time. It's super cute. Oh yeah, and...HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! :D
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