Re: Since Xmas is looming

In article <proto-2372E7.15531408112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Walter Bushell <proto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <Jr7982.IpL@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

But people living before technology, electric lights, all that,
paid a lot more attention to the sun and stars than moderns do,
and December 22 is the date on which (if you're in the northern
hemisphere) the sun gets to its lowest point in the sky. After
that you wait a couple days till your astronomers tell you that
yes, it is headed back north now, and *then* you celebrate.

Oh, yes. In northern climes, the fear was the Sun was going on a one way
trip.

Just so. Of course, the sun *had* returned every single year
without exception within living memory, but that was no guarantee
it wouldn't decide not to, this year. That's the disadvantage of
seeing the sun as a god, a living thinking entity with a will of
its own, that might suddenly (if not placated by mysterious
rituals) decide to head south and stay there and let you all
freeze.

Which is why the passage at the end of the Noah's Ark story,
"while the earth remaineth, day and night, summer and winter
shall not cease" was probably very comforting at the time: God
himself was *promising* not to retire to South Africa and leave
them in the dark.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

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