December 21, the winter solstice: truly the longest night there is

It is on the canonical day, December 21, which falls, in 2020, the winter solstice. The whole period is the most magical of the year: even the ancients, well before Santa Claus arrived, considered it sacred because it was the bearer of the new season. The time of the solstice is at 11.02 on this Monday.

TO DATE
It is not always the 21st on the day of the solstice, it varies from year to year. It depends on the 5 hours and 49 minutes that make the difference between thecalendar year and that which establishes the custom of the calendar.

The sum leads to a leap year every 4th and solstices and equinoxes do not always fall on the 21st of the month.

The solstice is not a day, but a moment, the one in which the sun is at the maximum angular distance from the plane of the equator. This means winter in the Northern Hemisphere and fewer hours of light, summer in the South with longer days thanks to the maximum irradiation of the sun. For the northern hemisphere it is the shortest day (therefore the longest night that is not that of Saint Lucia, 13 December), but also the moment when the days start to lengthen and the sun begins to rise again towards the equator heavenly.

SOLSTICE
The definition reported by the Treccani encyclopedia says that it is each of the two instants during the solar year in which the Sun reaches its maximum declination. In summer (June 21) the Sun has its maximum height in the northern hemisphere and its lowest in the southern hemisphere; vice versa in winter (21 December). The word comes from the Latin the anchorage, sun and stop.

ANCIENT
The solstices have always been considered sacred moments. Since prehistoric times, the meaning of the triumph of light over darkness has been attributed to the winter solstice. It was just the winter solstice of 2012 what according to the Mayan calendar it would have brought an epochal change (which however did not happen). In ancient times, the birth of the god Mithras was celebrated, the Sol invictus, from which the date of Christmas could also derive. In ancient Rome these were the days of the Saturnalia, parties in which the roles between rich and poor were reversed. Social classes were temporarily abolished. In Scandinavia there was also the Juul festival: fires were lit on the winter solstice.