Most people look forward to December 25th as their favorite day of the year. I totally understand that. However, I realized after having a conversation with my dad the other day that I am pretty excited about December 22nd - it may not beat Christmas, but it's right near the top. December 22nd. What's so special about December 22nd? Here's a list of important events that occurred on this day (thanks, Wiki!):
1937 - Lincoln Tunnel (NYC) opens to traffic
1941 - Winston Churchill arrives to Washington for a wartime conference
1958 - Chipmunk song reaches #1 on the billboards
1962 - 1,000,000th NBA point scored
1965 - "Dr. Zhivago" premieres
1971 - U.S.S.R performs underground nuclear test
1989 - Chad adopts a constitution
1994 - "Christmas Carol" opens at the Rodgers Theater (NYC) for 18 performances
As you can see, this day is pretty important. The reason why I LOVE December 22nd is because Scotland is officially stepping out of the Dark Ages today! That's right folks, now that December 21st - the shortest day of the year - is behind us, we're that much closer to persuading the sun to come back from vacation! I took it upon myself to document its travels from East to West yesterday, so hopefully you'll understand why we're so excited to be past December 21st. That's the real reason why the 22nd is so cool - the dark ages are coming to an end.
I followed the sun from 8:00am to 5:00pm - a normal workday for humans as well as a really, really, REALLY old star. =)
8:00am - First signs of movement from the Sun
9:00am - Taking it slow - the sun wouldn't want to move too fast and do any damage
10:00am - Let's call this a turf war between the sun and the clouds. As is usually the case in confrontations of this nature, the bully always wins!
11:00am - Behold! The sun! Insert "Hallelujah Chorus" here! WOO-HOO!!!
12:00pm - Whatever you do, don't move. If you move at this point, you'll miss the last drops of the sun's rays...
I missed the 1 o'clock picture - but it looked the same as the 12 o'clock picture - I promise.
2:00pm - The sun is not one to linger. People to see (not us), places to go (away from here), things to do (va-cay in Hawaii perhaps?).
3:00pm - If we have to experience an early sunset/dusk at least it's pretty...really pretty.
4:00pm - Sayonara, Sun! Helloooooooooo, Moon!
5:00pm - By far the most depressing hour of the day. My internal clock is ready to stage a revolt if something doesn't change here pretty quick.
Thank heaven for December 22nd. I even woke up earlier to enjoy the four or so extra minutes of sunshine I'll be granted today! Steve and I wish you all the very merriest of Christmases this year - rain or shine, sleet or snow. We hope it's wonderful for you. This post isn't intended as a Christmas card (how depressing would that be?!?!), but Christmas is upon us and we are thinking of you all and hoping your season - not necessarily the weather - is merry and bright!
3 comments:
How clever Kristen! I loved it. It's so depressing how early it gets dark. I remember on my mission tracting and having some old lady tell us it was MUCH too late for us to be out. We'd apologize but what we really wanted to say was, "Are you kidding?? It's 3:30 in the afternoon!"
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!
PS. I think you should do a version of this for the summer.
How did you manage to make the sun passing over head an interesting topic? I was totally enthralled. Thanks for sharing.
dear adams, we are so glad you documented this day. we have been awaiting the solstice as well!
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