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Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

"Twelfth Night ... which for most people in Britain now passes unnoticed"

Nowadays that is when you take the tree and decs down. Times change.

Back in the day, the bleak mid winter was really bleak. The twelve days of Christmas was quite a thing, when not much else could happen in a largely agrarian society. Each day had a name and a meaning and customs which might be followed. At last one involved a Roman style saturnalian role reversal - the lord became the servant and the servant the master. How much of all that stuff would be performed probably varied from area to area, just as modern xmas customs do today (bah humbug)

Nowadays wassailing is all that's left of an old custom and an old way of saying cheers and perhaps also the old English equivalent of the Italian "ciao".

Was hal!

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> Back in the day, the bleak mid winter was really bleak. The twelve days of Christmas was quite a thing

This is what I've never understood. The end of December isn't bleak. And it's not mid-winter -- it's only been winter for a few days.

Bleak mid-winter is the end of January, the start of February. That's when it's bad. That's when it's coldest. That's when people get depressed.

In the snowy northern parts of the world, I've often wished Christmas could be then, to help with people's moods.

Having it at the very start of winter feels like you're wasting all the cheer before we've gotten to the actual bleak mid-winter when you really need it!

As others have said - the days are shortest at this time of year. I live in southern England (Somerset) and we are on the same latitude as Calgary in Alberta. It's relatively warm here thanks to the Gulf Stream.

Around 400-200 years ago there was a little ice age in Europe - https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/56035590 the river Thames iced over several times to the point that fairs happened.

Until recently, the only heating was a fire and then body heat in bed (we are warm blooded after all). You may have experienced a rural cottage, when its time for bed and the fire has run low. You go up to the bedroom. There's rime on the windows and you can see your breath. Your nose shuts down if you try to breath through it. A hot water bottle takes the edge off the cold in the bed. You shiver for quite a while. With luck, you are not alone ...

This year, here, buds started breaking out on trees around 20 Dec 2023. Now, birds are displaying initial nesting behaviour. We have had the wettest, warmest winter for some time.

> Bleak mid-winter is the end of January, the start of February

Perfect timing for ones willpower to sputter out and for New Year's Resolutions to be abandoned. Jan 1 is the worst possible timing to decide to embark on any positive lifestyle change.

Ha, I never thought of that. So true.

New Year's resolutions should be made on the first day of spring -- Mar 19 this year!

It also explains why socks are actually a quite nice gift, as you get them before you'll need them, which historically is the best time, considering the alternative may be to receive them not at all.

In that view, a lump of coal doesn't seem half bad either! I think the focus there is on the miserly portion, not the utility of the gift (or lack thereof). Reading tradition(s) in this way really helps put fictional accounts such as A Christmas Carol and traditional celebrations themselves in a more charitable light.

It's a bit late, but I wish you season's greetings and a happy new year, whenever and however you celebrate, if and when you do.

That's exactly my thinking. Even time to slim down a bit for summer.

I have always understood this to be a compromise between the longest night and the coldest days, sure in late January it is colder, but you can tell that the days are getting longer, the effect is more pronounced the farther north you are, and remember that the southernmost part of the British isles is north of the lower 48

Technically, midwinter is the day of the solstice, which was Dec. 22 in the Northern Hemisphere.

Think about it logically: the solstice represents the shortest day and longest night of the year.

That's the typical modern connotation. It could also mean Christmas Day or Christmastime. Your description is a quite rare meaning indeed.

So this is one of those linguistic paradoxes, where flammable means inflammable, and midwinter is the first day of winter rather than the middle?

Ugh... I hate vocabulary.

The first day of winter very much depends on where you are. I hear that in Ireland it is considered to start around the first of November. The old norse celebrated 3 days of "Winter Nights to usher in its beginning, and the English celebrated Winterfylleth, to much the same end, typically in mid-late October.

It's also worth noting that in the old Germanic calendars, there were considered to be 2, rather than 4 seasons. Summer and Winter.

If you break up the solar year and have the time between the spring and fall equinox as "summer" and the time between fall and spring equinox as "winter", the winter solstice is smack dab in the middle. Worth pointing out though is that Germanic peoples mostly used a lunisolar, rather than purely solar or purely lunar calendar, which is why we rarely see these historical holidays falling directly on such astronomical events.

Think of the year split up between the solstices and it makes sense. The end of December is the most extreme time of winter light, and the end of June of winter light.

If you want your Yule to be a bit closer to then, just observe at a time when the Norse often were more likely to do so: the first full moon, following the first new moon, following the winter solstice.

That happens to fall on January 25 this year -- which seems at least closer to the middle of winter as we currently reckon it.

As for what the Norse were celebrating, it's a bit lost to history. The word yule itself seems mostly just to mean something like festival.

Think George Costanza with a helmet and axe and I think we're good to go.

I think the seasons have shifted -- it used to get colder in December. I agree that for the last few decades December has felt like Fall, but I think 400 years ago it was a mini Ice Age and December was legitimately snowy and wintery. But honestly I'm just speculating.

Seasons have gotten warmer or colder but I don't think they've shifted.

No matter how much colder or snowier it used to be in December, it was that much even worse at the start of February. December has never been "midwinter".

I'm not sure about England, but in Ireland and possibly other Celtic countries, Winter is traditionally taken to be November, December and January, thus Christmas is just slightly past mid-winter.

Traditionally and currently winter in England is December, January and February.

Interesting! From reading up on this, this seems to be "meteorological winter" which makes me think its not an old tradition. I think it's likely that the terms mid-winter and mid-summer come from a Celtic tradition similar to that still observed in Ireland.

The fact that Celtic spring then starts Feb 1 is... well, that's just wild. In Ireland, February's average low temperatures are colder than January's! [1]

But apparently that's indeed the long-standing date for the festival to mark the start of spring [2]. Guess those are some chilly festivities!

[1] https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/ireland/dublin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbolc

In my lifetime the seasons in Ireland were never very distinct. I remember thinking it was odd that spring wasn't much different from winter, and that autumn was often marginally warmer than summer, but living in a continental climate now I can see how the Irish seasons make no sense at all. In the US there tends to be constant mildly cold weather until around the 3rd week in December or so, then it gets noticeably colder. I never experienced that in Ireland.

That's the period between Samhain and Imbolc. That calendar is based on the amount of light. Samhain (Halloween) is the dey halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, and Imbolc is the day halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

In those days the amount of light available was a huge issue and feast days were marked around the days the light shifted, as well as shifts in behaviour. For example the harvest work would traditionally begin the day afer Samhain, halfway between the summer solstice (Midsummer) and the autumn equinox.

I feel that way too, but there are practical aspects. Getting away to visit people can be more challenging in the very depths of winter, while Christmas is generally a bit milder. On the other hand, actual white Christmases would be more common.

It's about light. These days we don't notice this period as bleak because we can turn on lights and continue with our lives, but in the past people would have had fewer practical hours at the time closest to the solstice.

Drinc hail!

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