We're not the only pebble on the beach

In the previous post when I said "I hope your Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, et al was a good one and that the New Year will turn out to be one of your very best ever" I was not purposely overlooking all of the Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists among my vast (yeah, right) reading audience. Never fear, I know you are out there somewhere and if by some chance one of you should run across this post some day, I hasten to add that I omitted your major holidays for a perfectly sound reason: This is December and they occur at other times of the year.

Let's do a little exploring.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Diwali:

"Dipavali (IAST: Dīpāvalī), commonly known as Diwali (/dɪˈwɑːliː/), is the Hindu festival of lights, with variations celebrated in other Indian religions such as Jainism and Sikhism. It symbolises the spiritual victory of Dharma over Adharma, light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. Diwali is celebrated during the Hindu lunisolar months of Ashvin (according to the amanta tradition) and Kārtika – between mid-October and mid-November. The celebrations generally last five or six days.

"Diwali is connected to various religious events, deities and personalities, such as being the day Rama returned to his kingdom in Ayodhya with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana after defeating the demon king Ravana. It is also widely associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, and Ganesha, the god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles. Other regional traditions connect the holiday to Vishnu, Krishna, Durga, Shiva, Kali, Hanuman, Kubera, Yama, Yami, Dhanvantari, or Vishvakarman."

So since Diwalie means festival of lights, is it the Hindi version of Hanukkah? In a word, no.

Moving right along, in Vietnam things get a bit complicated.

According to Wikipedia, "Tết (Vietnamese: [tet̚˧˦], chữ Hán: 節), short for Tết Nguyên Đán (chữ Hán: 節元旦; literally 'Feast of the first day') is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture. Tết celebrates the arrival of spring based on the Vietnamese calendar and usually falls between late January and 20 February in the Gregorian calendar. Tết Nguyên Đán is not to be confused with Tết Trung Thu. "Tết" itself only means festival but it would generally refer to the Lunar New Year in Vietnamese, as it is often seen as the most important festival amongst the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese diaspora, with Tết Trung Thu regarded as the second-most important."

I never knew until just now that Vietnamese folks think Spring begins somewhere between late January and 20 February. Live and learn.

I know so little about other cultures. It is so interesting to be learning about some of them at this late date, by which I mean this late date in my life of 84.75 years, not this late date in 2025.

I don't want to strain your patience or your good will, so a discussion of other holidays such as Eid (which this year occurred back in June) will have to wait until another time.

So there you have it, my 70th post for the year 2025, tying the 70 posts I created in 2024. Back in the good old days of 2012 and 2008 this blog grew by over 200 posts per year.

Maybe it will again, but as my mother used to say, don't hold your breath.

Fast away the old year passes

In other years on this blog, the period between Christmas and the New Year has been devoted to certain esoteric but such intereting (to me) subjects as the music of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards (actually Paul Weston and Jo Stafford), Auld Lang Syne Festivals of my own creation, the highbrow operatic comedy of Anna Russell, and such like. If you have never heard of any of them, they are all at various places in the archives list in the sidebar and with a few strategically placed clicks here and there (concentrating on the months of December in each yer) could be experienced either again or for the first time. It's strictly up to you. I can't do all of the work. I'm old and feeble. You don't have to agree so readily.

This year I'm on a different tack. Having recently discussed herein the effect of the winter solstice on the amount of daylight and darkness at various latitudes on our planet, I was hit with the sudden urge to know just how long a day is on the other planets of our solar system plus Pluto, which used to be considered a planet but has been downgraded by those in the know to dwarf planet status.

So I looked it up.

Into my favorite (British: favourite) search engine I entered the phrase "the length of a day on each planet and Pluto" and with the kind assistance of AI received the following answer almost immediately:

"The length of a day on each planet and Pluto is as follows:

• Mercury: 58.6 Earth days
• Venus: 243 Earth days
• Earth: 23 hours, 56 minutes
• Mars: 24 hours, 37 minutes
• Jupiter: 9 hours, 55 minutes
• Saturn: 10 hours, 33 minutes
• Uranus: 17 hours, 14 minutes
• Neptune: 15 hours, 57 minutes
• Pluto: 6.4 Earth days (6 days, 9 hours, 36 minutes)"

(end of AI's contribution to this post, and with the exception of the rather clunky "is as follows" AI's contribution was, if true, extremely informative)

So now you know. By "length of a day" I meant how long it takes said heavenly body to complete one rotation on its axis. Some of the tilts of planetary axes from vertical are so staggering as to make one's head swim. You can look them up if you are of a mind to. The randomness of our nearest neighbors would seem to indicate that a heavenly toddler was playing with dreidels (a Jewish game using spinning tops for those who don't know) and leaving them scattered about at the end of play time.

The size of a planet and its nearness to or distance from the sun (one astronomical unit (AU) equals 93,000,000 miles) seem to have no effect whatsoever on the planet's characteristics. For instance, Mercury (closest to the sun) and Pluto (farthest from the sun) are approximately the same size but Mercury's day, in round figures, is slightly less than two months and Pluto's day is slightly less than one week. Who knew? A day on Earth lasts from January 1st to January 2nd. A day on Venus, which is almost the same size as Earth, lasts from January 1st to what we would call August 31st. And the largest planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are veritable whirling dervishes. I wonder what centrifugal force feels like on a place so big that spins so fast.

I guess we'll never know, or maybe we (our species collectively) will know long after our generation has shuffled off this mortal coil.

My job here, as always, is to provoke your grey matter into wondering about things on your own and investigating the ramifications thereof to your heart's content.

In other words, my work here is finished.

At least for today.

I'm off to enjoy me some Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, Anna Russell insulting coloratura sopranos ("they have resonance where their brains ought to be"), Kenny G, the young Aretha Franklin, offkey musical saws, and (as Andy Griffith used to say) I don't know wha all, but the possibilities are endless.

One more post in the next five days will put this year's post count at 70, perhaps not as impressive as others (other years, other people) but pretty good for an old, feeble guy if I do say so myself.

I hope your Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, et al was a good one and that the New Year will turn out to be one of your very best ever. We are looking forward to meeting a fourth great-grandchild in 2026.

Peace on earth, goodwill to men.

God knows we could use some.

Today is the winter solstice

...in earth's northern hemisphere and also in the southern hemisphere although it is probably called something else there. Maybe kylie in Sydney will enlighten us.

It is the day with the least amount of daylight all year (the "shortest day") in the northern hemisphere and the day with the most amount of sunlight all year (the "longest day") in the southern hemisphere. It is also the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere and the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere.

Just for the record, sunrise in Canton, Georgia, today occurred at 7:40AM and sunset occurred at 5:32PM, a daylight period of 9 hours, 52 minutes. Because earth's axis is tilted approximately 23 and a half degrees off vertical, sunrise and sunset times vary according to one's latitude on the planet. Since Atlanta is at 33.75 North latitude and Sydney is at 33.87 South latitude, one would expect Sydney's daylght hours to complement Atlanta's daylight hours, adding up to 24 hours, and one would be right. I checked. The sun rose at 5:41AM today in Sydney and it set at 8:06PM, a daylight period of 14 hours, 25 minutes. That Atlanta's daylight and Sydney's daylight on solstice day added together does not equal exactly 24 hours--it equals 24 hours, 17 minutes--can be attributed to minor differences in the two cities' distances above and below the equator. On winter solstice day, everybody north of the Arctic circle experienced 24 hours of darkness, and everybody south of the Antarctic Circle experienced 24 hours of daylight. On summer solstice day in June, the very opposite is true.

These fascinating/boring facts (pick one) have been brought to you by your intrepid correspondent, rhymeswithplague, and there's a lot more where that came from.

PS - I do apologize for ignoring Beethoven's birthday this year.

From the archives: Yes, Virginia, there is a St. Nicholas

...and today, December 6, happens to be the day when people in many places around the world honor him. He looked nothing like the mental image you probably have of his direct descendant, Santa Claus. We have a poem called “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (written in 1823 by either Clement Clark Moore or someone else) and twentieth-century artist Haddon Sundblom’s depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising in 1931 to thank for that. (I would include Sundblom’s picture of your mental image here, Virginia, except that the aforementioned Coca-Cola Company owns the copyright.)

According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, the real St. Nicholas was born around 270 A.D. and died on this date in the year 343 in what is now the country of Turkey. He is the patron saint of sailors, fishermen, merchants, archers, children, the falsely accused, pawnbrokers, thieves, and students in Greece, Belgium, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, the Republic of Macedonia, Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro. He is also the patron saint of several cities, among which are Barranquilla in Colombia, Bari in Italy, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and Beit Jala in the West Bank of Palestine. In 1809, the New York Historical Society convened and named Sancte Claus the patron saint of Nieuw Amsterdam, the Dutch name for New York, so Saint Nicholas could also be considered the patron saint of New York.

Start spreadin’ the news.

To see Wikipedia’s very interesting articles about Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus, click here and here.


[Editor's Note. This post was originally published on December 6, 2007. —RWP]