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Happy Solsthelion! It's not the best portmanteau though as it's taken the 'sun' part of both its donor words. Happy Peristice!
Came here with the same reflection. Also the article doesn’t mention how Solsthelion is supposed to be pronounced, and I guess most English speaker meeting the word in the wild would more likely pronounce th as /ð/.
Happy Peristice is also close to apéritif, which is great for a celebration solicitation.
"Sols, the lion" is all I'm getting out of my mind meat :(
Solst-Helion is what the author was going for, I think, but I saw what you did too, lol.
Related, as solstice has latin roots and perihelium greek: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_word
The section with english examples looks especially interesting.
Problem with "Peristice" is that the Solstice comes a couple of weeks before the Perihelion, so it "should" be in the order:
Solstice -> Perihelion.
Also, "Peristice" is a bit close (for me) to "Peristalsis" ...
Ah, that does taint it a bit.
Truly a perineal problem.
Peristice is much, much better. And helps me learn which one peri- is.
Unfortunately, perihelion is not a good name for the point on the orbit that is closest to the Sun, which also makes "peristice" mostly meaningless, even if much better than "solsthelion".
Peri- means "around" (like in "perimeter" or "periphery", where the Latin translation of "periphery" is "circumference", or in "periscope", which means "look around"), which does not suggest much in terms of distance. For instance, both the Earth and Neptune move "around" the Sun, but at vastly different distances.
Apohelion for the most distant point on the orbit is a better name, because apo- means "away", but it still not the best, because "away" refers to direction of movement towards exterior, and not to the distance from the center. A body can be moving away, but still be very close to the center.
The Greek prefixes meaning "close" and "distant" are "anchi-" and "tele-" (first "e" is long). Therefore much more appropriate names would have been "anchihelion" and "telehelion", for the closest and for the most distant points on the orbit. The prefixes "anchi-" and "tele-" have already been used in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer, e.g. for "close combat" (like with swords) and "distant combat" (like with arrows).
"Solstice" is a better name, because "-stice" is cognate with "stay" (and with "stand"), and it refers to the fact that during a solstice the apparent movement of the Sun on the sky has a minimum speed, it almost stays in one place. So, for the time interval when the Sun both has a minimum speed of the apparent motion on the sky and is at a minimum distance from us, a term more correct etymologically would have been "anchistice", which is still not optimal, because it combines a Greek prefix with a Latin suffix. Translating "anchi-" into Latin would result in "propistice" (approximately meaning "staying close").
Peri for close and Ap for far is the existing terminology, and has been since Kepler, who in turn created them following a pattern set by Ptolemy in the Almagest (apogee and perigee are simply transcriptions).
So you are somewhere between 400 to 1800 years late to this terminology fight.
Peri- for close and Apo- for far is not the existing terminology, in any other words except the derivatives of "perigee" and "apogee". You do not say apovision and apophone, you say television and telephone.
The fact that "perigee" and "apogee" have been used for the first time with this meaning by Ptolemy, who was a native Greek speaker (but of Koine, not of classical Greek), is not enough to ensure that they have been good word choices and that they have been used properly, conforming to how they were used by the majority of Greek speakers. For any language there are many native speakers that have poor knowledge about their own language.
The words "perigee" and "apogee" have not been coined by Ptolemy, but they were Greek words that have been in use for about a half of millennium before Ptolemy. For example "apogee" has already been used by Aristotle.
At the authors from before Ptolemy, both "perigee" and "apogee" had been used with their correct expected meanings, i.e. the former as an adjective for things that go around the world and the latter as an adjective for things that go away from the ground.
Ptolemy has been lazy and instead of creating a new pair of compound words, well chosen to express in the clearest way their intended meaning (i.e. closest and farthest), he has just repurposed two existing words, giving to them new meanings that were inconsistent with the original meanings of their prefixes.
Moreover, the guilt is not entirely of Ptolemy, because he had not defined "perigee" and "apogee" with the current meaning, because his planetary model did not contain elliptic orbits where there are 2 well defined extreme points. Ptolemy has used "perigee" and "apogee" in a more vague sense, of regions close or distant to Earth, where a region where something goes around the Earth was understood to be close to Earth and a region that can be reached by going away from Earth was understood to be distant from Earth. Only after Kepler, when "perigee" and "apogee" have been redefined as extreme points of an orbit, their original Greek meanings have become completely inconsistent with their modern definitions.
A television is not a point on an orbit, but an apogee is.
But anyway, you have clearly decided what hill to die on, and who am I to kink-shame.
It's never too late for a true quibbler to correct the record.
According to my etymology source, perihelion came out in the 1680s, so it's closer to 350 years, not 400
Kepler coined "perihelium" as latin for "point of an orbit closest to the sun" and published it his 1609 book "Astronomia nova aitiologetos", so insisting on 1680 because that's when the spelling with "on" at the end arose is some real pedantic quibbling.
Surely it's more tempting to go for "it should be 415" is more tempting?
I agree that perihelion is a bad name (or that's my excuse for never remembering which it is) but given perihelion exists, peristice is a better name.
The second 'sun' part is just making up for the years where it doesn't occur on a Sunday.
Yeah ... 'Happy Sun-sun' is a bit wtf. 'Happy Closest-standing' at least alludes to why the time is special. BUT, has lost its stellar significance. Periheliostice? Solperistice? Northern Kiss?
Well, at least "closest-standing" is suggesting the event is related to something. Ellipsis is a perfectly sound process when it eludes the appropriate elements out of the explicitly uttered expression.
Amusing, but the entire point of a greeting at this time of year is based on a particular culture and history. Its not purely astronomical, and its significance is reversed in northern and southern hemispheres and is not all that relevant in the tropics.
While what you say is true now, in the distant past in all the cultures that had celebrations or holidays around this time of the year their origin had been purely astronomical, in celebrations of the Winter Solstice.
The reinterpretations of the Solstice celebrations to fit in various religions and the shift in the calendar from the true astronomical event have occurred much later.
By the time of Julius Cesar, after his calendar reform, the Winter Solstice occurred on the 25th of December, which is the reason for having Christmas on this day. The reason why Christmas is now shifted by 3 days from the solstice is that the Gregorian calendar reform has not restored the calendar of the time corresponding to the start of the Christian era, but the calendar of the 4th century (when the procedure for selecting the date for Easter has been established), and the calendar of the 4th century was shifted by these 3 days.
Before Julius Cesar, the Roman calendar shifted a lot from year to year in comparison with the astronomical calendar. It is likely that when first established, the 1st of March (their New Year) of the Roman calendar occurred on the Spring Equinox, but then it has drifted a lot. After the Julian calendar reform, the solstices and equinoxes occurred around the 25th of their months, then they have drifted away until the Gregorian reform has set them around the 22th of their months.
The history of greetings currently used in certain cultures rather proves the point that such things are dependent on culture and history.
I also doubt it was ever purely astronomical. Holidays would have happened because a lot of normal activity would have slowed or stopped in pre-industrial societies, and celebrations would have depended on what their traditions and beliefs about the significance of the solstice was.
But astronomical properties have directly shaped the culture.
The reason why normal activity slowed down around this time is astronomical. In Stockholm today, daylight started at around 9 in the morning and it was dark before 3 in the afternoon. Of every 24 hours, more than 18 are spent in darkness. Even daylight hours come with an asterisk: usually it's just a slightly less dark version of the night, because daytime rarely means sunshine. Stockholm sees less than an hour of sunshine per day in December, mostly clumped together on a few sunny days that you can easily miss if you're busy indoors.
The rich baggage of folk traditions and mythology is also deeply related to the shortest/longest days of the year - rebirth of the Sun, victory of light over darkness, etc are clearly of astronomical origins, with folk stories adding a layer of mystique to stimulate imagination and make things more interesting.
Midsummer, on the other side of the year, forms a pair with winter solstice, and is as big holiday as Christmas. In rural communities, Midsummer marked a brief pause between planting and harvesting. In modern times, Midsummer marks the start of summer vacations. The country shuts down in late June and your emails won't get replies before August as people are enjoying the 18 hours of sunshine of Nordic summers. :)
In few languages I know, name is about the night, which is pretty astronomical thing. In Scandinavian countries they use pagan name while celebrating Christian holiday, so cultural thing is pretty loose here.
> all the cultures that had celebrations or holidays around this time of the year
I expect this not to be true... Cultures with only a moon calendar (ancient Arabs) do not even have the means to express the date!
That is why I have qualified "cultures" with "that had ...", a condition that can be true only for the cultures with solar calendars or mixed solar-lunar calendars.
You don't need a calendar to have seasonal celebrations.
I doubt there was ~ever any society that couldn't tell you approximately where they were in the year anyway. All it takes is making marks on literally anything, one per day, or having a decent memory. What society doesn't have at least one person doing that?
> You don't need a calendar to have seasonal celebrations.
You need seasons. Some places have very little seasonality. They tend to have a pure moon calendar.
Are there any where you truly don't care what season it is? I can't think of any where it actually doesn't matter.
Amazing post. Thank you, I learnt some here.
FWIW the page specifically describes it as the "December Solstice" and has a footnote for that mentioning the specific seasons for each hemisphere. I imagine the author is well aware of how the event varies by geography.
As for what the "entire point" of a greeting is, I'd argue that the "entire point" is a bit of a philosophical question that depends on what you think it means for something to be "the point". Maybe a few thousand years from now, instead of seemingly ignoring the culture and history you refer to, Solsthelion will just be seen as another chapter in the history of the greetings used during this time of year, just like the cultural reference in one common greeting you might encounter this time of year might have seemed transgressive back when it debuted to people fond of previous cultural traditions during the same part of the year.
> has a footnote for that mentioning the specific seasons for each hemisphere.
It mentions winter and summer, seasons that do not exist for a lot of the world. For example, in South Asia the main seasonal variation is the monsoon rains.
In terms of weather you're right, but those areas will still have the shortest/longest day on the solstice even if the change is relatively small.
If you are right on the equator, then you would not have any chance. Close to the equator a hardly noticeable change. I have lived near the equator (7° north, mostly) and the change in day length (about half an hour between longest and shortest days) is not noticeable.
Happy Solsthelion!
Happy solstices and merry perihelions to all!
If anyone's celebrations urgently need very precise planetary orbital state vectors, for some reason, you can look up current and future ones here:
Happy Solsthelion! There's a ritual for it: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/bay-area-secular-solsti...
> So if it's after the middle of December, start wishing people a "Happy Solsthelion"
> ... it's a great way to form the ice.
The best part - although perhaps untrue in a room full of HN commenters :)
Depending on my company I like the classic ice former: "So how do you sell your labor?"
Aside if the author is reading: on mobile only 1/3 of the page width is the article, the rest is the sidebar, which makes it hard to read
Thanks for the feedback ... regrettably, I have no control over the template. Also, it reads really well on my mobile.
I'm not a web programmer, I use what's available, and sadly, sometimes it's crap.
If I had another lifetime to spare I might take up front end programming, but I turn 65 next year, I have a very full diary, and it's just not going to happen.
8-(
Due to precession the period is shorter every year. In 2884 solstice and perhelion will be on the same day.
Merry Crispness, and Happy Gnu Ears
It'd be wrong for me to flag this for wasting my time (so I'm not going to).
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