Sunrise 7:25 a.m. Thursday
Sunset 4:12 p.m.
Forecast: Cloudy all day, all 8 hours and 47 minutes. No snow on the ground, so it’s brown and gray everywhere. It’s going to get colder soon, as this is the official start of winter, and it’s already pretty cold.
But five seconds here and 12 seconds there, and we’ll now start getting more light every day.
Light always comes after the darkest times. The dark always comes after the brightest times. In the end it all balances, which is hard to remember in the darkest days and easy to forget in the brightest days.
Whoever decided to put Christmas around the winter solstices was brilliant, because when do we need a message of light and hope more than during the darkest days of the year?
Technically, the winter solstice is Friday, December 22, this year, but I’m writing about it today, because Friday is the big conclusion of Ebenezer. So: Happy solstice, such as it is. The days are going to get longer and brighter, and as we brave the chill, remember we’re just three months away from the first day of spring.
