Right now I want nothing so much as to go home for Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. I want to eat meat and potatoes and squash, I want to wear flannel pajamas under flannel sheets, and I want to see snow piled outside my windows. I want to go skiing, and sit in the lodge after sipping hot chocolate while a fire roars in a stone hearth.
This things are not going to happen; at least not until those last two months of the year, when they usually happen. In New Zealand Christmas does not coincide with short days and long nights, which seems absurd and impossible (nevermind all that nonsense about first Christmases, and where they happened and when—I won’t have it), and they celebrate Thanksgiving rather half-heartedly in February. But watching the sun set around 5:30 has cued some seasonal clock within me, one that operates on a different level than my logic. So though the calendar says “May” my instinct says “November” and here I am, thinking about Thanksgiving.
I looked up the date of the winter solstice; in the southern hemisphere it falls around June 21st, which is the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice. I’ll be here for that, and four days later I’ll leave, and be thrown into a world where the days are beginning to shorten just as they’ll finally be lengthening here. It’s actually extremely disturbing.
‘Solstice’ comes from two Latin words which together translate as ‘stationary sun.’ But the sun is stationary relative to the vast planet—and assuming that you are sitting in one place on Earth’s surface. And maybe you should be; I told someone that I don’t believe people were meant to switch between the northern and southern hemispheres like this, for this in-between period that is longer than a mere vacation but shorter than forever. When you sit still and wait for it, you have balance; the balance of circadian and seasonal rhythms, even night and day, gradual change. But instead I’m whizzing around the planet like a gnat around a cow’s head, flying in and out of shadow at a delirium-inducing rate. Is it Thanksgiving yet?
This things are not going to happen; at least not until those last two months of the year, when they usually happen. In New Zealand Christmas does not coincide with short days and long nights, which seems absurd and impossible (nevermind all that nonsense about first Christmases, and where they happened and when—I won’t have it), and they celebrate Thanksgiving rather half-heartedly in February. But watching the sun set around 5:30 has cued some seasonal clock within me, one that operates on a different level than my logic. So though the calendar says “May” my instinct says “November” and here I am, thinking about Thanksgiving.
I looked up the date of the winter solstice; in the southern hemisphere it falls around June 21st, which is the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice. I’ll be here for that, and four days later I’ll leave, and be thrown into a world where the days are beginning to shorten just as they’ll finally be lengthening here. It’s actually extremely disturbing.
‘Solstice’ comes from two Latin words which together translate as ‘stationary sun.’ But the sun is stationary relative to the vast planet—and assuming that you are sitting in one place on Earth’s surface. And maybe you should be; I told someone that I don’t believe people were meant to switch between the northern and southern hemispheres like this, for this in-between period that is longer than a mere vacation but shorter than forever. When you sit still and wait for it, you have balance; the balance of circadian and seasonal rhythms, even night and day, gradual change. But instead I’m whizzing around the planet like a gnat around a cow’s head, flying in and out of shadow at a delirium-inducing rate. Is it Thanksgiving yet?
1 comment:
what do n.zders have to do with thanksgiving?
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