The traditional East Asian seasons work really well in Scotland
Just to escape from all the Brexit madness, I read a couple of Wikipedia articles about the traditional East Asian calendars that divide the year into 24 solar terms instead of 12 months.
The solar terms are defined in terms of celestial longitude, and the same is true for the four seasons:
- Spring (315°–44°): 4th February–4th May
- Summer (45°–134°): 5th May–6th August
- Autumn (135°–224°): 7th August–6th November
- Winter (225°–314°): 7th November–3rd February
(The dates are approximations – they can vary by a day. And I haven’t really sussed why the four seasons aren’t exactly the same length.)
The funny thing is that these seasons seem to work much better than the traditional ones in Scotland. Phyllis and I have often said to each other that spring seems to start around our birthdays (4th and 8th of February), and my mum’s birthday (5th of May) is often the first warm day with green leaves on trees. Also, this year – without having read the Wikipedia article – I posted this on Facebook on the 7th of August: “Here in Scotland, hairst is in the air the day. Haste ye back, summer!”
It’ll be interesting to see whether winter starts on the 7th of November this year!