
How short is the shortest day?
Happy Yule! As you probably know, Yule (Jól) was the pagan Nordic celebration of the bleak midwinter. And it’s the winter solstice today – the shortest day of the year. What does that mean? The word solstice means “stopped Sun” in Latin – so it’s not really a whole day, but the moment when the Sun appears to stand still at its most southern point (so, furthest away from us in the northern hemisphere), before returning back towards the north. To put it another way, it’s the