Midwinter
December 22nd is the 2023 date of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. This day is variously known as Midwinter, the Shortest Day or the Longest Night. We expect to have around 7½ hours of daylight, though if it’s a gloomy day it will seem much less than that. In the most northerly parts of the northern hemisphere there may be no daylight at all. After that, the days start to lengthen, at the rate of about 15 minutes per week.
In my experience the coldest weather comes in the months following Midwinter. January and February are nasty, brutish and cold.
Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is a favourite carol of mine and has been sung to two major settings, one by Harold Darke (1888-1976)
and the other, perhaps more familiar, by Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
