{"id":7839,"date":"2016-10-05T17:48:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T16:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/widmann.scot\/?p=7839"},"modified":"2016-10-05T17:48:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T16:48:44","slug":"the-traditional-east-asian-seasons-work-really-well-in-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/the-traditional-east-asian-seasons-work-really-well-in-scotland\/","title":{"rendered":"The traditional East Asian seasons work really well in Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just to escape from all the Brexit madness, I read a couple of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lichun\">Wikipedia articles<\/a> about the traditional East Asian calendars that divide the year into 24 solar terms instead of 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>The solar terms are defined in terms of celestial longitude, and the same is true for the four seasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spring (315\u00b0\u201344\u00b0): 4th February\u20134th May<\/li>\n<li>Summer (45\u00b0\u2013134\u00b0): 5th May\u20136th August<\/li>\n<li>Autumn (135\u00b0\u2013224\u00b0): 7th August\u20136th November<\/li>\n<li>Winter (225\u00b0\u2013314\u00b0): 7th November\u20133rd February<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(The dates are approximations \u2013 they can vary by a day.  And I haven&#8217;t really sussed why the four seasons aren&#8217;t exactly the same length.)<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s birthday (5th of May) is often the first warm day with green leaves on trees. Also, this year \u2013 without having read the Wikipedia article \u2013 I posted this on Facebook on the 7th of August: &#8220;Here in Scotland, hairst is in the air the day. Haste ye back, summer!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;ll be interesting to see whether winter starts on the 7th of November this year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u00b0\u201344\u00b0): 4th February\u20134th May Summer (45\u00b0\u2013134\u00b0): 5th May\u20136th August Autumn (135\u00b0\u2013224\u00b0): 7th August\u20136th November Winter (225\u00b0\u2013314\u00b0): 7th November\u20133rd February (The dates are approximations \u2013 they can vary by a day. And I haven&#8217;t really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}