4 ms·
> The British approach of starting a season on the solstice / equinox has always seemed somewhere between weird and quaint (more towards the inconvenient end of
by louthy 11y ago
> The British approach of starting a season on the solstice / equinox has always seemed somewhere between weird and quaint (more towards the inconvenient end of weird).
Surely the reasons for the definition of seasons was for farmers to know the position of earth relative to the sun so they could make good decisions about the likely weather for growing? To say it's weird is quite an extreme position to take, there are clearly rational reasons for it. Even if they're not as important to our society as they once were.
- Jedd 11y agoPerhaps, but I'm not so sure that was the reason for the definition. For example, I know the dates of the solstices and equinoxes, and I'm (at best) a casual gardener. The fact those dates don't align with what I think of as the start of the seasons doesn't prevent me from remembering them. In the location I do most of my growing, I'm actually more interested in tracking first and last frost - these are the primary constraints on many crops. These certainly don't align with equinoxes or solstices, let alone 1sts of months. Farmers, presumably, are even more intimately aware of the usual dates (and variances) for these events in their region. That's why I don't think it was the reason for labelling the solstice / equinox as the start of each season.