Calculating the Sabbats
by Jeffrey Pierce

In 2010, Winter Solstice took place on December 21st; this year, it occurred on December 22nd. At first glance, this seems like an odd way to celebrate the holidays. I mean, how do you celebrate an event if the date changes from year to year?

The simplest way of explaining the phenomena without wading knee-deep into the realm of science is to remember that every four years we have to put an extra day in our calendar (February 29th) to compensate for the fact that our calendar isn't quite in sync with the natural world. If we didn't extend our normal 365-day year to 366-days once every four years, given enough time the seasons would happen months before the calendar month they're associated with. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we'd eventually experience the first snow of winter in July (and bask in the sun in February) without the concept of a leap year to constantly re-synchronize the cycle of life with the mathematics of our modern calendar.

If you think about the normal 365 day calendar that we rely on being off enough that we have to add a day every four years, it's easy to realize that the Solstice doesn't change - it's just that our method of marking the annual passage of time (the modern - or Gregorian - calendar) is somewhat flawed.

An Easy Science Lesson

Imagine a spinning basketball balanced on the tip of an unsharpened pencil. If you carried the pencil in a wide circle around a lamp (while facing the same direction as you walk), the light would strike the ball in a pretty uniform manner no matter where you were in the room. The trick is that our planet isn't balanced on top of a pencil - unless you could defy the laws of physics and tilt the basketball to an angle of approximately 23.44° off of the pencil's tip. If you could, and you carried the ball and pencil around the room, sometimes the top of the ball would be facing the lamp, sometimes it would be facing away, and sometimes it would be in the middle.

When the northern part of our planet is facing the sun, we get longer hours of sunlight here in the Northern Hemisphere; when the southern part of the planet is closer to the sun, the opposite is true. The date of the solstices and equinoxes don't randomly float around the calendar, but are directly related to this process of the Earth's tilt and our planet's journey around the sun. It's our slightly out of sync calendar that needs a leap year to keep from losing its grip on the seasons that is the reason behind the changing dates.

Simple Observations

Here in our family, rather than relying on a calendar to choose the dates of our solar holidays, we look to the sun. The solstices (both summer and winter) and equinoxes (vernal and autumnal) are easily calculated dates and you can find them detailed on countless astronomy Web sites if you don't want to make the observations yourself.

And those observations? You could actually make them yourself without any sort of equipment. All you need is an unobstructed view of the sunrise and the ability to record where it rises in relation to a fixed point each morning. Because of the tilt of our planet (think "basketball on a pencil") it appears as if the sun rises in a slightly different position each morning. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it appears to rise a little farther south each morning until Winter Solstice. (If you happen to live in the Arctic Circle - latitude 66.56° north - the sun will never quite leave the horizon on this one day in December). Each morning after Winter Solstice, the sun will rise a little farther north until, on June 20th this year, the sunrise stops its northern journey and begins to head south once more. The reason that we call these two days - one in December and one in June - a "solstice" is that the word is derived from the Latin words "sol" (sun) and "sistere" (to stand still) - referring to the farthest northern and southern extremes of the journey of the sunrise before it appears to stop and reverse course.

You could actually find the dates of our holidays by observing the sunrise.

At the midpoint between the two solstices are the equinoxes. If the solstices represent the days with the longest and shortest hours of sunlight, then the two days in the middle would logically have equal amounts of light and darkness. And they do. The word equinox is derived from the Latin words "aequus" (equal) and "nox" (night) - or "equal night," referring to the balance between darkness and daylight.

Calculating the Holidays

Our family celebrates eight solar holidays each year - the quarters of the year and the cross-quarters. What may surprise you is that you probably celebrate them in one form or another as well; Christmas, Ground Hog's Day, Easter, May Day, and Halloween are all found on particular dates for a reason. Two equinoxes and two solstices (2 + 2 = 4) nicely divide the solar year into four equal quarters. If the other four days are cross-quarters, it makes sense that they fall at the mid-point between each solstice and equinox.

Each year, after finding the astronomical dates for the solar quarters, we calculate the mid-point between each. For instance, this year the Winter Solstice fell on December 22nd and Spring Equinox falls on March 20. The mid-point between the two is February 4th. We call it First Spring in our family and it has continued into modern times with the celebration of Ground Hog's Day. The mid-point between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is May 5th, a day we refer to as Beltaine - and which echoes in modern times as May Day. The calendar dates are off slightly, not because we're right and you're wrong (or vice versa) but because our modern calendar is something of a functional disaster when it comes to synchronizing us with our planet's journey through the heavens.

Why Cross-Quarters?

It's pretty obvious why we celebrate the quarters of the solar year (the solstices and equinoxes) but why celebrate the cross-quarters as well? The answer is pretty simple and can be found in another name for Summer Solstice - Midsummer. Each of the quarter dates represents the mid-point in the season; each of the cross-quarters represents the beginning of a new season and the ending of the old. Think about. Spring is pretty much in full swing here in the Northern Hemisphere by the time Spring Equinox (March 20th this year) rolls around. However, we celebrate First Spring in February - just about the time the very first shoots of green are beginning to appear here and there in the natural world.

This year, we'll celebrate the following holidays - and we'll share our traditions and themes with the readers of Old Ways. Remember, we're "pagans with a little 'p'" in our family. On the path we call home, everyone follows their own heart to find what they believe. When there's a question regarding a piece of philosophy or theology, our fallback position is pretty simple - if there were no books and no Internet, what could we find simply by observing the natural world?

So, based purely on those observations, here are our dates for 2011-2012 Solar Year based upon the dates of the solstices and equinoxes as found in The Old Farmer's Almanac:

Winter Solstice: December 22, 2011
First Spring: February 4, 2012
Spring Equinox: March 20, 2012
Beltaine: May 5, 2012
Summer Solstice: June 20, 2012
First Harvest: August 6, 2012
Fall Equinox: September 22, 2012
Samhain: November 6, 2012
Winter Solstice: December 21, 2012

Thoughts? Comments? You can contact us at connect@oldways.com or interact with Jeffrey, Briana, and the Old Ways community on our Facebook page.

Originally published in Old Ways on December 27, 2011