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What day does June 21 mark for you?
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 26, 2018, 09:46:36 pm ---You guys forgot to vote!
--- End quote ---
Ooops!
Took care of that!
Front-Ranger:
If June, July and August comprise summer, then shouldn't midsummer be on July 15?
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on July 12, 2018, 06:13:26 pm ---If June, July and August comprise summer, then shouldn't midsummer be on July 15?
--- End quote ---
I found this online, not sure how correct it is.
Q: I always found it strange that the day which marks the beginning of the season of summer is called "mid-summer", which I understand would mean "middle of summer". While midsummer is on the summer solstice (June 20–21), the actual middle of summer would be about August 6, no?
So why is the first day of summer called midsummer?
A: The word midsummer comes to us from Old English, and it has a Dutch cognate midzomer, and Scandinavian cognates (e.g. midsommar in Swedish), so it may even come from an older Germanic language. Both the old Anglo-Saxon calendar and the old Icelandic calendar had two seasons, summer and winter. For these calendars, "Midsummer's Day" would have fallen near the middle of summer (probably not the exact middle ... summer started in mid-April in the old Icelandic calendar, and on a full moon in the old Anglo-Saxon calendar).
The Anglo-Saxon calendar also explains why summer and winter are words which have roots in Proto-Germanic, while fall and spring were not used for the seasons until Middle English, and autumn is originally a Latin word.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/117183/etymology-of-midsummer-why-is-the-first-day-of-summer-called-middle-of-summ
Jeff Wrangler:
And of course, thanks to Julius Caesar's astronomers, the whole business got out of whack. The Christian Church set Christmas on Dec. 25, because it was thought to be the winter solstice, and St. John Baptist's Day on June 24, because it was thought to be the summer solstice.
CellarDweller:
Always fun to have a messed up calendar! ;D
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