First day of autumn: Why do we celebrate equinoxes anyway?

Monday marks the autumnal equinox, one of two days during the year that neither the North nor South Pole is angled toward the sun, resulting in a day and night that are almost exactly equal.

|
Don Ryan/AP/File
Tree branches laden with the changing, multi-colored leaves of fall are seen below a blue sky filled with white, fluffy clouds in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010. Today is the fall equinox and first day of Autumn, when the sun rises directly in the east and sets directly in the west.

It’s that time of year again, the changing of the seasonal guard is upon us.

Beginning Monday night – around 10:29 pm EDT, to be precise – the Earth will reach a point in its orbit known as the equinox, where the sun shines directly on the equator, favoring neither the Northern nor Southern Hemisphere. For just one day, both hemispheres of the Earth experience 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness, before parting temporal ways. 

For the 90 percent of humanity living north of the equator, the autumnal equinox  ushers in crisper days and longer nights. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, the vernal equinox means the promise of spring. Six months from now, the equinox will once again equalize the distribution of the sun’s rays for one day only, before launching the Northern Hemisphere into spring and the Southern Hemisphere into autumn.

Throughout human history people have been fascinated by both the spring and fall equinoxes. Long before the advent of telescopes and other modern astronomical observation equipment, ancient peoples erected physical monuments to track the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

The great sandstone monoliths at Stonehenge in southern England are said to mark the autumn and spring equinoxes, as well as the summer and winter solstices, the longest and shortest days of the year respectively.

Many historians believe the massive rock formation was erected under the supervision of astronomer-priests as an astrological calendar to alert ancient people of the optimal time to begin planting, harvesting, and breeding cattle.

More than 5,000 miles away, the ancient Mayans constructed their own celestial calendar on a limestone plateau in the northern region of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. At the center of Cichén Itzá – once a major Mayan metropolis – a four-sided stone pyramid known as El Castillo reaches 79 feet up into the heavens.

More than 1,000 years after its construction, thousands of people still gather around El Castillo during the equinox to witness a mesmerizing trick of light and shadow. As the sun sets, a series of triangular shadows align in such a way that a diamond-backed snake appears to slither down the stairway of the pyramid.

Halfway around the world, some Aboriginal Australians appear to have also used rock formations to observe Earth’s orbital milestones. An egg-shaped ring of more than 100 basalt boulders appears to mark the equinoxes and solstices. Archaeologists, astronomers, and Aboriginal advisors have only recently begun to delve into the significance of this formation, which is believed to have been created by the Wadda Wurrung people.

Many ancient pagan religions held ritual celebrations and sacrifices around both equinoxes. Some historians believe that Christian Easter and the Feast of St. Michael (Sept. 29) were originally scheduled to coincide with these established festivals.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to First day of autumn: Why do we celebrate equinoxes anyway?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0922/First-day-of-autumn-Why-do-we-celebrate-equinoxes-anyway
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe