unironedman

It’s that time of year when time itself gets a little bit nebulous. Most of this comes down to the whole Christmas season when we get stuck into dinners, get-togethers, parties and various other commitments to the point where we genuinely forget what day it is. Indeed, we even begin to lose the basic language that normally defines these things. For example, today, Saoirse asked me if we’d like to go visiting good friends up the country. Yes, I replied… when? Sunday, came the reply. And what day is that, I heard myself respond. And if you think that’s a one-off, my daughter made the exact same faux-pas a few hours later. Oh how we laughed.

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, as David Tennant’s version of Dr. Who said, way back in 2007, as he tried to describe the complexities of time travel.

For the record, it’s Monday. The 29th. And yes, I had to look that up.

The next significant date on the calendar is the 31st, and the morning will begin with Lock Up The Year. This is a local informal fun run to round off your running season, and there are marathon, half-marathon and 10k options. Or whatever you’re havin’ yerself, like. We don’t mind. And then later that evening, Cool Hand Luke will be doing their thing down in Portlaoise once again, to see in the new year.

But as for the grand stretch… well, it has become a meme, and indeed, just as popular are the memes that mock those of us that would have the temerity to utter the phrase (‘there’s a grand stretch in the evening…). Truth be told, you won’t really notice much of a difference. Certainly nothing grand, anyways. Not a for a while.

What you might hear, then, not least from country folk, is the alternative ‘cock step’. Here I shall quote briefly from this website:

The Feast of the Epiphany is also called coir-ceim-coilleach, which means ‘the cocks step’; the first noticeable lengthening of the daylight hours…

(That’s January 6th, in case you are unfamiliar. In Ireland, it’s also known as Nollaig na mBan, or Women’s Christmas (or even Little Christmas), when female folk were celebrated and given a day off from their domestic duties. Sounds a tad patronising, does it not?)

The cock does indeed have a short step. Some define it even further as the cockerel mounting the dungheap to announce its presence to the world in the morning, and raising its foot and placing it back down again. So, to be pedantic, not even a step forward. But movement, nonetheless. Which I suppose you could ascribe to the tiny incremental changes of evening light as we move towards Brigit’s Day on February 1st. Hopefully by then, nobody would be fool enough to still be saying ‘grand stretch’. Unless they want a box in the mouth. And so the Winter Solstice marks the shortest ‘day’ where we experience the least amount of daylight hours in the year.

But as Dr. Who might warn us, it’s not that simple. No way. No chance. Solar time, it turns out (as Bill Bailey is wont to say) is not the same as clock time. Darn it. Here’s some blurb from the interweb:

The shortest day (Winter Solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere, including Ireland, is around December 21st, when the sun rises latest and sets earliest, but due to the Earth’s orbit, the absolute earliest sunset happens a bit before (around Dec 13th) and the latest sunrise even later (Dec 29-30th), with times varying by location, but generally featuring under 8 hours of daylight in Ireland for the solstice itself. 

Key Details:

• Date: Winter Solstice usually falls on December 21st or 22nd.
• Why the Discrepancy? The Earth’s elliptical orbit (Equation of Time) makes solar noon (when the sun is highest) shift slightly from clock noon, causing the earliest sunset and latest sunrise to occur a few days away from the solstice itself.
• In Ireland (e.g., Kildare):
  • Solstice (Dec 21, 2025): Sunrise ~8:40 AM, Sunset ~4:08 PM, Daylight ~7.5 hours.
  • Earliest Sunset: Around December 13th.
  • Latest Sunrise: Around December 29th or 30th. 

In Simple Terms: The shortest day has the least daylight, but the exact sunrise/sunset times shift because the Earth’s orbit isn’t a perfect circle, creating a few days difference between the solstice and the actual earliest/latest sun moments.

Are we clear?

I think I prefer the cock step.

If you want to delve deeper into this malarkey, have a look at Analemmas. This explains what happens if you were to photograph the sun from your back garden at the same time every day for a year. The sun would describe an elongated figure-of-eight pattern, returning to the same spot as the year comes to an end, and the whole cycle repeats itself.

Wibbly-wobbly.

Anyway, happy new year to ye all. Hope ye have a good one, and that the new year is filled with goodness and loveliness. Statistically-speaking, that’s unlikely. But we can dream 😉