NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Paul Saffo
Date: 2021 Jun 20, 21:05 -0700
Okay Frank, you can settle a pet peeve of mine. There is no consensus that I can discern re the relationship between the Solstice and the start/middle of summer. Consider:
These cultures consider the Solstice to be mid-summer: Sweden, Ukraine, England (since centuries before the time of Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night's Dream!), Spain.
Portugal is earlier - June 13 in Lisbon, and later (June 29) in Sintra.
Along with midwinter, I would argue that midsummer is a date quite separate from the Solstice, which as everyone in this group knows, is very specifially (and empirically) defined. By contrast, the start or middle of summer is a squishier non-specific date determined by cultural habit and perhaps climate/weather.
What am I missing?
-p
I thus would argue that the Solstice is nothing other than theSolstice. It is not the start of summer, nor mid-summer.
