Tricks of the light as our dark days arrive

Country Living with Francis Farragher

We’re freewheeling towards Christmas at a frantic pace over recent weeks with the days seemingly slipping by like seconds and there is really very little we can do about it. ‘Go with the flow’ is probably the best policy to adopt but it seems to be quite impossible not to get caught in the stampede that precedes the biggest festival of the year in the western world.

While Christmas Day is the focal point of the season for nearly everyone, next Sunday, December 21, marks the very peak of the colder season when the winter solstice occurs and we have what we term the ‘shortest day of the year’.

If we enjoyed an absolutely clear day here in Galway, we would still only receive just about 7 hours and 30 minutes of sunshine with our great solar radiator not rising until around the 8.49 mark next Sunday morning, while it will disappear from our skies again just before 4.20 that evening.

The significance of this time of year was not lost on communities dating back through the centuries and even the millenniums as we can gauge from our own backdoor and the Newgrange site in Co. Meath, whose construction goes back to about 3,200BC, even predating places like Stonehenge in England and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

The Newbridge site has been classified as a passage tomb, but now many archaeologists and historians regard it as much more than that. Many people classify it as an ancient temple that has now acquired a mystique all of its own based on religious, ceremonial and spiritual factors.

However the real attraction of Newgrange is its roof-box that only allows the light from the rising sun of the winter solstice to light up the inner chamber during the period from December 19 to December 23.

Only when the angle of the sun is at its lowest will the chamber light up so 5,000 years ago, science and civilisation were obviously well advanced in Boyne Valley country. When the chamber lit up, the local elders knew that the deepest point of winter had been reached, with a new year of light ready to begin.

Of course our cloudy skies often spoil the fun for the lucky group of people who manage to get into the chamber but maybe some brighter interludes this weekend might coincide with the sunrises from Friday through to Sunday.

For  more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.