Yup that's what the Dec in December is for, Sept for 7, Oct for 8 and Nov for 9.

Holy shit, I never even noticed this.

I was the tenth month of the year when the Roman calendar started in March, so it was still the month with the winter solstice.

You'd be amazed how much the calendar was messed around with. At least one Roman Emperor used to adjust the starting day to bring tax collection day around sooner. Then there was Augustus who decided that if Julius could have a month named after him so should he.

Then there's the whole Gregorian shift exercise which different countries did at different times.

I've got a book about it somewhere and it's quite eye opening when you realise just how arbitrary it all is and how much it has changed.

When it comes to celebrating the solstice, a couple of years ago we went down to the 'Burning the Clocks' parade in Brighton and it was a great evening.

We had friends down there and their children had made their lanterns so we joined the parade through the streets with hundreds of others with lanterns of all shapes and sizes, dancers and street entertainers.

The culmination of the evening was on the beach and passing all the lanterns on to a huge pile for a bonfire where they were all burned.

Obviously a bit late for this year, but this event seems to have become a huge success going by the photos and news items I saw on it last night.

http://www.samesky.co.uk/

It's a glacially slow process at first, and really isn't meaningfully noticeable until about February, when the lengthening day process really starts to speed up, such that (in the South, for example) by late March just before the clocks go forward, the sunrise time is about 5:49am.

example South East location

The sunrise time is still getting later and will continue to do so until about December 31

I know.