The evening have already been getting lighter for a week and a half; earliest sunset was on 12th December. Latest sunrise, however, is not until 30th December.
That's London times, I should add.
Good spot! This is a consequence of London's relatively high latitude of 51°30'N which places it almost twice as far from the Tropic of Cancer (about 3120km) than the Arctic circle (1670km).
My home city of Adelaide is located at a much shallower latitude of 34°55'S (3520km from the Antarctic Circle, 1280km from the Tropic of Capricorn) and so we have an even greater gap of 32 days between our earliest sunrise on December 6 and latest sunset on January 7.
This effect is much less pronounced around the June Solstice when the earth's elliptical orbit is at aphelion (furthest point from the sun) on July 4 because the angular velocity of the orbit is slower than when it is at perihelion (closest point to the sun) on January 3.
For the benefit of Howardh, I would recommend
this ABC article on the subject that was published just a couple of days ago.
IMO today should be the start of the new year, as from now onwards in the northern hemisphere the days (gradually) start to become longer - and it makes sense!
If you're going to revise the calendar you might as well do it properly, because changing it by just 11 days would only cause confusion. How about 10x 36 day months, each composed of 6x 6 day weeks, with an extra holiday at the end of every second month.
But if you can't convince anyone of that, there's nothing stopping you declaring the December Solstice to be the start of the year for your own personal purposes, given there are plenty of other concepts of a "year" which don't start on January 1 - e.g. financial years in different places, Chinese New Year, the Islamic Calendar, liturgical year, academic years etc.
Another option with its roots in astronomy could also be to start the year at perihelion, the earth's closest approach to the sun, which takes place on January 3rd or 4th every year. You could also pick a favourite star or constellation and use its annual
heliacal rising as the start of your year as a number of ancient cultures across three continents did.
The sole 'problem' is that nobody else will have a clue what you're talking about. No big issue, surely?
There is another change which would actually make some sense for everyone though - shifting all lines of meridian to the east by 120° and UTC as well, so that a larger portion of the earth's population is closer to UTC and therefore having to make smaller calculations when doing international business. The international date line would then be at the current location of -30°, and having to zigzag around just one place (Greenland) rather than the current nine. This change would ideally be made on 1 March 2020, so that the whole of North and South America would change over by skipping straight from 28 February to 1 March while everyone else enjoys a one-off public holiday on 29 February.
Oh, and anyone in the Southern hemisphere, please come on and enjoy a big grin!!
It's not all great news though
