Happy Solstice!
As a kid growing up in Alaska, winter solstice was a much-anticipated and much-welcomed event. Winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, marks an important change in the rotation of the earth – and for those who live closer to the poles, an important change in daylight. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun will now start to shine a bit more each day. In Alaska that meant that even though the days would still be cold and snowy for months and months to come, you could at least count on a few more minutes of daily brightness.
People often ask me whether all that winter darkness was depressing. It really wasn’t, but largely because I didn’t know any better! To me, the extremes of the solstices were just a fact of life. When I visited my grandparents, I found Colorado to be a wondrous place where the sun rose for several hours a day in the winter. And, traitorous star, it actually set in the summer. I also didn’t learn until I was nine that Easter egg hunting in the snow is not normal for most Americans. My childhood was different.
Kids can understand Earth’s rotation, as well as the solstices and equinoxes, through a simple exercise with a pencil, a roll of toilet paper and a flashlight. Sketch the continents on your roll of toilet paper, then place the roll on the pencil, which serves as the axis. One person can hold the flashlight, standing in for the sun. The person in charge of the rotation should revolve around the sun tilting North America toward the sun for the summer and away from the sun during the winter.
When the toilet-paper learning fun is over, make some cookies! These Starshine Cookies can be made with any roll-out sugar cookie recipe. Make a hole in the cutout shape using a smaller cookie cutter or household object, then place the cutouts on a foil-lined cookie sheet that has a light coating of non-stick cooking spray. Fill the holes with crushed Jolly Ranchers or LifeSavers. Breaking with a hammer is awesome.
Bake as usual, but allow the cookies to cool for an extra amount of time in order to remove them without damaging the stained glass effect.
While they are cooling, check out this fantastic time-lapse video taken a week after winter solstice in Fairbanks last year.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXxRcXHI_tI[/youtube]
Yeah, that was my childhood. Even though I live in the Lower 48 now, I still love the winter solstice and the extra daylight that it signifies.
