In the summer, everything in this place seemed to quiver with the continuous wavering of a thousand songs and sounds. But on this day, the quavering had stopped, and a clear, bright calm had descended and had covered everything with its sweet peace. – Paul Gruchow, Journal of a Prairie Year

The Fourth Week of Early Winter

Phases of the Bedding Plant Moon 

and Pollinating Pinetree Moon

Phases of the Moon

Dec. 15: The Bedding Plant Moon is full.

Dec. 22: The moon enters its final quarter.

Dec. 30: The Pollinating Pinetree Moon is new.

The Sun

Winter solstice occurs at 4:19 a.m. (EST) on Dec. 21.

Weather Trends

This time of the year is ordinarily dominated by two major cold waves. The first comes in on the 21st or 22nd, and the second arrives between the 23rd and the 26th. Christmas is typically the brightest day of the week, bringing a 70 percent chance of sun. The 28th is the darkest day, with a 70 percent chance of clouds. Snow falls half the time on Christmas Eve and on the two days before New Year’s Day. The 26th is typically the coldest day of the week and has almost a 40 percent chance of highs just in the teens or 20s.

The Seasonal Calendar

But let the months go round, a few short months,

And all shall be restored. These naked shoots

Barren as lances, among which the wind

Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,

Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

And more aspiring and with ampler spread

Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. – William Cowper

 

The Natural Calendar

On the 24th of December, the sun begins its ascent toward June, shifting from a declination of 23 degrees and 26 minutes to 23 degrees and 25 minutes. (Of course, it is Earth that actually shifts in relation to the sun). Although the days in our village do not start to lengthen until the 26th, the 24th is the first day of the Season of the Rising Sun, a period which divides the year into two equal halves and which lasts until the sun stops at its highest point above the horizon between June 19 and 23 and then begins to fall toward winter solstice on June 24.

Milder weather in the lower Midwest may open pussy willows and draw up snowdrops, crocus and aconites as the days expand, but along the Gulf of Mexico, the Season of the Rising Sun is already shortening the dormancy of trees and shrubs, hurrying the gestation of spring. Across coastal Georgia, sweet gums and yellow poplars finally lose their leaves, and their buds swell almost immediately to replace the loss. In central Florida, red maples open, and Jessamine produces its yellow blossoms.

In my village along the 40th Parallel, the Season of Dormancy can last from November through March, but a little more than a thousand miles south, that period narrows to a slender, ambivalent space, a borderland in which the difference between winter and spring balances on a fulcrum as small as a single plant or a single hour. Along Yellow Springs Creek, the apparent movement of the sun on December 24th seems frozen in the long stillness of our landscape, but somewhere between the Marshes of Glynn and the Everglades that minute change undoes the advance of superficial cold and stirs the coals of far-off summer’s core.

Almanack Classics

My Favorite Christmas Outhouse Story

A Lesson for Teacher

By Mrs. Lillie Shaffer

“A Lesson for Teacher” by Mrs. Lillie Shaffer was one of the first stories submitted to Poor Will’s Almanack back in the last decades of the last century, and it has remained my favorite holiday story throughout the years. I was a teacher most of my life, and I can appreciate how important it was for my students to teach me how to treat them – Poor Will

This story was told by my father, and I remember him telling it many times. And it always brought laughter, since he told it not only for himself but also for us.

When these events took place, my father was a student in a rural one-room schoolhouse. As I recall, he told how his teacher was a man who was stern, and with only teaching on his mind, never showing much affection for his pupils.

Now, it was Christmas time, and teachers usually gave a treat to each pupil in the school. But my father and the other students received no treats from this teacher. 

So, the pupils gathered on the school yard at noontime and decided on a plan.

When their teacher took his trip to the outhouse, the big boys sneaked behind the building, upsetting it on the door, making no escape for him.

My father would really laugh when he remembered their teacher looking out through the three-hole building seating arrangement, begging for them to please set the outhouse up right!

The children played all afternoon, and finally, when it was time to walk home, they set the building upright and ran home.

They returned to school the next day and didn’t know what punishment would await them.

Believe it or not, on each desk was a piece of candy, and never a word was said by their teacher or the pupils. I imagine that teacher never forgot that Christmas meant giving!

Answers To Last Week’s Sckrambler

In order to estimate your Sckrambler IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ.

SPCLA CLAPS

SALP LAPS

SSPA SAPS

ATSP TAPS

SEALP LAPSE

SPARCS SCRAPS

PARTS TRAPS

ASPLF FLAPS

SAMP MAPS

LSPAS SLAPS

This Week’s Rhyming Sckrambler

FITG

TRDIF

FEDFINS

TRIF

WSTFI

TTHRFI

TILF

FIRSTH

FEDWHIF

FIFEDM

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Copyright 2024, W. L. Felker