As May turns into June and the summer days warm up many Pagans, Neopagans and Druids turn their minds to converging on a number of ancient stone circles around the United Kingdom. Some will be heading for the most famous – Stonehenge.
Others will be heading for lesser known ones – such as Long Meg and her daughters. And all of them preparing to celebrate the Summer Solstice. The question is, of course, when is the Summer Solstice?
The Changing Summer Solstice
It may be a surprise to learn that the Summer Solstice does not occur on the same date every year. If asked, most people will reply that the Summer Solstice occurs on June 21st. And that's true. Most of the time.
However, the Summer Solstice may also occur on June 20th or June 22nd (although the next time that the Summer Solstice is due to occur on June 22nd is 2203, so that won't be an issue for most readers of this article). The actual days for the next few years are:
- 2009 – 2011: June 21st
- 2012: June 20th
- 2013 – 2015: June 21st
- 2016: June 20th
- 2017 – 2019: June 21st
- 2020: June 20th
The reason for these changes is quite simply because the calendar is fixed to 365 days (plus one every leap year) whereas the Earth takes 365.24199 days to circle the Sun.
The next question is, therefore, how can a programmer handle these changes in an application or a web page?
