You are currently browsing the daily archive for 21/12/2014.
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(Can one say that about Solstice as well as Christmas? Oh well….)
Scrooge might well get grumpy about English Heritage’s announcement about tomorrow’s event: “The [Winter Solstice at Stonehenge] is traditionally celebrated at the sunrise closest to the time when the sun is stationary”.
Is it? Doesn’t their own latest research indicate Stonehenge was designed to view winter sunsets not sunrises – and from outside the stones not inside?! Yet tomorrow they’ll let thousands into the circle to hoot and holler at the rising sun and won’t let on to them that they think they’re in the wrong place and 16 hours too late!
Shouldn’t EH, not the attendees, specify what the authentic celebration should be? After all, it is they who commissioned the research, it is they who are discomforted by the event and it is they who would save loads of money by not having to stage a massive free shindig inside a world heritage monument in the middle of the night!
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UPDATE Mon 22 Dec: Stranger and stranger (x3) ….
From the Western Daily Press this morning:
“Dozens of people turned up to the stones yesterday morning for the sunrise, but were told they had come a day too early” and
“The winter solstice sunrise is the most important moment in the pagan calendar – the moment of rebirth when the days begin to get longer again. It was the moment Stonehenge was aligned for – not the summer solstice sunrise.”
The Heritage Journal 
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