Solsthelion

This is a word I invented many years ago, half a decade at least.[0]

It's a portmanteau word[1] made from "Solstice" and "Perihelion".

The December Solstice[2] is on December 21st[3], and the Perihelion, the point in the Earth's orbit where we are closest to the Sun, is on January 4th[4]. So the "Solsthelion" neatly covers the holiday period and is purely astronomical, not based in any particular human culture or history.

So if it's after the middle of December, start wishing people a "Happy Solsthelion"

... it's a great way to form the ice.


[0] http://www.mrob.com/pub/math/solsthelion.html

[1] A word which combines the meaning of two words (or, rarely, more than two words), formed by combining the words, usually, but not always, by adjoining the first part of one word and the last part of the other, the adjoining parts often having a common vowel; for example, smog, formed from smoke and fog. — https://www.wordnik.com/words/portmanteau%20word

[2] Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemipshere, Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemipshere

[3] It's more complicated than that. The astronomical Solstice is when the Earth's axis of rotation points directly towards or directly away from the Sun. That means that the plane containing the Earth's axis of rotation and the line joining the Earth to the Sun is perpendicular to the plane of the Earth's orbit. So there is an exact instant when this happens, and that instant can occur on Dec 20th, Dec 21st, or Dec 22nd.

So for convenience, people usually just declare Dec 21st to be the "Calendar Solstice".

More:

[4] Unsurprisingly, it's more complicated than that. As with the Solstice, there is an exact instant when this happens, but usually it's on, or one day either side of, January 4th. For London, UK, the dates and times are:



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