LogFAQs > #973249566

bsp77 posted...

Why would the day with the most sunlight be the start of the warmest season?

In practice, the warmest period does tend to fall between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, simply because of how long it takes the earth's temperature to catch up to the amount of sunlight it's getting.

bsp77 posted...

Actually, the winter solstrice was also called midwinter and hence was the middle. More recently it culturally shifted to the beginning.

Not having studied anthropology enough to be able to confirm this, I would hazard a guess that that's a function of how culturally significant the amount of daylight was, rather than anything to do with weather or temperature. For a very significant part of humanity's history (including the period in which the pagan traditions off of which we base our recognition of the solstice were developed) daylight dictated much of what people were able to do and when they could do it. In that regard, the solstice marked the end of the period in which the amount of daylight was declining and was celebrated as looking forward hopefully to longer days and greater potential for productivity. It's not necessarily the middle of "winter" in the sense of the cold season, but it is the middle of "winter" in the sense of the period in which there isn't much daylight to work with.