This weekend, will you take in some college football or NFL games? Apple picking on the East Coast is in its prime days, so if the weather is nice, perhaps that’s how you’ll spend your Friday or Saturday. If you’re near the Rockies or in parts of New England, this weekend might be the closest weekend to peak foliage.
I hope everyone has a nice fall weekend — except for the pedants who insist that fall doesn’t begin until Wednesday.
You are perfectly free to choose the autumnal equinox as your marker for the end of summer, but quit trying to claim it’s somehow the right marker. There is no “official first day of fall” because there is no official who gets to blow the whistle to start fall. No official body gets to write the rulebook on this.
The four seasons are not a creation of God. They are a device of man used to explain the phenomena of God’s creation.
The seasons are not facts, like gravity or time. They are explanatory tools.
Astronomical seasons have many uses, but we all need to recall that the astronomers are not our rulers.
Sept. 1 is when meteorologists say fall begins, and frankly, that corresponds more closely to the way most of us live. For me, because I have six children, summer ends and fall begins on the first day of school. That’s my official first day of fall because that day is when my life changes.
Labor Day is when some people stop wearing white and the neighborhood pool closes. That is just as official of a last day of summer as any equinox.
In fact, the equinox (the beginning of astronomical autumn) doesn’t matter to most people. It perhaps almost matters to me because Washington’s lettered streets run due east and west, so there’s no shade on them near sunrise or sunset.
If the astronomers and the pedants are honest, they will admit that even for them, summer ended and fall began weeks ago. They’re all watching football and picking apples. None of them are drinking Corona at the beach and working on their tans.
In most of the United States outside of California, June is warmer on average than September. But should we insist upon calling most of June “Spring” and most of September “Summer?”
More to the point, do you consider it “fall” when you attend Christmas parties on the week before Dec. 25?
In the continental U.S., the earliest sunset is around Dec. 6. Are you telling me that the feast of St. Nicholas is a dark autumn night?
Astronomers do great work, and I’m grateful for them. But they don’t make the rules.
