30F at 7.30am and overcast with rippling cloud and a pink sunrise at 7.36am, rising to a high of 40F and sunny with wispy balls of cotton wool clouds. Icicles as big as railroad spikes glistening in the afternoon sun.

Winter Solstice began at 5.20am. The first day of Yuletide, the shortest day of the year (7.36am to 4.29pm) and originally an ancient pagan festival of lights. There’s a reason why there are festivals of light in religions in this hemisphere around this time – the darkest time of the year. The seasons are caused by the tilt in the earth’s axis. This tilt is constant as the earth spins in its orbit around the sun in an elliptical pattern (an oval). We’re at one of the narrow ends of the elliptical orbit, and the northern hemisphere is the farthest away from the sun at this time.