> I don't know of anyone who does *NOT* believe that June 21st
> is the first day of summer and December 21st is the first day of winter
In an astronomical (and general scientific) sense, the summer
solstice marks the beginning of summer, the winter solstice
the start of winter, the vernal equinox the arrival of spring,
and the autumnal equinox the beginning of fall.
The summer solstice has also been known as "midsummer" (and, IIRC,
St. John's Day) for a very, very long time.
Phenomenologically, summer begins when the weather starts to feel
reasonably consistently "summery" with an expectation that it'll
continue to do so from that point through the usual summer months.
When that usually happens varies from location to location, and
exactly when it happens depends on what the weather is doing from
year to year.
Socially, summer begins on a date when one's culture has decided
summer starts: the last day of the school year, or Memorial Day
(US), for example. Some folks consider all of June to be part of
spring, notwithstanding the last nine days of it being after the
solstice.
If "Midsummer" were truly the middle of summer, then autumn would
start in mid-August. Nobody I know around here thinks of autumn
as starting any earlier than sometime in September. Still, "Midsummer"
is one of the names for the summer solstice.
So I don't know many people who refuse to acknowledge that the
start of summer and winter are _technically_ the respective
solstices, but neither do I know anyone who fails to refer to
late November and _all_ of December as being part of winter in
any context _other_ than scientific. The start of summer seems
to be rather less nailed-down.
Gee, you're both right.
-- Glenn
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