The Aztecs would rip out still-beating human hearts to honor the sun god Huitzilopochtli, so that the sun would continue to rise. I too have performed a ritual every year, in a tradition taught me by my father. On New Year’s Eve, we consume a root beer float to honor the passing year and propitiate the new one. Every year since I was a wee little tyke I have performed the sacrifice.
Until last night. I no longer have children at home, and my wife was at work. I was alone with the cat when I suddenly realized at 11pm that I had none of the sacred ingredients, neither root beer nor ice cream, it was -10°C outside, and even if I felt like taking a walk, no store would be open at this hour. I must confess I also didn’t feel much like saving the world this year.
I apologize if 2025 turns out to be a disastrously bad year — it will all be my fault.
The omens have already begun. The US Capitol building was struck by lightning last night, something that I’m sure almost never happens.
If Trump was hit by lightning I’d almost be tempted to believe in Gawd… Then if Vance and co got hit as well..
Alos, um, don’t they have lightning rods on the Capitol and other tall buildings as routine there??
The US Capitol is the tallest building for a mile around it, so I bet it is often hit by lightning, usually in the summer though.
Nah, I’m going with the lightning as a practice shot for three weeks from now.
Had thunder and lightning also here in NY right at New Years.
Elsewhere in lightning-bait news:
Controversy over management of Christ the Redeemer
I have been refusing to do my family’s ritual for many years now in hopes of keeping the new years away. This has been a miserable failure and now here I am at 80 and it looks like I cannot avoid 81 in February. Well, I could avoid it by dying of course (which could spontaneously happen any old time now) but I do not favour this plan.
And curse you computer for flagging the perfectly correct Canadian spelling of “favour”. You are my servant, I am not yours!
(re-posted in the right thread)
For the first time that I can remember I went to bed early on 31st December. No ill effects so far.
Ed Seedhouse @5. I’m in the UK and British spelling is always accepted on this site. Are you set to British English?
December 18 is the Aztec Feast day to celebrate Lord Huitzolopochtli. We all let that one pass us by. Apparently, turkeys were a staple holiday meal on Aztec holidays. Not root beer floats, but chocolate drinks too.
Solstice rituals are important, PZ. I’ve never observed that one, but I’ll consider starting. I foresee that because we have failed to observe this sacred ritual, we will be cursed with a monster ruling over us for the next four years. There will be much gnashing of teeth.
I read a few years ago in a book by a French scholar of Roman religion that the month of the Winter Solstice was a series of ritual celebrations in Rome. I don’t know if that translated to the rest of the Roman world, but possibly. All the religious cults in Rome, and there were quit a few, had important feasts during this time of year. So it was a busy time propitiating the gods.
Oh, PZ, such blasphemy!. We are putting your name on our Aztec calendar to be struck by lightning in the year 2085. Does root beer float? Is a bear catholic? Does the pope shit in the woods. These are important questions I am sure the main slime media will address, soon.
Brace yourself for the insanity about to hit us in the new year. However, I hope your 2025 is one of peace and prosperity.
Not to worry! I observed my family’s tradition of putting a little pouch of money outside the door before midnight, then bringing it in when I got up this morning. According to my elders our collective prosperity for the year is assured!
I think this might be a local (or even unique to my family) variant of “first-foot”, a tradition in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-foot
Things will be fine. I had the ritual pickled herring to help straighten out the new year.
It’s the dead of winter man! How is DC getting thunderstorms? I’ve seen photos of DC in winter, and there is most definitely snow. In fact, I looked it up, and it gets more than a foot of snow each winter…moreover, nighttime temperatures usually drop near, or below freezing in late December/early January. Thunderstorms require heat and humidity, interacting with a cold front. [And please, pedants don’t @ me, I know that thundersnow is a thing. I even experienced it once (in Montréal, where I used to live…it was fairly tame, just a couple lightning strikes and associated thunderclaps, but it still scared the living daylights out of me). But it’s super uncommon, occurring less than 10X per year, globally, and I don’t think that’s what happened to the Capitol building this time.]
Freakin’ climate change.
Addendum: I did a bit more digging and actually, thundersnow occurs <10X per year (on average) in the USA alone. Globally, the answer is hard to know for sure, but a recent study of just China found ~300 occurrences (on average) per year, so the global total is likely in the low thousands.
@ ^ VolcanoMan : Trivia – You’d think lightning would occur most often over the ocean given geography and how much of our planet it covers but actually :
Source : https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2023/07/Central_Africa_the_most_active_lightning_region_in_the_world
Goes with tropical jungle so guess it makes sense when you think about it although why Central Africa not the Amazon I’m not quite sure…
Oh, & thundersnow requires colder conditions than thunderstorms obvs!
I’ve experienced thundersnow, in the UK, and very dramatic it was too, I was looking outside when one lightening bolt came down fairly close, lit up the falling snow incredibly brightly, absolutely beautiful.
@3 I was in NY for NYE as well–is anyone else concerned that we had what is functionally a summer thunderstorm (with some pretty spectacular lightening) in the dead of winter?
The downpour was so bad that the highways were flooding & cars were pulling off the highway because the downpour made it impossible to see.
The US is going to have to completely redo its infrastructure to deal with climate change; the storm drains were completely overwhelmed. Just happy I wasn’t on the GWB or the new Tappan Zee at the time.
Hope you weren’t in Times Square at the time of the downpour bcw.
Or else hope the cholesterol from all those Big Macs finally kicks in and finishes the job. Seriously, what is keeping TFG alive.
I’m pretty sure the answer is “you don’t know the POWER of the Dark Side!”
I’ve experienced thunder snow twice in my life here in NJ, awesome experience. Very difficult to get the conditions for such an event.
@ PZ: I hope you said the words correctly when you performed the ritual.
Eos is the publication of the American Geophysics Union. They recently summarized a paper that described proofs of increased lightning on and around oceanic trade routes. So lightning over the ocean is provably not evenly distributed.
Maybe this is also shipping. :)
Rabbitbrush @ 11
We eat lots of pickled herring for Xmas in Sweden. The fermented baltic sea herring is for consumption in fall. I am not certain about new year herring, we mostly consume ethanol-based beverages.
-Is there a ritual that would allow you to go “Fast Forward” 365 days? Or even four years?
Hmm …here is an interesting Youtube title. “Ghost – Ritual – The Masquerade – Atlanta”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mPLowrdom04