Lois Edwards
Dec 1, 20222 min
Happy Winter Solstice! It’s December and the shortest day of the year is almost upon us. In fact, winter solstice is at 2:47 pm MST on December 21st, the moment at which the sun is at its lowest point for the year. Why is there such an emphasis on winter solstice? For thousands of years, humans have known that after winter solstice, the days begin to get longer. Many societies and cultures have celebrated this “rebirth” of the sun, even in prehistoric times. Thus, obliquity, or the axial tilt of Earth relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun, is the reason for the season of celebration.
We at Rocky Mountain Atheists (RMA), formerly the Atheist Society of Calgary (ASC), have a lot to celebrate this season. Yes, we have a new name, and a beautiful new logo. I want to emphasize, however, that we are the same organization with the same leadership. Nothing has changed except the name. In case you missed the announcement at our Sagan Day Celebration, the president’s news release is here: https://www.rockymountainatheists.ca/post/breaking-news-asc-is-now-the-rocky-mountain-atheists
RMA’s big event for this month is, wait for it, a Winter Solstice Celebration. It has been three years since we have been able to have a solstice dinner, so it is definitely something to celebrate. On Saturday, December 17th, at 6:00 pm, we will meet at the Rosedale Community Hall at 901 11 Ave NW, for dinner (turkey and a vegan option), games, prizes, cash bar, silent auction, and live music! The dinner will be buffet style and servers will be masked and gloved for your safety.
We have more great news! The refugee, whom we applied to sponsor three years ago, had his final interview on November 28th and he was accepted. It will take about two more months to wrap up all the details for his trip from Nepal to Calgary, but he will arrive by February or March. We will definitely have a big celebration when he gets here.
Lois’s Pick
My pick for December is a little unusual because it is not a podcast or a YouTube channel. It is a website called School of Thought. It is a non-profit organization, established to promote critical thinking, reason, and understanding. They develop educational materials such as posters and decks of cards on such topics as cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and many more. I discovered it when I was researching ways to have constructive conversations on delicate topics and found the website, Rules of Civil Conversation, which is part of the School of Thought. To learn more about it, go to the Rules of Civil Conversation web page, and look for the symbol that says “see how it works,” on the lower right of the web page. Click on the symbol and you will be taken to a video in which Steven Fry will tell you all about the School of Thought.