Here you see yesterday’s winter solstice sunset over Great Cove and Eggemoggin Reach. The word “solstice” is derived from Latin and broadly means “the sun standing still.”
Thus, yesterday the sun stopped what to our eyes was its southerly journey and now will appear to turn around and slowly head north. (Of course, our sun doesn’t move like that; our planet is doing that kind of moving in relation to our star.)
Practically, this means that our daylight will start to increase slowly each day until the summer solstice. Days reportedly now are getting longer by an average of 2 minutes and 7 seconds; by January 18 we’ll be having an extra hour of daylight. After that, we’ll accumulate about an hour every four weeks. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 21, 2021)