NON-RELIGIOUS WINTER SOLSTICE CAROL (Adeste Fidelis)

 

This year’s winter solstice is pretty much like last year

With singing and drinking filling folks with good cheer.

Why does this happen, periodically?

Because the Earth is tilted to its plane of orbit

The Earth’s axis is tilted: twenty three degrees.

 

The Earth’s solar orbit illuminates our north sky

Then six months later it’s the south’s turn to fry.

It’s simply envisioned, gyroscopically.

Earth’s axis of rotation, while circling in its orbit

Maintains an inclination of twenty three degrees.

 

And now, in December, there’s hardly any sunlight

And up north in Reykjavik the whole day is night.

But daylight’s returning, automatically.

Because the Earth is tilted to its plane of orbit,

The Earth’s axis is tilted: twenty three degrees.

 

With our glasses clinking, it’s not to Jesus’ birthday

Or to the Maccabees that we toast today.

No, it is simple, astronomically.

Terrae proclinatae,                                    (Of the leaning Earth)

Ambitum laudamus .                                  (We praise the orbit.)

Venite extollamus                                      (Come, let us extol)

Terram, Dominam.                                    (The Earth, our Lord.)

 

Stephen Baird MD

 

Note:  Some researchers of the trial of Gallileo Gallilei by the Inquisition for defending Copernicanism, have speculated that this fragment of Latin verse to Adeste Fidelis was actually written by Galileo.  But critics suggest that this looks too much like American high school Latin and is therefore a modern forgery.