# The seasons: why the year turns, how many seasons the world counts and what 351 languages call them The sky gives the year four corners: two solstices and two equinoxes. Everything else was decided by people. Some counted two seasons, some three, six or seven, and Japan’s old almanac counts seventy-two. Scroll through one year cut 21 ways, the season words of 351 languages, and the stories told about the turning year. ## Why the year turns The Earth is closest to the Sun in the first week of January. Whatever makes July hot in London and Bucharest, it is not distance. Follow one orbit and watch your own latitude. ### In January the Earth is nearest the Sun On 3 January 2026 the Earth passes its closest point to the Sun: 147.1 million km. The north of the planet is in midwinter. So the common explanation, that summer comes when the Earth is close to the Sun, is wrong everywhere, and in the north it is the wrong way round. The orbit on the left is drawn to scale. It is an ellipse so close to a circle that the eye cannot tell. ### The axis leans, and keeps pointing the same way The Earth spins on an axis tilted 23.44° from upright, and as the planet goes round the Sun the axis keeps pointing at the same distant stars. For half the year the northern end leans towards the Sun, for the other half it leans away. On the right is the Earth seen from the side, with sunlight coming from the left. The bright line is your latitude: the lit part is your day, the dark part your night. Move the latitude under the picture to yours. ### Day and night are nearly equal everywhere At 14:46 UTC on 20 March the Sun stands exactly over the equator. The line between day and night runs through both poles, and every latitude gets about twelve hours of each. About, because the air bends the Sun’s light over the horizon and the Sun is a disc, not a point: on the equinox the day is already a few minutes longer than the night. At London’s latitude it lasts 12 h 11 min. ### The longest day in the north, the shortest in the south The northern end of the axis now leans straight at the Sun. At London’s latitude the day lasts 16 h 38 min and the noon Sun climbs to 62° above the horizon. North of the Arctic Circle it does not set. Height matters as much as hours. A high Sun spreads its light over less ground, so each square metre receives more of it. ### Two weeks into northern summer, the Sun is at its farthest On 6 July the Earth is 152.1 million km from the Sun, 5.0 million km farther than in January. In January the planet receives about 6.9% more sunlight than it does now. The south therefore gets its summer Sun slightly stronger and its winter Sun slightly weaker than the north does. The tilt decides which season it is; distance only adjusts it a little. ### The hottest weeks come after the longest day The solstice is the day of most sunlight in the north, yet the warmest weeks arrive a month or so later, and the coldest come in January and February, well after the darkest day. Land, and above all sea, take time to warm up and to cool down. Measured against the curve of incoming sunlight, surface temperature outside the tropics runs about 29 days behind over land and about 56 days behind over the oceans. ### The four seasons of the sky are not equal Count the days between the four corners of 2026: 92.7 from the March equinox to the June solstice, 93.7 to the September equinox, 89.9 to the December solstice, 89.0 back to March. The Earth moves fastest when it is nearest the Sun, in January, so it hurries through the northern winter. The north’s spring and summer together last 7.5 days longer than its autumn and winter. The reason follows from the laws Johannes Kepler published in 1609; astronomers in Athens had noticed the inequality about two thousand years before him. ### The shortest day in the north At London’s latitude the Sun now stays up for 7 h 50 min and reaches only 15° at noon. The June day there is 2.1 times as long. In Sydney and Buenos Aires this is the start of summer. Solstice means “the Sun stands still”: for a few days its noon height hardly changes before it starts back. ### Where the tilt changes almost nothing Set the latitude to Singapore, one degree north of the equator. Its longest and shortest days differ by 9 minutes. There is no winter to speak of. What changes there is rain. Much of the world counts its year in wet and dry, and that is where the count of seasons begins. ## How many seasons are there? The same 365 days, cut by different peoples. Each ring is one calendar; they stay on the page as you go, from two seasons to seventy-two. ### Iceland: the year in two halves (Iceland) The old Icelandic calendar has two seasons, summer and winter. They are called misseri, half-years. Summer begins on the first Thursday after 18 April and winter on a Saturday between 21 and 27 October; in 2026 that is 23 April and 24 October. The University of Iceland’s almanac calls the rules old, probably of the twelfth century. Bede, writing around 725, says the early English divided the year chiefly into two seasons, winter and summer, of six months each. - sumar: summer - vetur: winter ### The Hebrew Bible: dry and rain (Ancient Israel) The Hebrew Bible speaks mostly of two seasons: qayits, warm and dry, and ḥoref, cold and wet. On the eastern shore of the Mediterranean it is rain, far more than temperature, that divides the year. The text gives no dates. The months drawn here are the region’s climate today, and the two colours stand for water: ochre for the dry months, blue-green for the rain. - קיץ (qayits): the warm, dry season - חרף (ḥoref): the cold season of rain ### Hawaiʻi: Kau and Hoʻoilo (Hawaiʻi) Hawaiian tradition names a hotter, drier season, Kau, and a cooler, wetter one, Hoʻoilo. Hoʻoilo begins in the month when Makaliʻi, the Pleiades, appears in the east after sunset; it is the season of rain and of humpback whales offshore. In Kau the green turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. The seasons follow lunar months, so the dates on the ring are approximate. - Kau: the hotter, drier season - Hoʻoilo: the cooler, wetter season ### Central Australia: hot and cold (Central Australia) “There are two distinctive seasons that we talk about – the hot and cold weather,” say the Walabunnba families whose calendar Australia’s weather bureau publishes. Wangtanka, the hot time, brings bushfires and heavy rain; the rain bird calls before a big storm. In Yurluurrp, the cold time, kangaroo and goanna grow fat. This is the first ring from south of the equator. Its hot season falls from October to March, so its gold sits opposite the gold of the northern rings. - Wangtanka: hot weather - Yurluurrp: cold weather ### Ancient Egypt: flood, growth, harvest (Ancient Egypt) The Egyptian year had three seasons of four months each, named for what the Nile did: Akhet, the inundation; Peret, when the land emerged and was sown; Shemu, the harvest. New Year was probably first tied to the day Sirius returned to the dawn sky, at about the time the river began to rise. The calendar had 365 days and no leap day, so over the centuries its seasons slid away from the river they were named for. The ring shows them where the names fit, with the flood starting near the June solstice. Around 3000 BC, calculations put the dawn return of Sirius within days of the June solstice. The river no longer floods Egypt: since 1964 the flood has been held behind the Aswan High Dam. - Akhet: Inundation - Peret: Emergence - Shemu: Harvest ### Thailand: three seasons set by the wind (Thailand) Thailand’s weather service divides the year into a hot season from about mid-February, a rainy season from about mid-May and a cool season from about mid-October. The south-west monsoon brings the rain and the north-east monsoon ends it. Rain takes five of the twelve months. - ฤดูร้อน (ruedu ron): hot season - ฤดูฝน (ruedu fon): rainy season - ฤดูหนาว (ruedu nao): cool season ### Ethiopia: Belg, Kiremt, Bega (Ethiopia) Ethiopia’s meteorological institute reports on three seasons: Belg, the short rains from February to May; Kiremt, the main rains from June to September; and Bega, the dry months from October to January, when the harvest comes in and highland nights are cold. Each lasts four months, as in ancient Egypt. The Nile’s flood was Ethiopia’s Kiremt arriving downstream: most of the flood water came from the Ethiopian highlands. - Belg: the short rains - Kiremt: the main rains - Bega: the dry season, harvest ### The Tiwi Islands: three seasons and thirteen more (Tiwi Islands, northern Australia) North of Darwin, the Tiwi count three major seasons. In Jamutakari it rains every day and the north-west wind brings lightning and thunder. Kumunupunari is “the dry season of fire and smoke”. Tiyari is hot and humid. They are not equal: three months, six and three. Inside them the Tiwi calendar names thirteen minor seasons, which overlap. - Jamutakari: the wet season - Kumunupunari: the dry season of fire and smoke - Tiyari: the hot, humid season ### Four, by the sky (Northern hemisphere) Astronomers cut the year at the four moments described in the first chapter: the two equinoxes and the two solstices. In 2026 spring lasts 92.7 days, summer 93.7, autumn 89.9 and winter 89.0. South of the equator the same four quarters carry the opposite names. The dotted spokes on the ring mark the four moments; every other ring can be read against them. - Spring: equinox to solstice - Summer: solstice to equinox - Autumn: equinox to solstice - Winter: solstice to equinox ### Four, by the month (Weather services, northern hemisphere) Weather services need seasons that begin and end with whole months, so that one year’s figures can be compared with another’s. Their spring is March, April and May; summer is the three warmest months, winter the three coldest. It starts about three weeks before the astronomers’ spring. Australia’s weather bureau uses the same four dates with the names reversed: spring there begins on 1 September. - Spring: March, April, May - Summer: June, July, August - Autumn: September, October, November - Winter: December, January, February ### Ireland: seasons that begin at the festivals (Ireland) In the old Irish calendar the seasons begin at four festivals: spring at Imbolc on 1 February, summer at Beltaine on 1 May, autumn at Lugnasad on 1 August and winter at Samain on 1 November. The solstices and equinoxes fall in the middle of each season, as in the English word midsummer for 24 June. The same medieval texts also remember a count of two: a tale in the Ulster cycle says the year once had only two divisions, summer from Beltaine to Samain, and winter. In Ireland 1 February is still marked as the first day of spring. - errach: spring, from Imbolc - samrad: summer, from Beltaine - fogamar: autumn, from Lugnasad - gemred: winter, from Samain ### East Asia: spring starts in early February (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam) The traditional calendar of China, followed in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, also puts the solstices and equinoxes at mid-season. Spring begins at lìchūn, around 4 February, when the Sun is halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. So four calendars that all count four seasons disagree about when spring starts: 1 February in Ireland, 4 February in China, 1 March for the weather services and 20 March for astronomers. That is 47 days between the first and the last. - 春 (chūn): spring - 夏 (xià): summer - 秋 (qiū): autumn - 冬 (dōng): winter ### India’s forecasters: the monsoon is a season (India) The India Meteorological Department reports its statistics by four seasons of unequal length: winter is January and February, the pre-monsoon hot weather runs from March to May, the south-west monsoon from June to September, and the post-monsoon from October to December. None of the four is called spring or autumn. The older Indian count, six seasons, comes a few rings further out. - Winter: January and February - Pre-monsoon: the hot weather, March to May - South-west monsoon: June to September - Post-monsoon: October to December ### A fifth season to match five elements Chinese medicine paired the seasons with the five phases: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The Huangdi Neijing, the founding classic of Chinese medicine, names a fifth, 長夏 chángxià, “long summer”, between summer and autumn, and assigns it to the spleen. The passage gives the fifth season no dates, so it has no ring here. The usual explanation is that five phases needed five seasons. ### The Gulf of Carpentaria: five (Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia) The Yanyuwa of northern Australia count five. In Rra-mardu, the dry season, heavy fogs and dews come and the oystercatcher lays its eggs on the beach. In Ngardaru the north wind turns hot and raises dust storms. Na-yinarramba brings electrical storms without rain, when it is too hot for anything but fishing. Then Wunthurru, the early storms, when flying foxes leave and long rolling clouds arrive over the coast, and Lhabayi, the last of the wet. - Wunthurru: early storm season - Lhabayi: end of the wet - Rra-mardu: dry season of fogs and dew - Ngardaru: hot season - Na-yinarramba: humid season ### India: six seasons of two months (India) Sanskrit literature counts six seasons, the ṛtu, of two months each: spring, the hot season, the rains, autumn, the cold season and the cool season of dew. The dictionary of Monier-Williams notes that in ancient times the year was also divided into three, five, six, seven, twelve, thirteen and twenty-four; “in later time six seasons are enumerated”. The rains, varṣā, are a season in their own right. They arrive in different months in different parts of India, so the dates on the ring are approximate. - वसन्त (vasanta): spring - ग्रीष्म (grīṣma): the hot season - वर्षा (varṣā): the rains - शरद् (śarad): autumn, the ripening - हेमन्त (hemanta): the cold season - शिशिर (śiśira): the cool, dewy season ### Noongar country: six seasons told by flowers (South-west Australia) In the south-west corner of Australia the Noongar year has six seasons, named for stages of life from birth to adulthood. They are read from what is in flower. Bunuru, the second summer, is the time of white flowers on the jarrah and marri trees; Djeran turns to red; Makuru, cold and wet, to blue and purple, while black swans prepare to nest. Djilba opens with yellow acacias. In Kambarang the orange-yellow flowers of the Christmas tree warn that heat is on its way. The seasons have no fixed dates and, in the words of the calendar’s keepers, can be long or short. - Birak: season of the young; first summer - Bunuru: season of adolescence; second summer - Djeran: season of adulthood; autumn - Makuru: season of fertility; winter - Djilba: season of conception; first spring - Kambarang: season of birth; second spring ### Kakadu: a season named for flattened grass (Kakadu, northern Australia) The Bininj/Mungguy people of Kakadu, in Australia’s tropical north, recognise six seasons. In Kudjewk, the monsoon, speargrass grows more than two metres tall. Bangkerreng is the month of the “knock ’em down” storms, violent winds that flatten it. In Wurrkeng, the cold season, most creeks stop flowing and the country is burnt in patches. Kurrung is hot and dry, “goose time”. Kunumeleng, the build-up to the rains, “can last from a few weeks to several months”. - Kudjewk: monsoon - Bangkerreng: “knock ’em down” storms - Yekke: cooler but still humid - Wurrkeng: cold weather - Kurrung: hot dry weather - Kunumeleng: pre-monsoon storms ### Broome: a season one month long (Broome, north-west Australia) On the north-west coast of Australia the Yawuru count six seasons of very different lengths. Man-gala, the wet, lasts four months. Marrul lasts one: it begins when the inland bloodwood tree comes into bud and ends when the south-east wind starts to blow. Three of the six seasons are a single month. A season here is an event, and takes as long as the event takes. - Man-gala: the wet - Marrul: hot, still air and very high tides - Wirralburu: cooling - Barrgana: cold season - Wirlburu: warming - Laja: the hot build-up ### Seasons named for a sound and for beads Some calendars cannot be drawn against dates at all. The Asiniskaw Īthiniwak, the Rocky Cree of northern Manitoba, tie six seasons to thirteen moons. Sikwan, the break-up, is named for rattling: candling ice, running streams and the wings of arriving geese. Mikiskaw, the freeze-up, means “plenty of beads”, for the frost. Their summer, nīpin, is also the new year, the time to count how many winters old you are. The Inuit of Nunavut describe their own six seasons in one line: “Our 6 seasons follow the migration of birds.” ### Heavy dew time, and the season of big wind The Gulumoerrgin (Larrakia) people of the Darwin region divide the year into seven main seasons. Among them are the rainy season, the monsoon, a “speargrass, magpie goose egg and knock ’em down season”, “barramundi and bush fruit time”, “heavy dew time”, the season of “big wind” and the build-up. The calendar was set down in 2012 by Larrakia knowledge-holders with Australia’s national science agency. Only two of its seven seasons have printed months, so it is described here and not drawn. ### Sápmi: eight seasons, and a book title (Sápmi, northern Scandinavia) Sámi reindeer herders in the far north of Scandinavia work through a year of eight parts, with four in-between seasons added to the usual four. Giđđadálvi, spring-winter, is the time in March and April when the light is back but the snow still holds and the herds are moved to higher ground. The herding year is real and in use. The phrase “people of the eight seasons” is younger: it is the title of a 1963 book by the Swedish ethnographer Ernst Manker, and the linguist Michael Rießler thinks Manker may have coined it. No older text with the eight-part scheme was found for this page. - giđđadálvi: spring-winter - giđđa: spring - giđđageassi: spring-summer - geassi: summer - čakčageassi: autumn-summer - čakča: autumn - čakčadálvi: autumn-winter - dálvi: winter ### China: twenty-four steps of the Sun (China) The Chinese calendar divides the Sun’s yearly path into 24 equal steps of 15 degrees. Eight of them are the solstices, the equinoxes and the starts of the four seasons. The other sixteen describe the weather and the farm work of the plain of the Yellow River, where the list was made: Insects awaken, Grain rain, White dew, Frost descends. The Hong Kong Observatory notes that the list “reflects to some extent the climate over central China in ancient time”. They are still printed in calendars across East Asia, and UNESCO added them to its list of intangible heritage in 2016. All 24 are listed after this chapter. ### Japan: seventy-two seasons of five days (Japan) Each of the 24 terms is split in three, which gives 72 seasons of about five days. Each has a sentence for a name. In mid-October it is “Chrysanthemums open”; in early March, “Hibernating creatures open their doors”; in June, “Rotted grass turns into fireflies”. The list came from China. The astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai rewrote it for Japan’s own birds, flowers and weather in 1685, and it was revised again for the calendar of 1755. About fifty of the 72 were changed: only 20 keep exactly the name the old Chinese list had in that place. Otters laying out their fish, hawks turning into doves and sparrows becoming clams were replaced. ### The 24 solar terms - 4 February 立春 (lìchūn): Start of spring - 18 February 雨水 (yǔshuǐ): Rain water - 5 March 惊蛰 (jīngzhé): Insects awaken - 20 March 春分 (chūnfēn): Spring equinox - 5 April 清明 (qīngmíng): Clear and bright - 20 April 谷雨 (gǔyǔ): Grain rain - 5 May 立夏 (lìxià): Start of summer - 21 May 小满 (xiǎomǎn): Grain fills - 5 June 芒种 (mángzhòng): Grain in ear - 21 June 夏至 (xiàzhì): Summer solstice - 7 July 小暑 (xiǎoshǔ): Lesser heat - 23 July 大暑 (dàshǔ): Greater heat - 7 August 立秋 (lìqiū): Start of autumn - 23 August 处暑 (chǔshǔ): End of heat - 7 September 白露 (báilù): White dew - 23 September 秋分 (qiūfēn): Autumn equinox - 8 October 寒露 (hánlù): Cold dew - 23 October 霜降 (shuāngjiàng): Frost descends - 7 November 立冬 (lìdōng): Start of winter - 22 November 小雪 (xiǎoxuě): Lesser snow - 7 December 大雪 (dàxuě): Greater snow - 22 December 冬至 (dōngzhì): Winter solstice - 5 January 小寒 (xiǎohán): Lesser cold - 20 January 大寒 (dàhán): Greater cold ### The 72 seasons of the Japanese almanac - 4 February 東風解凍 (Harukaze kōri o toku): East wind melts the ice - 9 February 黄鶯睍睆 (Kōō kenkan su): Bush warblers sing - 14 February 魚上氷 (Uo kōri o izuru): Fish rise through the ice - 19 February 土脉潤起 (Tsuchi no shō uruoi okoru): The veins of the soil grow moist - 23 February 霞始靆 (Kasumi hajimete tanabiku): Haze first trails - 28 February 草木萌動 (Sōmoku mebae izuru): Grasses and trees begin to bud - 5 March 蟄虫啓戸 (Sugomori mushito o hiraku): Hibernating creatures open their doors - 10 March 桃始笑 (Momo hajimete saku): Peach blossoms first open - 15 March 菜虫化蝶 (Namushi chō to naru): Cabbage caterpillars become butterflies - 20 March 雀始巣 (Suzume hajimete sukū): Sparrows begin to nest - 26 March 桜始開 (Sakura hajimete saku): Cherry blossoms first open - 31 March 雷乃発声 (Kaminari sunawachi koe o hassu): Thunder gives voice - 5 April 玄鳥至 (Tsubame kitaru): Swallows arrive - 10 April 鴻雁北 (Kōgan kaeru): Wild geese go north - 15 April 虹始見 (Niji hajimete arawaru): Rainbows are first seen - 20 April 葭始生 (Ashi hajimete shōzu): Reeds first sprout - 25 April 霜止出苗 (Shimo yamite nae izuru): Frost ends, rice seedlings grow - 30 April 牡丹華 (Botan hana saku): Tree peonies bloom - 5 May 蛙始鳴 (Kawazu hajimete naku): Frogs begin to call - 11 May 蚯蚓出 (Mimizu izuru): Earthworms come out - 16 May 竹笋生 (Takenoko shōzu): Bamboo shoots come up - 21 May 蚕起食桑 (Kaiko okite kuwa o hamu): Silkworms wake and eat mulberry leaves - 26 May 紅花栄 (Benibana sakau): Safflowers flourish - 31 May 麦秋至 (Mugi no toki itaru): The wheat harvest arrives - 6 June 蟷螂生 (Kamakiri shōzu): Mantises hatch - 11 June 腐草為蛍 (Kusaretaru kusa hotaru to naru): Rotted grass turns into fireflies - 16 June 梅子黄 (Ume no mi kibamu): Ume fruits turn yellow - 21 June 乃東枯 (Natsukarekusa karuru): Self-heal withers - 26 June 菖蒲華 (Ayame hana saku): Irises bloom - 2 July 半夏生 (Hange shōzu): Crow-dipper sprouts - 7 July 温風至 (Atsukaze itaru): Hot winds arrive - 12 July 蓮始開 (Hasu hajimete hiraku): Lotus flowers first open - 17 July 鷹乃学習 (Taka sunawachi waza o narau): Young hawks learn to fly - 23 July 桐始結花 (Kiri hajimete hana o musubu): Paulownia first sets its flower buds - 28 July 土潤溽暑 (Tsuchi uruōte mushi atsushi): The earth is damp, the heat humid - 2 August 大雨時行 (Taiu tokidoki furu): Heavy rains fall at times - 7 August 涼風至 (Suzukaze itaru): Cool winds arrive - 13 August 寒蝉鳴 (Higurashi naku): Evening cicadas sing - 18 August 蒙霧升降 (Fukaki kiri matō): Thick fog rises and falls - 23 August 綿柎開 (Wata no hana shibe hiraku): Cotton bolls open - 28 August 天地始粛 (Tenchi hajimete samushi): Heaven and earth begin to cool - 2 September 禾乃登 (Kokumono sunawachi minoru): Grain ripens - 7 September 草露白 (Kusa no tsuyu shiroshi): Dew on the grass shows white - 13 September 鶺鴒鳴 (Sekirei naku): Wagtails call - 18 September 玄鳥去 (Tsubame saru): Swallows leave - 23 September 雷乃収声 (Kaminari sunawachi koe o osamu): Thunder stills its voice - 28 September 蟄虫坏戸 (Mushi kakurete to o fusagu): Creatures seal their doors in the earth - 3 October 水始涸 (Mizu hajimete karuru): Water begins to dry up - 8 October 鴻雁来 (Kōgan kitaru): Wild geese arrive - 13 October 菊花開 (Kiku no hana hiraku): Chrysanthemums open - 18 October 蟋蟀在戸 (Kirigirisu to ni ari): Crickets are at the door - 23 October 霜始降 (Shimo hajimete furu): Frost first falls - 28 October 霎時施 (Kosame tokidoki furu): Light showers fall at times - 2 November 楓蔦黄 (Momiji tsuta kibamu): Maples and ivy turn yellow - 7 November 山茶始開 (Tsubaki hajimete hiraku): Camellias first open - 12 November 地始凍 (Chi hajimete kōru): The ground first freezes - 17 November 金盞香 (Kinsenka saku): Narcissus blooms - 22 November 虹蔵不見 (Niji kakurete miezu): Rainbows hide and are not seen - 27 November 朔風払葉 (Kitakaze konoha o harau): North wind sweeps away the leaves - 2 December 橘始黄 (Tachibana hajimete kibamu): Tachibana citrus first turns yellow - 7 December 閉塞成冬 (Sora samuku fuyu to naru): The sky closes in and winter comes - 12 December 熊蟄穴 (Kuma ana ni komoru): Bears go into their dens - 17 December 鱖魚群 (Sake no uo muragaru): Salmon gather - 22 December 乃東生 (Natsukarekusa shōzu): Self-heal sprouts - 27 December 麋角解 (Sawashika no tsuno otsuru): Elk shed their antlers - 1 January 雪下出麦 (Yuki watarite mugi nobiru): Wheat sprouts under the snow - 5 January 芹乃栄 (Seri sunawachi sakau): Water dropwort flourishes - 10 January 水泉動 (Shimizu atataka o fukumu): Frozen springs begin to stir - 15 January 雉始雊 (Kiji hajimete naku): Pheasants begin to call - 20 January 款冬華 (Fuki no hana saku): Butterbur flowers appear - 25 January 水沢腹堅 (Sawamizu kōri tsumeru): Ice lies thick on the marsh streams - 30 January 鶏始乳 (Niwatori hajimete toya ni tsuku): Hens begin to lay ## Where the four words come from Each dot is a language. Dots of one colour share a word or an idea; the key under the map says which. Winter is the word most widely shared, and autumn the one the languages agree on least. ### One word from Ireland to India Latin hiems, Greek kheimṓn, Russian zima, Lithuanian žiema, Irish geimhreadh, Persian zemestān, Sanskrit hemantá: these are one word, worn differently by several thousand years. Romanian iarnă and French hiver come from the Latin adjective, “wintry times”. Of the 64 languages whose season words were traced for this map, 27 keep it. No other season word is shared so widely. Among Europe’s Indo-European languages only the Germanic ones lack it: nobody knows for certain where winter comes from. ### Years counted in winters In the fourth century the Gothic Bible translated “twelve years” with the word for winter. Old English and Old Norse counted years the same way, and in Icelandic a person is still so many winters old. The habit is not only Germanic. Navajo hai, winter, belongs to a root meaning “a winter or a year passes”, and Greenlandic ukioq means both winter and year. ### Summer, Sommer, samhradh, haf Summer has an old shared word too. English summer, German Sommer, Irish samhradh, Welsh haf and Armenian amaṙ all continue it: 17 of the 64 languages, two of them inside a compound. In Armenian the same root also gave am, “year”. The Slavic languages chose another word, leto, and it too means both summer and year. Russians give their age in it. English has counted ages in summers since about 1300. ### Where summer is the Latin word for spring Latin for spring was ver. In Romanian that word, vară, means summer, and spring became primăvară, “first spring”. Spanish verano, Portuguese verão and Albanian verë made the same move. Lithuanian and Latvian did it on their own, with their inherited word: vasara is summer and spring is pavasaris, “toward summer”. Spanish shows the word in mid-journey. In Don Quixote (1615) Cervantes names five seasons in a row: primavera, verano, estío, otoño, invierno. A dictionary printed four years earlier counts four and calls the first of them verano. ### The old word, and what replaced it The inherited spring word survives in Latin ver, Greek éar, Russian vesna, Swedish vår, Persian bahār and Sanskrit vasantá: 17 languages on this map. Elsewhere spring was renamed, most often as a beginning. French printemps is “first season” and German Frühling “the early one”; 10 languages name it that way. Another eight build it on their word for summer: Basque udaberri is “new summer”, Bulgarian prolet “before summer”. Old English said lencten, “long days”. Spring, first “springing time” in the early 1300s, replaced it, and Lent is what is left. ### The season with no shared name Around AD 98 the Roman historian Tacitus wrote of the Germanic peoples that winter, spring and summer had a meaning and a name among them, but “the name and the goods of autumn are alike unknown”. It is one Roman’s report, and the Germanic languages do have an old word for harvest time. But the map agrees with him in one respect: autumn is the season the languages agree on least. Sixteen languages name it for the harvest, with at least four unrelated words: German Herbst, Russian osen’, Albanian vjeshtë, Arabic kharīf. Four call it an ending, like Catalan tardor, “lateness”. Five call it the approach of winter, from Irish fómhar to Persian pāyiz. Six name the falling leaves. Lithuanian ruduo is the red-brown season, and Welsh hydref is the call of the stag. Whether the first speakers of the Indo-European languages had an autumn word at all is disputed. One standard dictionary says none can be reconstructed; another handbook reconstructs a word for harvest time. ### Harvest, autumn, fall English has gone through three. Old English called the season hærfest. Autumn arrived from French in the late fourteenth century and pushed harvest back into the fields. “Fall of the leaf” is recorded from the 1540s and plain fall from the 1660s. Latin autumnus itself has no known origin. French and Italian took their words from it by way of books; Romanian toamnă, Spanish otoño and Portuguese outono inherited theirs by word of mouth. ### Words made for other people’s seasons Hebrew stav, autumn, occurs once in the Bible, in the Song of Songs, where it means the rainy winter; its use for autumn is modern. Hebrew ḥoref, winter, is the same root as Arabic kharīf, autumn. In India and Pakistan kharif and rabi, the Arabic words for autumn and spring, now name the two crop seasons. Where the year has no autumn, a word was built when one was needed. Thai says “season of falling leaves”, Tagalog taglagas, “season of falling”; Yoruba borrowed the English words. Malay musim, Swahili msimu and English monsoon are all one Arabic word, mawsim, which simply means season. For Chinese, Japanese and Korean the map stays grey. The dictionary used here gives no accepted origin for Japanese haru, natsu and fuyu, and the familiar stories about the characters, such as grain and fire for 秋, are later readings. ## Who takes the summer away Before the tilt of the Earth was understood, the turning year was told as a story: a daughter kept underground, a sun goddess who hides in a cave, an old woman with her sheepskin coats. Each story is set here at its day or its season, with the oldest text found for it. Where the text names no season, the card says so. ### The Fisher who let the summer out (Ojibwe, Lake Superior) On the southern shore of Lake Superior, in an Ojibwe tale printed in 1839, a hunter called Ojeeg, the Fisher, climbs to the sky with the otter, the beaver, the lynx, the badger and the wolverine. They break through. In the lodges of the sky people they find cages full of birds, and Ojeeg cuts them open. The birds pour down through the hole, and warm weather with them. The sky people shoot him in the tail and he stays in the heavens, as the stars the Ojibwe call the Fisher. The tale as printed names no narrator. Schoolcraft’s wife, the Ojibwe writer Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and her family helped gather his material. ### The hag of winter and her prisoner (Scotland) All winter Beira, queen of winter, keeps the young Bride captive, until Angus comes to free her on the first day of spring, which is Bride’s Day. This is the form in which the story of the Cailleach and Brigid is usually told. It was printed in 1917, in a book of tales for the general reader, and its author names no source. Often presented as an ancient Celtic myth. The old hag of winter and the weather lore of St Bride’s Day are recorded folklore. No text earlier than 1917 that joins them into this plot was found. ### An ox of clay to send away the cold (China) China’s Book of Rites gives each month its orders. For the last month of winter officials are told to send out a clay ox, to see the cold off. The first month of spring belongs to the spirit Gou Mang. The oldest description opened for this page, of the Song capital in the early twelfth century, has the ox on the eve of lìchūn, the start of spring. It says the prefecture brought a spring ox into the palace “to whip the spring”, and small oxen were sold in the street. The beating of the ox is not in the Book of Rites. The ancient text has only the clay ox, sent out at the end of winter. ### The feast of the flaying of men (Mexica (Aztec), central Mexico) The second month of the Mexica year was Tlacaxipehualiztli. The Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, who questioned Nahua elders in the sixteenth century, records that on its first day slaves and captives were killed and flayed in honour of the god Xipe Totec, and that people suffering from diseases of the skin and eyes vowed to wear the skins. By the reckoning of Sahagún’s editor of 1829 the month ran from about 22 February to 13 March, in the dry season; other reckonings put it in March. Often explained as the earth putting on a new skin in spring. That reading is modern. Sahagún describes the rite and the vows of the sick, and gives no such meaning. ### Baba Dochia and her coats (Romania) Romanians call the first nine days of March the days of the Babe, the old women. The story behind them, as folklorists printed it around 1900, has old Dochia climbing the mountain with her sheep in March, wearing all her sheepskin coats. The sun comes out and she takes off one coat a day. Then the cold returns and she freezes on the mountain. In some versions she has nine coats, in others twelve. Around 1716 the Moldavian prince and scholar Dimitrie Cantemir described the rock itself, on Mount Ceahlău: an old woman with about twenty sheep. He gave her no name and no story. The tale that Dochia was the daughter of the Dacian king Decebalus, fleeing the emperor Trajan, is a ballad of 1839 by the writer Gheorghe Asachi, his own composition. ### Love burned to ash, with Spring beside him (India) The Rāmāyaṇa tells that Kāma, the god of love, dared to disturb Śiva at his meditation. The god’s eye fell on him and he was burned; since then he is called the bodiless one. The poet Kālidāsa, some centuries later, set the scene in a sudden spring. In his telling Kāma arrives with his constant companion, Spring in person, who carries the mango twig that is Kāma’s weapon. The oldest text does not mention spring; the season enters with Kālidāsa. A link to the festival of Holi was not found in the ancient texts opened for this page. ### Death is carried out of the village (Poland) In Poland, on or near the first day of spring, an effigy called Marzanna is carried out and drowned or burned. The custom is at least six centuries old. In 1420 a church synod at Poznań ordered priests to stop people carrying out a figure “which they call Death” and throwing it into water. The name Marzanna comes a little later, from the chronicler Jan Długosz, who listed her among the Polish gods and compared her to the Roman Ceres. Długosz modelled his list of Polish gods on the Roman ones, and historians treat it with caution. The oldest record speaks of Death, with no goddess of winter. ### A third of the year underground (Greece) Hades carried off Persephone. Her mother Demeter, goddess of grain, hid the seed in the ground: oxen ploughed in vain and barley was sown for nothing. Because Persephone had eaten in the underworld she must return there for part of every year, and she comes up, the hymn says, when the earth blooms with the flowers of spring. The oldest full telling, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, says three times how long she stays below: a third of the year. Six months, in most retellings. That figure is Roman, from Ovid. And her absence may not be winter at all: in Greece grain is sown in autumn and reaped in May, and one scholar argued that the barren months of the myth are the dry summer, when the seed lies stored underground. ### A burning stick held up to a star (ǀXam, South Africa) In South Africa, in notebooks kept in the 1870s, speakers of the ǀXam language described what was done when Canopus and then Sirius first came out in the winter sky. A child is told to put the end of a stick in the fire and point it, burning, at the star, and the people ask that the star may not come out coldly, and that the sun may warm them. Afterwards the women go out early to gather food, sunning their shoulders. ### The Night of the Drop (Egypt) In Cairo in the 1830s the night of 17 June was the Night of the Drop: a miraculous drop was believed to fall into the Nile and make it rise. Families spent the night on the river bank. Nearly seventeen centuries earlier the Greek traveller Pausanias was told that the Egyptians said the river rose with the tears of Isis, mourning Osiris. The tears of Isis are known through a Greek writer repeating a Phoenician; no ancient Egyptian text was found for them. The Englishman who recorded the Night of the Drop does not mention Isis; joining the two is later learning. ### The Inca feast of the Sun (Inca, Peru) Of the four festivals the Inca kings kept at Cusco, the greatest was Inti Raymi, held at the June solstice to honour the Sun as the father of the first Inca. In Cusco that is midwinter: the shortest day of the year. The description comes from Garcilaso de la Vega, born in Cusco in 1539 and writing in Spain decades after the conquest. The Inti Raymi performed at Cusco today was first staged in 1944, as a reconstruction based largely on Garcilaso. ### The day the sun trembles (Moldavia, Romania) On 24 June, St John’s day, Romanians keep Sânziene. Cantemir, writing around 1716, records what Moldavian villagers believed about that morning: that the sun does not rise steadily but with a trembling step. Everyone got up before dawn to watch. Cantemir adds that the trembling was in their dazzled eyes. He describes a second custom of the same season, the Drăgaica. When the grain begins to ripen the girls of several villages choose the most beautiful among them, crown her with ears of wheat and lead her through the fields. ### Half the year below, half above (Sumer, Mesopotamia) In a Sumerian poem written on tablets more than 3,600 years old, the goddess Inana goes down to the underworld and can leave only by sending someone in her place. She gives her husband, Dumuzid. In the broken last lines a voice divides the sentence: Dumuzid for half the year, his sister for the other half. The tablets are about a thousand years older than the hymn to Demeter. The poem names no season and says nothing of plants dying. That the story explains the dead season, which in Iraq is the summer heat, is a modern reading. ### Summer’s end (Ireland) In the Irish tale of the wooing of Emer, the hero Cú Chulainn explains old words to his charioteer. Samain, he says, is the end of summer, for the year once had two divisions: summer from Beltaine and winter from Samain. Imbolc is the beginning of spring, when the ewes are milked. This is the count of two seasons from the first rings of this page, in a tale about a thousand years old. Samain as the “Celtic New Year” is an inference first made by the scholar John Rhys in lectures of 1886; it is disputed. The early texts opened for this page give a division of the year and a night on which tales are set. ### Summer and winter pull on a rope (Inuit, Baffin Island) The anthropologist Franz Boas described the feast held on Baffin Island in November 1883, when the autumn storms begin. The people divide into two parties: the ptarmigans, who were born in winter, and the ducks, the children of summer. A rope of sealskin is stretched between them and each side pulls. If the ducks win, summer has won, and fine weather can be expected through the winter. It is one rite, in one region, seen by one visitor. It foretells the weather; it does not explain why there are seasons. ### Why winter is cold: he takes after his father (Iceland) In the Prose Edda, written in Iceland around 1220, a traveller asks why summer should be hot and winter cold. The answer is a family tree. Summer’s father is Svásuðr, a man of pleasant nature. Winter’s father is Vindsvalr, and his kin were grim and cold-hearted; Winter has their temper. The same book describes the Fimbulvetr, three winters in a row with no summer between them. The Fimbulvetr is the first sign of the end of the world, a single catastrophe. It is not a story about winter returning each year. ### The sun shuts herself in a cave (Japan) In the Kojiki, Japan’s oldest chronicle, the sun goddess Amaterasu, frightened by her brother’s violence, shuts herself in the Heavenly Rock-Dwelling, and heaven and earth go dark. The eight hundred myriad gods gather. They make the long-singing birds sing and hang up a mirror; one goddess dances, and a strong god waits hidden beside the door. The story is placed here at the December solstice because some scholars read it as the sun’s weakening at midwinter. Others read it as the memory of an eclipse. The chronicle names no season and does not say that the darkness returns. Both readings are modern. ### The sun has two wives (Māori, Aotearoa New Zealand) In Māori tradition the sun has two wives: Hine-raumati, the summer maiden, and Hine-takurua, the winter maiden. He spends half the year with each. One teller explains that the story is the sun’s own path, between its rising place in the north-east in winter and in the south-east in summer. Hine-takurua lives on the ocean and Hine-raumati on the land. Takurua is also the Māori name of Sirius. ## How the idea of a season was built ### About 3200 BC · Ireland: A tomb built for the shortest day At Newgrange, on the River Boyne, an opening above the entrance lets the rising sun shine down a passage 19 metres long into the burial chamber on the mornings around the winter solstice. A survey published in 1974 concluded that the builders intended it. Long before anyone wrote about seasons, people were building for the day the sun turns back. ### About 700 BC · Greece: A calendar of stars and birds The poet Hesiod tells a farmer when to work by stars and birds, hardly ever by a date. Reap when the Pleiades rise and plough when they set. The cry of the crane means rain and ploughing. Sixty days after the winter solstice the star Arcturus rises at dusk, then the swallow comes, and it is spring. ### About 620 BC · Sparta: Three seasons, and a fourth A fragment of the poet Alcman says that three seasons were made, summer and winter and autumn the third, and a fourth, spring, when things grow but there is not enough to eat. The four seasons had to be assembled, and this line shows one being added. ### About 430 BC · Athens: The seasons are measured, and are not equal The Athenian astronomers Meton and Euctemon are the first people recorded as finding that the four seasons differ in length. Around 130 BC Hipparchus measured spring at 94½ days and summer at 92½, and explained it by moving the Earth off the centre of the Sun’s circle. In his time autumn was the shortest season; today it is winter, because the point where the Earth is nearest the Sun has drifted. ### About 400 BC · Kos: Four seasons, four humours A medical treatise from the school of Hippocrates ties each season to a fluid of the body: phlegm increases in winter, blood in spring, yellow bile in summer, black bile in autumn. For some two thousand years afterwards the four seasons were part of a system of fours, with the elements and the temperaments. ### 139 BC · China: The 24 terms, complete The Huainanzi, compiled at the court of the prince Liu An, contains the first complete list of the 24 solar terms: every fifteen days the handle of the Dipper shifts, “producing the changes of the twenty-four seasons”. Older texts have fewer: the Book of Documents marks four, and the monthly ordinances of the Book of Rites eight. ### 37 BC · Rome: A farmer’s year in eight parts Varro’s handbook of farming gives the four seasons with their lengths, then divides the working year into eight, by winds and stars: from the west wind to the spring equinox 45 days, to the rising of the Pleiades 44, to the solstice 48, to the Dog Star 27, and so on round to the west wind again. ### About 613 and 725 · Seville and Jarrow: The wheel of the year Isidore of Seville explained the seasons with circular diagrams, and his book became known as the book of wheels. One wheel carries the words world, year, man, and joins seasons, elements and humours. The English monk Bede repeated the scheme in 725: winter is cold and wet, spring wet and hot, summer hot and dry, autumn dry and cold. The ring on this page has ancestors. ### 905 · Kyoto: Poetry is filed by season Japan’s first imperial anthology of poems, the Kokinshū, opens with the four seasons, before love. Later came books of season words for the poets of linked verse and haiku: the first separate one was printed in 1648, and one of 1803 lists some 2,600 words. ### About 1412–1416 · France: Twelve pictures of work and weather Medieval calendars showed the year as a round of work, one task to a month. The Limbourg brothers began the grandest set for the Duke of Berry’s book of hours. In February the sheep are penned, snow lies on the beehives and the household warms itself at the fire. ### 1563–1573 · Vienna: A face made of autumn Giuseppe Arcimboldo, painter to the Habsburg court, composed each of the four seasons as a head built from its own produce. Autumn is a man of grapes, pears and a pumpkin, with a split barrel for a coat. The emperor sent a set as a gift to the Elector of Saxony in 1573. ### 1609 · Prague: Why the seasons are unequal Johannes Kepler showed that a planet moves on an ellipse and sweeps equal areas in equal times, so it travels fastest when nearest the Sun. For the Earth that is early January, which is why the northern winter is the shortest season. ### 1725 · Amsterdam: Four concertos with a script Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons were printed with a sonnet for each concerto, and letters in the score mark which line is being played. ### 1736 · Norfolk: Writing down the first swallow Robert Marsham began to note, each year on his estate, the first dates of the signs of spring: flowers, leaves, the arrival of birds and their song. His family kept the record until 1958. It is the kind of record, like Kyoto’s cherry blossoms, that now shows spring moving. ### 1793 · Paris: Months renamed for the weather The French Republic replaced the months with twelve new ones named by Fabre d’Églantine for the weather and the farm, with one ending for each season: Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire for autumn; Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse for winter; Germinal, Floréal, Prairial for spring; Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor for summer. The year began in autumn. ### 1958 · Hawaiʻi: The planet breathes once a year Charles David Keeling began measuring carbon dioxide on Mauna Loa in March 1958. Besides the rise from year to year, his curve shows a yearly wave: the gas falls from about May to September as the plants of the north grow, and climbs through autumn and winter as they decay. With the long-term rise removed, the swing is now close to 7 parts per million. ### 1987 · Massachusetts: The wrong answer, in cap and gown A film that opens at a Harvard graduation asks new graduates and teachers why summer is warmer than winter. Again and again the answer is that the Earth is then closer to the Sun. ## Are the seasons changing? In Kyoto, the day the mountain cherries reach full flower has been written down since the year 812, in court diaries and temple records. Dates survive for 838 of the springs since. From 1801 to 1850 the average date was 17 April. Over the thirty years to 2026 it was 4 April, 13 days earlier. The two earliest flowerings in the whole record are 25 March 2023 and 26 March 2021. Before this century the earliest was 27 March 1409. A season can also be defined by temperature instead of by dates. A 2021 study took the land of the northern mid-latitudes, from 30° to 60° north, and let summer begin, at each place, when the smoothed temperature rises above the level that three quarters of the days of 1952–2011 stayed below, and end when it falls back under it; winter is the same with the coldest quarter. By that measure summer grew from 78 days in 1952 to 95 in 2011. Spring shrank from 124 days to 115, autumn from 87 to 82 and winter from 76 to 73. ### Do the old calendars still match the weather? That depends on what a calendar is tied to. Seasons fixed by the Sun or by a rule fall on the same dates as ever; what can move is the weather their names describe. Seasons read from flowers, birds and winds have no dates to slip from, but signs that used to arrive together can come apart. And the flood that one calendar is named for was stopped by a dam. Nine of the 21 are checked below, against measurements or against what their keepers say. The others are not tested here. #### Egypt · flood stopped by a dam: The flood kept coming, and stopped at Aswan The flood that Akhet is named for no longer reaches Egypt’s fields. The first dam at Aswan, finished in 1902, let the whole flood through its sluices. The High Dam closed the river in 1964, began to store water that May and was completed in 1970. Below it, in the words of the hydrologists Sutcliffe and Parks, the flood discharge was “eliminated”. Above the dam the flood went on arriving every summer, fed by the rains of Ethiopia. On the main Nile in northern Sudan, August, September and October carried about three fifths of the year’s water in 1961–1995, against nearly two thirds in 1911–1960. The tables read for this page end there; Ethiopia completed a large dam of its own on the Blue Nile in 2025, and no flow figures since were found. Egypt still keeps a feast of the river in those weeks: state media reported Wafaa El-Nil on 15 August 2025. #### Japan · partly drifted: The cherry is early, and the geese winter in the north From 1953 Japan’s weather agency timed plants and animals at its observatories by a single method, so its tables allow a test of the almanac. The season “Cherry blossoms first open” runs from 26 to 30 March. On the average of 1991–2020, Tokyo’s cherries open on 24 March and Kyoto’s on the 26th; on the average of 1981–2010 both dates were two days later. “Swallows arrive” begins on 5 April, and Kyoto’s first swallow was seen, on average, on 27 March, a date that has hardly moved since the 1960s. “Wild geese arrive” falls on 8 to 12 October. The environment ministry’s count of January 2025 found 282,761 geese in Japan: 245,795 of them in Miyagi prefecture, in the north, 45 in Kyoto prefecture and none in Tokyo. No long series of arrival dates was found, so no shift can be measured. At Miyajima-numa, a lake in Hokkaido, in the far north, an environment ministry ranger recorded the first flock on 15 September in each year from 2017 to 2020. Geese were not among the animals the weather agency watched, and in 2021 it stopped watching animals altogether, all 23 species, swallows and fireflies among them: around its observatories, it said, they had become hard to find. #### China · the dates hold, the weather has moved: The thaw of Rain water came two weeks early The 24 terms follow the Sun, so their dates cannot move. The weather they are named for has. A study of 549 Chinese weather stations took the average temperature of each term in 1961–1990 and asked when that temperature arrives now. Between 1961 and 2007 the warmth of Rain water came 14.6 days earlier and that of Insects awaken 11 days earlier, while the temperatures of the terms from late August to December came five or six days later. Days as cold as Greater cold fell from 32 a year in the 1960s to 14 in 1998–2007. #### India · dates revised: The forecasters moved their own dates Until 2020 India’s normal dates for the monsoon rested on records from 1901–1940. That year the weather service replaced them, using 1961–2019 for the arrival of the rains and 1971–2019 for their retreat. Arrival in Kerala, in the south, stayed at 1 June. The start of the retreat from the north-west moved from 1 September to about 17 September. The service still reports the monsoon as the four months from June to September. #### Iceland · holds, by rule: A first day of summer that often freezes Iceland’s summer begins by rule on a Thursday between 19 and 25 April, whatever the weather does. In Reykjavík, in the years 1949 to 2015, the average temperature of that day was below freezing 14 times, and in four years the thermometer never rose above zero. Trausti Jónsson, a meteorologist writing for Iceland’s weather office, does not count that against the old calendar. The day opens the warmer half of the year, he writes, and was “well chosen”. #### Sápmi · herders report drift: “The whole year has kind of changed gear” Sámi reindeer herders in Sweden, fourteen of them interviewed in 2009, described autumns that had become longer, wetter and warmer. Lakes on the migration routes that used to be frozen in October were open when the time came to move. Sudden thaws in winter had become commonplace and could leave good pasture locked under ice. “The whole year has kind of changed gear,” one of them said. #### Australia · keepers report drift: “The calendar is moving around” On the Tiwi Islands, flowering bottlebrush and wattle are the sign that tern eggs are ready to be gathered. In 2019 Tiwi rangers told researchers that the trees had flowered that year and there were very few eggs: the sign was “out by a couple of months”, and “the calendar is moving around”. Of 52 Tiwi people interviewed, 23 said the dry season was getting longer. Rainfall measured at Darwin since 2000 showed no significant change in the start of the wet. In Noongar country Makuru, in June and July, is the cold and wet season. From May to July south-west Western Australia has had about 20% less rain since 1970 than in 1900–1969. At Kakadu, park staff interviewed twenty traditional owners in 2008; most said they had noticed changes since childhood, among them later seasons and later fruiting and flowering. Joni Wilson, a Yanyuwa and Garawa woman of the Northern Territory, said in 2023: “We used to live off a seasonal calendar, but we notice changes.” For the Yawuru and Walabunnba calendars no statement from their keepers was found. ## Do other planets have seasons? Any planet with a tilted axis has seasons, and each has its own count of days. Mars leans a little more than the Earth, 25.2° against 23.4°, and its orbit is far more stretched, so its seasons are very unequal. Uranus lies on its side, tilted 98°, and takes 84 Earth years to go round the Sun, so each season lasts about 21 years, and each pole has about 42 years of daylight followed by 42 of night. On Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, a season lasts more than seven Earth years. Mercury stands almost upright, with a tilt of 0.03°, and has no seasons of this kind. The Earth’s own tilt is not fixed. Over the last million years it has swung between 22.1° and 24.5° in a cycle of about 41,000 years, and it is slowly decreasing now. The date of closest approach to the Sun also drifts, by about one day every 58 years, so in some ten thousand years the Earth will be nearest the Sun in the northern summer. ## Questions people ask about the seasons ### Why do we have seasons? Because the Earth’s axis is tilted 23.4° and keeps pointing the same way as the planet goes round the Sun. For half the year the northern half leans towards the Sun and gets longer days and a higher Sun; for the other half the southern half does. Distance is not the cause: the Earth is closest to the Sun in early January. ### How many seasons are there? It depends on who is counting. Astronomers and weather services count four. Iceland’s old calendar counts two, ancient Egypt and Thailand three, India’s classical calendar and the Noongar people of Australia six, the traditional Chinese calendar 24 solar terms and Japan’s old almanac 72. This page draws 21 such calendars as rings of one year. ### When does spring start? On 1 March for weather services in the northern hemisphere, and at the March equinox (20 March in 2026) for astronomers. The traditional calendars of Ireland and of China start it earlier, on 1 February and around 4 February. South of the equator the same rules give 1 September and the September equinox. ### Why are the seasons reversed in the southern hemisphere? When the northern end of the Earth’s axis leans towards the Sun, the southern end leans away. June brings the longest days of the year to London and the shortest to Sydney. ### Are the four seasons the same length? No. In 2026 the northern spring lasts 92.7 days, summer 93.7, autumn 89.9 and winter 89.0. The Earth moves fastest when it is nearest the Sun, in January, and so spends less time on that part of its orbit. ### Why is autumn called fall? It is short for “fall of the leaf”, a phrase recorded in English from the 1540s; plain “fall” for the season is recorded from the 1660s. Before either, the English name of the season was harvest. Autumn came from French in the late fourteenth century. ### What is the longest day of the year? The June solstice in the northern hemisphere (21 June in 2026) and the December solstice in the southern (21 December by universal time; in Sydney it is already the 22nd). At London’s latitude the June day lasts 16 h 38 min and the December day 7 h 50 min. ## How this page was made The dates and times of the equinoxes and solstices, the lengths of the seasons, the Sun’s distance and the hours of daylight are computed for 2026 with the formulas of Jean Meeus’s Astronomical Algorithms. The equinox and solstice times were compared with the table published by the US Naval Observatory for 2024 to 2030 and agree to within a minute. Daylight is counted from sunrise to sunset with the standard allowance of 0.833° for the bending of light and the size of the Sun’s disc. Each calendar on the rings comes from a source named on its card: where possible the community’s or the institution’s own publication. The Aboriginal seasonal calendars belong to the communities who shared them; they are summarised here from the pages published with their permission by the Bureau of Meteorology, Kakadu National Park and CSIRO, and each card links to the original. Seasons that follow the Sun are drawn from its computed position, in the time zone of the country concerned. Seasons that their keepers read from plants, animals and winds are drawn at the months those keepers print, and the cards say that such dates are approximate. Egypt’s three seasons are drawn where their names fit the river, beginning at the June solstice, because the Egyptian civil calendar later drifted through the year. On the rings a colour means a time of the local year, from midwinter blue to midsummer gold; seasons defined by water have colours of their own. The words come from the translation tables of English Wiktionary for spring, summer, autumn and winter, as they stood on 11 October 2026. For 64 languages each word was traced further in etymological dictionaries, and only those languages are coloured on the map. A dot stays grey where no origin is agreed. The counts printed in the chapter are counts of those 64 languages, which are mostly languages of Europe and western Asia, so they describe that sample and not all the world’s languages. The check of the calendars against the weather, in the chapter on change, rests on the sources named under each card. Three figures there are worked out for this page from published tables. The shares of the Nile’s water that arrive from August to October, in 1911–1960 and in 1961–1995, are added up from the monthly averages of Sutcliffe and Parks for the main Nile at Wadi Halfa, Kajnarty and Dongola, one record whose gauge was moved upstream. That Kyoto’s swallow date has hardly moved rests on averages taken here from the weather agency’s yearly dates: 28 March for 1961–1990 and 26 March for 1981–2010. The dates of Japan’s 72 seasons are those of 2026; the cherry and swallow dates are the weather agency’s 1991–2020 averages. The almanac gives no measured date for 1755, so only the change between the two sets of averages is a measured shift. Flow tables for the Nile after 1995, a long series of arrival dates for Japan’s geese and statements from the keepers of two Australian calendars were looked for and not obtained. What herders, rangers and traditional owners said is given as the named sources report it. Each story is given with the oldest text found for it and a note on its kind: an ancient text, a medieval or early modern one, folklore written down by a named collector, or a modern composition. Where a familiar version turned out to be later than usually said, the card says so. Quotations from published translations name the translator; the line from Tacitus is translated here from his Latin. Some points were read only through Wikipedia’s account of the source: the Poznań statute of 1420 and Jan Długosz on Marzanna, the Blue Nile’s share of the flood, the first staging of Inti Raymi in 1944, the lectures of 1886 behind the “Celtic New Year”, the part played by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and the crop seasons kharif and rabi. https://mariuscomper.uk/seasons/