Although we always think of 21 December as being the shortest day and the Winter Solstice, in fact this year both fall today, 22 December. The Solstice was actually at 05:30 UTC (aka. GMT) this morning. And today is the shortest day (time between sunrise and sunset) of the year in London; with just 7 hours 49 minutes 43 seconds of daylights today is just 1 second shorter than yesterday, and 5 seconds shorter than tomorrow.

Almost every culture around the world has a rite (often a festival of rebirth, light or fire) observing “the turning of the year”: that time when the days start lengthening and we know Spring is on the way. For most of us in the western world the Roman Saturnalia and the Celtic fire festivals have been admixed by Christianity to make our Christmas.

So we had jam yesterday and although there’s no jam today there will be jam again tomorrow.