Fading Ad Blog Rotating Header Image

Winter Solstice

A Winter’s Day In A Deep & Dark December – I Am A Rock [In Shock] #haiku

© Frank H. Jump

Unseasonable
Stationary snowflake panes
Shocking climate change

So many lovely ‘Douglas Leigh-styled‘ illuminated snowflakes
Adorn the Flatbush Streets
Hovering from Chinatown’s Canal
Then over the Manhattan Bridge
Into the cavernous Flatbush Extension
Of high-rise hopes for prosperity
Northern Comfort & joy for this holiday season
And the coming New Year
Only a facsimile of snow for this winter solstice
Will suffice for ice
As winter marigolds continue to bloom
In our glorious & confused ghetto garden

Cat Silhouette – Amersfoort, NL – Gaia Son – Happy Winter Solstice

Cropped & Altered  by FHJ  © Gaia Son

Uncropped & Unaltered © Gaia Son

The Snowflake – On Advertising Legend Douglas Leigh – by Tod Swormstedt

Somewhere Above Canal Street © Frank H. Jump

Although I had learned and come to respect Frank Jump’s work in documenting ghost signs, it wasn’t until the summer of 1999 that I had the opportunity to meet him in person. Jump happened to be on a road trip, heading back to New York City, and took time to stop and see what I was doing as founder of the American Sign Museum, here in Cincinnati. The museum was very much in its infancy then, and I had just begun to assemble a collection of vintage signs and sign-related items.

Several months later, I had the occasion to visit with Frank and his partner, Vincenzo, at their Brooklyn home. That opportunity was all about our mutual interests, and we’ve remained friends as both of our projects progressed. I will never forget that first visit to see Frank…

My trip to New York was a last-minute mission of mercy. The urgency had been created by a phone call I received from Ilaria Borghese, the great-granddaughter of Douglas Leigh, the creative genius behind Times Square’s Great White Way. As she explained, Leigh’s widow (and second wife), Elsie, was planning to clean out their former Upper East Side apartment in the next two days, and all was going in a dumpster. She said, “If you want anything, you’d better get up here and grab it.”

I couldn’t believe it—Douglas Leigh’s incredible legacy being tossed in a dumpster. I booked the next flight I could get to LaGuardia. As I was scrambling to get details together, I remembered Frank’s invitation from the summer before to stop by. I called him and, in a rather frantic voice, tried to explain my dilemma, asking if he could pick me up at the airport and let me stay overnight. “Sure,” he said without hesitation. “You can tell me all about it when you get here.”

He picked me up that evening, and over dinner, I rehashed my conversation with Ilaria and told him my plan was to get over to the apartment and save as much as I could. Frank said he would drive me over to the former Leigh penthouse first thing in the morning. He told me he had to be at work at noon that day but he’d do whatever he could to help up until he had to leave.

What Frank and I found when we exited the seventh-floor elevator was an expansive apartment with boxes piled everywhere. It was just like Ilaria said it would be: a bunch of workmen gathering up the boxes indiscriminately and loading them onto the same elevator for disposal in the dumpster waiting street-side. Frank and I were able to put the workmen off for a time while we scurried around taking stock of the various piles and trying to segment the archival items from the clothes, furniture and other personal items. Toward the end, we were actually grabbing boxes from the workmen’s arms and stacking them to the side.

At one point, Elsie asked if we wanted “the Snowflake,” and we both looked at each other and said in unison, “The Snowflake?” Unfortunately, I was not equipped to ship the several-ton illuminated snowflake that had hung over the intersection of 57th and Fifth Avenue every holiday season. By the end of the day, we were able to save a little more than seven hundred items, dominated by historic photographs, slides and sketches of Leigh’s work and nearly three hundred cans of 16mm promotional films. We were even fortunate to save such things as Leigh’s Rolodex and several personally annotated scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine clippings documenting Leigh’s career.

When I founded the American Sign Museum, the mission was to inform and educate the general public, as well as business and special interest groups, about the history of the sign industry and its significant contribution to commerce and the American landscape. Frank Jump has played a part as preservationist in this mission, having spent the last two decades urgently documenting the history of mural advertisements throughout the five boroughs of New York City with his Fading Ad Campaign.

Tod Swormstedt
Founder of the American Sign Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio
Former editor and publisher of Signs of the Times Magazine

From The Fading Ads of NYC (History Press, 2011) © Frank H. Jump

Happy Winter Solstice!

Jet Lens Flare © Frank H. Jump

Winter Solstice 2012: Shortest Day Of The Year Marked By Pagan Celebrations – Huffington Post

Tales of Winter Solstice

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE – Collage of Roger Dean, Original photos of petroglyphs in NM & Getty Photo of Stonehenge

Winter Solstice 2012: A Shortest Day Of The Year Marked By Pagan Celebrations

Cosmic Triple Play – Winter Solstice Eclipsed Full Moon – Meteor Shower

HERIBERT PROEPPER FILE - The moon appears totally covered by shadow as the earth passes between the moon and the sun, during the lunar eclipse in this Jan. 9, 2001, file photo taken in Kiel, Germany.

For the first time in 632 years, the full moon will experience a total lunar eclipse on the winter solstice, the equivalent of a cosmic triple play – Helena Independent Record

Other sites have cited lengths of time this hasn’t happened. LiveScience claims it hasn’t happened in 372 year AND there will be a meteor shower.

Live Science

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel – Toll The Ancient Yuletide Carol – Global Winter Solstice 2009 – Flatbush, Brooklyn

Icelandic manuscript depicting Odin who slew the frost giant, Ymir. – Wikipedia

Site of the Goseck circle. The yellow lines represent the direction the Sun rises and sets at the winter solstice, while the vertical line shows the astronomical meridian. – Wikipedia

The Goseck circle is a Neolithic structure in Goseck in the Burgenlandkreis district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It consists of a set of concentric ditches 75 meters (246 feet) across and two palisade rings containing gates in defined places. It is considered the earliest sun observatory currently known in the world. – Wikipedia

A view inside the recently reconstructed wooden palisade of the circle. – Wikipedia

“Midwinter blót” (at Uppsala Temple), by Carl Larsson (1915) – Wikipedia

In Sweden and many surrounding parts of Europe, polytheistic tribes celebrated a Midvinterblot or mid-winter-sacrifice, featuring both animal and human sacrifice. The blót was performed by goði, or priests, at certain cult sites, most of which have churches built upon them now. Midvinterblot paid tribute to the local gods, appealing to them to let go winter’s grip. The folk tradition was finally abandoned by 1200, due to missionary persistence. – Wikipedia

An illustration of people hauling a Yule log from Chambers Book of Days (1832)- Wikipedia

A Yule log is a large wooden log which is burned in the hearth as a part of traditional Yule or Christmas celebrations in several European cultures. It can be a part of the Winter Solstice festival or the Twelve Days of Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or Twelfth Night.

Yule or Yule-tide is a winter festival that was initially celebrated by the historical Germanic peoples as a pagan religious festival, though it was later absorbed into, and equated with, the Christian festival of Christmas. The festival was originally celebrated from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar. The festival was placed on December 25 when the Christian calendar (Julian calendar) was adopted. Some historians claim that the celebration is connected to the Wild Hunt or was influenced by Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival.

Terms with an etymological equivalent to “Yule” are still used in the Nordic Countries for the Christian Christmas, but also for other religious holidays of the season. In modern times this has gradually led to a more secular tradition under the same name as Christmas. Yule is also used to a lesser extent in English-speaking countries to refer to Christmas. Customs such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from Yule. In modern times, Yule is observed as a cultural festival and also with religious rites by some Christians and by some Neopagans. – Wikipedia

The Inti Raymi or Festival of the Sun was a religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the sun god Inti. It also marked the winter solstice and a new year in the Andes of the Southern Hemisphere. – Wikipedia

The Inti Raymi or Festival of the Sun was a religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the sun god Inti. It also marked the winter solstice and a new year in the Andes of the Southern Hemisphere. One ceremony performed by the Inca priests was the tying of the sun. In Machu Picchu there is still a large column of stone called an Intihuatana, meaning “hitching post of the sun” or literally for tying the sun. The ceremony to tie the sun to the stone was to prevent the sun from escaping. The Spanish conquest, never finding Machu Picchu, destroyed all the other intihuatana, extinguishing the sun tying practice. The Catholic Church managed to suppress all Inti festivals and ceremonies by 1572. Since 1944 a theatrical representation of the Inti Raymi has been taking place at Sacsayhuamán (two km. from Cusco) on June 24 of each year, attracting thousands of local visitors and tourists. The Monte Alto culture may have also had a similar tradition. – Wikipedia

The Winter Solstice occurs exactly when the earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26′. Though the Winter Solstice lasts an instant in time, the term is also colloquially used like Midwinter to refer to the day on which it occurs. For most people in the high latitudes this is commonly known as the shortest day and the sun’s daily maximum position in the sky is the lowest. – Wikipedia

Mosaic of Sol (the Sun) in Mausoleum M in the pre-fourth-century necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica. Some have interpreted it as representing Christ. – Wikipedia

Sol Invictus (“the undefeated Sun”) or, more fully, Deus Sol Invictus (“the undefeated sun god”) was a religious title applied to at least three distinct divinities during the later Roman Empire; El Gabal, Mithras, and Sol. A festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun (or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti) was celebrated by the Romans on December 25. On this, the first day after the six day solar standstill of the winter solstice, the duration of daylight first begins to increase, as the sun once again begins its sunrise movement toward the North, interpreted as the “rebirth” of the sun. With the growing popularity of the Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth came to be given much of the recognition previously given to a sun god, thereby including Christ in the tradition. This was later condemned by the early Catholic Church for associating Christ with pagan practices. – Wikipedia

December 19th Blizzard – Flatbush – Liberty Snow 2009 © Frank H. Jump

Wikipedia references:

Other links:

Winter Solstice – Astronomically Speaking

Science World, Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice Quicktime Movie

Eric Weinstein’s World of Science is an excellent Internet resource for Mathematics & Science. Click on the globe for a Quicktime Movie of the Earth as its axis shifts through the seasons with relationship to the Sun.

More On The Winter Solstice – Ancient Origins

Ancient Origins, Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice – Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA

Happy Winter Solstice - Pocono Springs, Newfoundland PA
© Frank H. Jump

Hawthorne, Choke Cherries & Winter Solstice