September – A Month of Losses

I've always enjoyed watching the passage of the seasons. September is a deceitful month. It still feels like summer, but things they are a-changing. Here in Ireland "still feels like summer" might well mean the rain hasn't stopped since mid-June. But even then there is always the hope that September will fulfill the promise of early summer and not leave us entirely bereft. As it happens, this year's September is the continuation of a warm, if not always sunny, summer.

Nevertheless, September is a month of savage losses. Here in upper mid latitudes, two hours are wiped from the account of daylight between the first and last of the month, the most of any month. Because of that quirk of the earth's orbital motion known mysteriously as the "equation of time", considerably more than half of the daylight losses are reflected in earlier sunsets as the analemma heads westward. (The word equation is used in an archaic sense – it doesn't refer to a mathematical formula, but to the equalisation of the solar day lengths into mean solar days. We could have a whole other post on the equation of time and the analemma, but I digress).

Here, the time of sunset goes from well after 8pm, to shortly after 7pm. And October will not only trim most of another hour, but heralds the end of Summer Time so that, in all, the clock time of sunset is rewound by a full three hours in the space of sixty days.

In northern hemisphere September, we switch from lookingly gloatingly at neighbours to the south, who haven't enjoyed our long summer days, to eyeing them enviously, as the passage of the autumnal equinox means that our days are now shorter than theirs. Of course, we also look at our neighbours to the north and thank our lucky celestial objects that we don't have to endure their winter. And here on this mild and damp Atlantic rock, embedded in the gulf stream, we're grateful we don't have to endure the winters of many southerly neighbours either.

September can be a bit schizophrenic about which season it occupies. Those who go by the astronomical seasons will be certain that most of September is part of summer, until the autumnal equinox late in the month. Meteorologists may go by common northern hemisphere agricultural seasons, which places September as the first month of autumn, at least in continental climates. Local customs play a role. In the US, the summer vacation season is traditionally reckoned from Memorial Day to Labor Day (which fell early on September 1st this year).

Here in Ireland there can be no doubt about the traditional season. In the local Gaelic, September's name is Meán Fómhair, meaning Mid Autumn. We are caught firmly between summer and winter. It's six weeks since Reek Sunday, when we climbed to the top of Croagh Patrick in our thinly disguised Christian replacement of Lúnasa, the harvest festival of the god, Lugh. That marked our passage into Autumn. And it is barely seven weeks to Samhain, when the souls of the dead will be abroad once more, and Winter will be upon us. Appeasing the spirits has always been a national pastime here, where the sea and the winds may be kind or cruel in what they toss our way in autumn.