The writer had to attend a standup with a colleague in Norway to realize this and write an article. Funnily enough, as a Muslim I get reminded about this annually during Ramadan, which is right now.
First of Ramadan this year coincided with March 1, and it was a 12:45 hours of fasting from the first light of dawn to sunset at my
location, also near Los Angeles. Today it's going to be 13:15 hours long, and by the time last of Ramadan rolls in around the end of March, it will be 13:37 hours.
Ramadan is observed following the lunar calendar, which is shorter than solar- based calendars by about 10 days. A winter Ramadan is short and easy in the northern hemisphere and we will have the shortest days in 2031. 2047 it's going to be middle of summer, so the hardest.
In case you ask, well what about places where sun does not set? When do you have your Suhoor (meal before dawn) and iftar (breakfast meal at sunset)? Opinions differ, but people usually follow the more realistic time of sunrise and sunset at a reference location. My brother in law was in Sweden few years back and he used the time of Mecca as reference.
Living among Muslim and Catholic people in a time of simultaneous Lent and Ramadan, I first read "How the Fast Days are getting longer" and thought "How true, how true".
As a middle-aged human I first read "How the Fast Days are getting longer" as some kind of ironic commentary with the actual meaning being "how fast the days are getting shorter".
I think it speeds up because we settle in a routine, and when every day is mostly the same the brain just compresses the experience. The younger you are, the more new everything is around you, and you may not know yet what is worth trying or not, hence more things happen, and that makes it appear to last longer.
An interesting thing that non-muslims may not consider is that because Ramadan goes backwards in the western calendar approx. 10 days per year, for many people it'll be only a few times in their total lifespan when they experience and remember it being in the middle of summer and also in the middle of winter.
This. I was a high schooler when I had winter Ramadan. Next time that happens in 2031 I'll be 46, and 62 in 2047 when it's in the middle of summer. If I'm lucky I might get one more winter Ramadan in 2063 or something, InshaAllah
Yesterday I had a flight from San Jose to LA. I didn't really plan for Ramadan when I booked the flight. I was scheduled to land at LAX at 6.45pm, about 25 minutes before iftar LA time. The plan was to land, have something light at the terminal then drive 1 hour back to my place.
Well the flight got delayed about 25 minutes. It was going to land about 10 minutes after sunset. I was debating whether to buy something to eat before boarding. But then I can't have the tray open and eat when the plane is landing. I ended up breaking fast in the LAX terminal but around 30 minutes after I originally planned to.
Its really nice flying during sunset though, the pink sky around LA was gorgeous.
Depending on the specific school of fiqh that the commenter follows, he could have also been totally fine not fasting at all if traveling more than 80 km beyond his home.
That's right! People who are used to fasting don't want to miss out regardless. I mean you get the best type of food in Ramadan which for some reason people don't make the rest of the year.
As an Israeli, on Friday and Saturday the train/bus schedule changes based on the time Sabbath starts (which is, iirc, when 3 stars are visible in the sky), meaning that in winter there's like one or two trains really late (like 22:00-23:00) on Saturday, and in summer there's like four or five, starting at a more reasonable time than 23:00.
I saw some things recently about how Hakeem Olajuwon fasted during Ramadan and generally his performance was just as good during Ramadan as during the rest of the season, which is really impressive.
I'm not seeing how the time of sunrise and sunset differ according to whether your calendar follows the sun or the moon. Ramadan wanders through the solar year, sometimes occurring in the summer, sometimes in the winter, because it is scheduled according to the lunar cycle. But the fact that Stockholm has a lot more daylight during summer than Mecca does is just a consequence of the layout of the Earth. They both have summer at the same time. The effects are what's different.
If you use a solar calendar, the difference would only be by location. Solar calendar users already experience that. It applies for day-to-day stuff, but I actually can't think of any events explicitly tied to sunrise/sunset in a Western/Christian calendar. So you really need that to experience the full extreme, which Ramadan has.
Jewish holidays have that too, with the new day starting at sunset. But the calendar is lunisolar, so it wobbles buts doesn't drift. Islamic calendar has maximum differences.
That's why people who use lunar calendars tend to live closer to the equator, where the annual effects of the Earth's tilt are negligible and the lunar cycle is much more noticeable
Before the modern era, Christian countries also demarcated their hours according to sunrise and sunset; even today, Catholic and Orthodox monasteries and seminaries use these for the Liturgy of the Hours.
>Ramadan wanders through the solar year, sometimes occurring in the summer, sometimes in the winter, because it is scheduled according to the lunar cycle.
To be honest, that's the difference people are talking about (at least to my understanding). Because Ramadan follows a lunar calendar, the sunrise on the first day of Ramadan in Stockholm could happen anywhere from ~3:30am to ~8:45am depending on the year.
If I were using a lunar calendar as my actual calendar, the first day of the year would also have a sunrise time that varied significantly.
The start and the end of ramadan (the month) are based entirely on the lunar calendar, and the islamic authorities that your particular branch of the faith sighting the moon by eyeball, but the length of time per day that you're obligated to fast are based on sunrise and sunset, which is obviously solar.
I mean, yes the sighting of the Sun is a solar-related reckoning of time, but the solar calendar is based on the Earth's orbit around our Sun and the way that orbit changes the Earth's relative axial tilt in relation to the part which faces Sunward, yes?
On the other hand, a sunrise and sunset are not so much dependent on our orbit at all, but your particular latitude and longitude at any given point in time. Sunrise and sunset, in terms of orbital mechanics, aren't dependent on Earth's position in space or its orbit, but on the observer's position on Earth: where either the terrain/shadow obscures the Sun from our view or it doesn't. You can easily modify the phenomena of sunrise or sunset by traveling elsewhere, regardless of the solar calendar's season or our axial tilt.
Our solar and lunar calendars are reckoned by solar and lunar activity, and Earthbound Leadership adjusts those calendars so that they're calibrated to that activity. On the contrary, with our civil time fixed in an abstract 24-hour cycle and sliced up into 60-minute time zones (give or take), sidereal time is sort of divorced from clock time, and we rarely attempt, in modern times, to calibrate civil time according to the Sun's actual meridians at all -- but we do, in fact, find it necessary to compensate for variations in the Earth's rotation.
Ask any astronaut about sunrise and sunset, because for a satellite orbiting Earth, the Moon, or a probe which is traveling somewhere, those are alien or malleable constructs.
I mean, very roughly, our western calendar based on solar observations is consistent in that the same months will always be in the same season. You can always expect that January and December will be cold, and in the northern hemisphere have some of the shortest days of the year.
The Arabic Islamic calendar is not like that. Ramadan is one of the standard months of the lunar calendar and depending on what year you're talking about, Ramadan might be exactly in the middle of summer, or it might be in the direct middle of winter. Very approximately it goes "backwards" in seasons 10 or 11 days per year and eventually wraps all the way around from the POV of the western solar calendar.
In the western calendar, the winter solstice will always fall on December 20th or 21st even going up to the year 2100. And the same for the summer solstice on June 20th or 21st.
Yes but you said that "sunrise and sunset are solar reckoning" and I wasn't taking issue with the topic of lunar/solar calendars because calendars don't count off or delineate the hours in a day.
Every calendar that I'm aware of considers "days" as an abstract unit which consists of one planetary rotation, without nuances of activity or visibility of external bodies, right? True?
What I meant was that for an observant Muslim, the month start and month end date of Ramadan is set by the moon, but also each day has a very slight different sunrise time and Iftar time (sunset, when you can eat and drink again) which is dependent on the sun's position.
You are right that the human perceived calendar date is something we invented rather arbitrarily. Of course, the longest day of the year was occurring on June 20th before humans invented agriculture or cities. That we call it "June" and "20" is a cultural artifact.
Sunrise and sunset are wholly dependent on the observer’s position because “night” is a cultural construct referring to being within the Earth’s shadow rather than a dragon devouring the Sun, yes?
I am heading to the local cafe right now. This is the only time of the year they make Special Ramadan Phirni and they don't even share that exact recipe. I have begged them many times: either make it year round or for just give me the bloody recipe.
In Bangladesh we also make a bunch of different dishes only in Ramadan. I mean they are made all year round in restaurants, but in Ramadan every Muslim household and street corner vendors will make them- haleem (lentil soup with meat), piyaju/beguni (deep fried snacks made of onions, lentils and eggplant etc.), bundia/jalebi (desserts), sola-muri (chickpea dish with puffed rice), "rooh afza" beverage to name a few. Even my non-muslim friends would crave some of these dishes and look forward to Ramadan to enjoy these.
How apropos and now I'm curious how many English speakers don’t really consider how a “mildly profane” adjective had its start as a blasphemous slur against the Eucharist and a certain Queen?
First of Ramadan this year coincided with March 1, and it was a 12:45 hours of fasting from the first light of dawn to sunset at my location, also near Los Angeles. Today it's going to be 13:15 hours long, and by the time last of Ramadan rolls in around the end of March, it will be 13:37 hours.
Ramadan is observed following the lunar calendar, which is shorter than solar- based calendars by about 10 days. A winter Ramadan is short and easy in the northern hemisphere and we will have the shortest days in 2031. 2047 it's going to be middle of summer, so the hardest.
In case you ask, well what about places where sun does not set? When do you have your Suhoor (meal before dawn) and iftar (breakfast meal at sunset)? Opinions differ, but people usually follow the more realistic time of sunrise and sunset at a reference location. My brother in law was in Sweden few years back and he used the time of Mecca as reference.