Today is the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. And it’ll be the shortest work day of the year as everyone bunks off early to get stuck into the Christmas cheer. And in that spirit, this will be a short post to the bonkers.ie blog too.
Today is also the day that twelve lucky winners, selected from a lottery of 30,000 people, got to enter the Newgrange burial chamber to await the solstice sunrise. Sadly, or perhaps predictably, the sun didn’t shine. Could it be a celestial sign?
A sign? Well, another ancient people of avid builders and star gazers also have something rather dramatic lined up for us today. A baktun, or 394 year cycle of the Mayan calendar comes to an end on this winter solstice, and nutters far and wide reckon it can mean just one thing. The end of the world.
Dramatic enough for you? Well, lucky for us the brain-boxes over at NASA have been keeping their eyes peeled for Mayan Meteorites and haven’t spotted any… yet. They’ve even posted a fascinating blog and video on their website explaining the whole thing which you can see here. It opens with the line “Dec 22 2012: If you’re reading this story, it means one thing: The World Didn’t End Yesterday”. Oops, I think we’re a day early for that one!
With all of the excitement and drama afoot, you’d nearly forget that it’s just four days ‘till Christmas. And as something of an optimist, I’m off out to get my turkey, and I’m fully expecting to share it with my family on Christmas day.
And that’s what this blog is really all about. All of us here would like to wish everyone who’s helped support bonkers.ie and everyone we’ve worked with over the last year a very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2013 – which is a year I’m fairly confident we’ll all get to see!
Merry Christmas everyone and thank you from all at bonkers.ie
