We explain what spring is, its history and cultural significance. In addition, the processes that are carried out in it.
What is spring?
Spring (from Latin primto, “Primer” and will see, “Greenery”) it is one of the four seasons climatic conditions in which the year is divided of the temperate zones of the planet, along with the summer, autumn and winter.
But unlike the latter, spring characterized by a gradual rise in temperature, dispersion of rains, longer and sunnier days, and flowering and greening of deciduous plants (falling).
The greening of plants has caused that spring is culturally associated with the ideas of rebirth, resurrection, joy and youth, against the association of winter with death. This can be seen perfectly in the artistic and musical works that pay tribute to the station, such as the corresponding fragment of The four Seasons by Vivaldi.
Spring begins, astronomically, with the vernal equinox (from March 20 to 21 in the northern hemisphere and from September 21 to 23 in the south) and culminates with the summer solstice (around June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere and December 21 in the Southern Hemisphere).
Spring story
The seasons have always had a correlate or a cultural or mythological explanation in human peoples, and spring in them has always played a celebratory, festive role. In Greek mythology, for example, the seasons were explained by the famous abduction of Persephone by the god of the underworld, Hades.
Persephone, tradition has it, was the daughter of Demeter, an agricultural and earth goddess, and upon being forcibly taken underground to the world of the dead, she was so saddened and unhappy that Hades had no choice. They had to come to an agreement: she would spend six months with him underground (corresponding to fall and winter) and then six months back with her mother (spring and summer). A) Yes, the spring time was for the Greeks the celebration of the return of the daughter with Demeter, who out of pure joy made the plants bloom.
The celebration of the spring equinox was thus frequent not only in the culture of the ancient Greeks, but also of many European peoples of pantheistic religion, who are commonly referred to as celts.
It is about a group of more or less similar people, agraphic and animist religion, that every spring solstice met to celebrate the return of fertility and warmth to the world. The Celts also had their own calendar developed from the equinoxes and solstices, to which it is suspected that the ruins of Stonehenge in England would respond.
Why happens?
From an astronomical point of view, the seasons are due to the movement of tilt of the earth’s axis, which causes an uneven distribution of sunlight between both hemispheres, reversing every six months. It is not true that it is due to translational motion along its elliptical orbit.
Hence, the seasons are opposite between the northern and southern hemispheres, making the boreal spring (north) be the austral autumn (south), in the three months prior to the solstice of the Tropic of Cancer (April, May, June); and meanwhile, the austral spring (south) coincides with the boreal autumn (north), the three months prior to the solstice of the Tropic of Capricorn (October, November, December).