We explain what spring is, its history and cultural significance. In addition, the processes that are carried out in it.
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What is spring?
Spring (from Latin prim a , “first” and vera , “greenery”) is one of the four climatic seasons into which the year of the temperate zones of the planet is divided , along with summer , autumn and winter.
But unlike the latter, spring is characterized by a gradual rise in temperature , dispersion of rainfall, longer and sunny days, and flowering and greening of deciduous (falling) plants.
The greening of plants has caused spring to be culturally associated with the ideas of rebirth , resurrection, joy and youth, against the association of winter with death. This can be perfectly perceived in the artistic and musical works that pay tribute to the station, as the corresponding fragment of The Four Seasons of Vivaldi.
It begins astronomically with the spring equinox (March 20-21 in the northern hemisphere and September 21-23 in the south) and ends with the summer solstice (near June 21 in the northern hemisphere and on December 21 in the southern hemisphere).
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Spring history
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 Rapture of Persephone by the god of the underworld, Hades.
Persephone, tradition says, was the daughter of Demeter, an agricultural and earth goddess, and being taken by force underground to the world of the dead, she was so sad and so unhappy that Hades had no choice to reach an arrangement: she would spend six months with him underground (corresponding to autumn and winter) and then six months back with her mother (spring and summer). Thus, the spring time was for the Greeks the celebration of the return of the daughter with Demeter , who made plants bloom with pure joy.
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, which are commonly referred to as Celts .
It is a group of more or less similar peoples, Ágrafos and animist religion, that each spring solstice gathered to celebrate the return of fertility and heat to the world. The Celts also had their own calendar developed from the equinoxes and solstices, to which the ruins of the Stonehenge in England are suspected.
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Why happens?
From an astronomical point of view, the stations are due to the tilt movement of the earth’s axis , which causes uneven distribution of sunlight between the two hemispheres, reversing every six months. It is not true that it is due to the translational movement along its elliptical orbit.
Hence, the seasons are contrary between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, making the boreal spring (north) the southern autumn (south), in the three months prior to the solstice of the Tropic of Cancer (April, May, June); and for its part, the southern spring (south) coincides with the boreal fall (north), the three months prior to the solstice of the Tropic of Capricorn (October, November, December).
