Mail Tribune

Someone asked me recently why Dec. 21 isn’t the coldest day of the year. After all, being the winter solstice, it’s the longest night of the year. That should make it the coldest day of the year, too.

While that makes sense, it doesn’t make it so. What happens instead is a situation known as "seasonal lag." As the name would suggest, there is something that tends not to keep up with the seasons. It’s the temperature.

Just like it takes people awhile to warm up to a new idea, it takes the Earth awhile to warm up in the summer and cool down in winter.

Beginning in autumn, the Earth cools gradually as it absorbs increasingly colder temperatures on the surface and in the atmosphere. By the time the winter solstice rolls around, the Earth has become cold enough to begin radiating some of that coldness back into the air above the ground.

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When the cold air radiating out from the Earth meets the cold air still coming down from Earth’s atmosphere, we humans experience the year’s coldest temperatures. By the time all the conditions work together to make this happen, it’s closer to February than December.

The same holds true for the summer. By the time all the conditions work together to make the hottest temperatures occur, it’s closer to August than June.

A mini version of this takes place every day. With the sun shining its brightest when it’s directly overhead, you would expect the hottest time of day to be noon. Not so. By noon, the Earth has finally warmed up enough to begin to radiate out some of that heat. The result is that the hottest time of day is later on in the afternoon.

The human version of seasonal lag shows up in lots of ways. In the olden days of my youth, people had to warm things up before they used them. This was as true of cars, trucks and tractors as it was for radios, televisions and amplifiers.

Today, while you don’t necessarily have to wait for cell phones and any other appliances to warm up, you do need to wait for their batteries to be charged. You don’t eat at a new restaurant right when it first opens. You give it some time. Weeks. Maybe months.

As exciting as plays can be on opening night, there is wisdom in waiting later in the run before seeing the show. Give the cast’s creative batteries time to be fully charged.

Entertainers have long known that they have to warm up the audience before anyone really pays attention. And sometimes there is a punch-line lag — the "two ... three ... four" before people get the joke.

When it comes to new ideas, it takes some people longer than others to get them. A period of time elapses before the thought sinks in enough to register as an "Ah-ha!" That period can range from a few seconds, to minutes, or not at all.

The first ones to have the "Ah-ha!" moment and take up new ideas are called "early adopters" by those who chart these things. After an idea has been around for awhile and enough people have responded favorably to it, the idea reaches a critical mass and becomes embedded in society. It becomes a way of life.

Think of some of the noblest ideals that have come to humanity — religion, democracy, marriage, freedom. When these first appeared in our history, it took awhile for us to "warm up" to them — if at all.

I would suggest that some of the loftiest notions are still closer to the first inklings of opening night rather than the maturity of a long run. Or to belabor the metaphor, some of our institutions are running on batteries that are in desperate need of recharging.

Call it a "consciousness lag." The ideas are there. They’re even inside us. But for them to emerge from more of us and radiate back into the world in our daily behavior takes some time. Just as the daily seasonal lag is a mini version of what happens during the year, the course of each individual life is a mini version of the unfolding history of our species.

George Bernard Shaw used to despair that youth is wasted on the young. By the time we have finally gotten a handle on this life thing, we’re almost too old to live it. Or, as the adage puts it: We get too soon old and too late smart. This may be a strong argument for the necessity of reincarnation. If at first you don’t succeed....

Meanwhile, the solstice is behind us and February is just around the corner. Winter is gearing up for its big delivery. The world of nature is right on schedule.

But what about us humans? How long is the consciousness lag for us? And are we getting warmer or colder as we wait?