CHRISTMAS WEATHER.

Auckland Star, Volume 304, Issue 304, 23 December 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS WEATHER.

WELL-FOUNDED BELIEFS. Old-fashioned people still cling to the old weather sayings associated with Christmas, but if we arc to test the accuracy of the weather wisdom of our ancestors we must remember that they were probably reckoning on the old date for Christinas, which then stood at January 0, before our calendar was altered to make Christmas Day fall on December 25. ln those days Christmas was an important date for the weather prophets, and in various rural districts of the Old Country we still find a number of quaint sayings. For instance, it is said that if the sun shines through the apple trees on Christmas Day there will be an abundant crop the following year. In some parts of Rutlandshire they still say that a "green Christmas brings a heavy harvest," and that a full moon on Christmas Day is not considered a good sign from the weather point of view. Then there is the old proverb:— Light Christmas, light wheats'aeaf, Dark Christmas, heavy wheatsaeaf, which refers to the phases of the moon. A windy Christmas and a calm Candlemas are held as signs of a good year, and . f it rains during the twelve days after Christmas Day, the year that follows will, it is believed, be a wet one. If the meadows are green at Christmas rural folk say that they will be covered with frost at Easter, while a December cold with snow is good for rye. In spite of the advance in modern weather science many of these old weather sayings are often unaccountably correct.