Quite right rendell, there's been a similar discussion about this on here in the past :) What I should've said is that because the change is so very small i.e a few seconds around the solstice, the perception is that the days are standing still...ergo solstice. Doesn't the rate of change speed up though? If it was only a few seconds each day, surely that wouldn't account for the loss of daylight we experience up to the winter solstice. I'm sure the rate of change gets up into the minutes...