Major Snow

Meaning

Major Snow, Daxue, is the twenty-first of the twenty-four solar terms: the Sun at 255°, about 7 December. In northern China the snow now falls thick and stays; rivers freeze, and the land lies white under the shortest days of the year, which are only a fortnight away.

It is an opening term: it opens the Rat month, the eleventh solar month, the heart of winter and of Water. The Rat month holds the winter solstice, and the Zhou dynasty’s calendar made it the first month of the year, the month in which the light is reborn.

Its three pentads are the hedan bird falling silent, the tigers beginning to seek each other out, and the shoots of a hardy iris, the lìtǐng, rising from the frozen ground: even in the deep of winter, the tradition looks for the first stirrings of the year to come.

In practice

• In BaZi a birth from this instant belongs to the Rat month and its pillar; a birth within five minutes of it is marked uncertain, since a slightly different time would give the Pig month.
• In Chinese astrology the month animal turns from the Pig to the Rat, and the Cycles lens begins the Rat month’s reading here.
• In Feng Shui the month’s star changes, one less than the Pig month’s.
• The Calendar marks it on its day, with the Sun at 15° Sagittarius, as the opening of the Rat month.

Across traditions

• In northern Europe Saint Lucia’s day, on 13 December, brings candles and light into the darkest weeks, as the Chinese pentads look for the first life under the snow.
• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the term is taisetsu, daeseol and đại tuyết; in Japan the season of snow viewing, yukimi, begins.
• In Western astrology the Sun is at 15° Sagittarius, the middle of the last autumn sign, a fortnight before the solstice opens Capricorn.

Origin and history

The Monthly Ordinances of the Book of Rites describe the eleventh month: the hedan bird silent, the tigers mating, the iris sprouting, and the ruler ordering the officials to keep everything closed and quiet, for this is the month in which yin is at its height and yang begins to return. The Huainanzi, in 139 BC, sets the term among the twenty-four.

A proverb of the north says that a timely snow is the promise of a good year, for the snow cover keeps the winter wheat warm and gives the fields their water in spring. Snow has its place in poetry too: in “River Snow”, by Liu Zongyuan of the Tang, a thousand hills have no bird and ten thousand paths no footprint, and an old man in a straw cape, alone in his boat, fishes the cold river in the snow. A proverb sums up the winter kitchen: pickle the vegetables at Minor Snow, cure the meat at Major Snow.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes Major Snow as the instant the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches 255°, from its table of the solar terms computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800 to 2200. The Rat month and its pillar begin at that instant, whatever the clock or the time zone. In 2026 it falls on 7 December at 02:52 UT.

Correspondences