Start of Winter

Meaning

The Start of Winter, Lidong, is the nineteenth of the twenty-four solar terms: the Sun at 225°, about 7 November. As with the other seasons, the Chinese year begins its winter halfway between the equinox and the solstice: the harvest is in and stored, the fields rest, and life turns inward, towards the house and the stores.

It is an opening term: it opens the Pig month, the tenth solar month and the first of winter, the season of Water. In the five phases the season turns from Metal to Water, from gathering to keeping, the time of rest that prepares the next growth.

Its three pentads are the water beginning to freeze, the earth beginning to freeze, and the pheasant going into the sea and turning into a great clam, the old observers’ image for the birds that disappear from the fields as the cold comes.

In practice

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

Across traditions

• In the Celtic year Samhain, on 1 November, also opens winter halfway between equinox and solstice, the old new year of the Gaels, kept on in All Saints and Halloween.
• In Korea the weeks after ipdong are the season of kimjang, when families and neighbours make the winter’s kimchi together, a custom on UNESCO’s list of humanity’s intangible heritage; in Japan the term is rittō, in Vietnam lập đông.
• In Western astrology the Sun is at 15° Scorpio, the middle of the second autumn sign: the West still counts autumn, the Chinese year already winter.

Origin and history

The Monthly Ordinances of the Book of Rites, after the “Twelve Months” of the Lüshi Chunqiu, have the ruler go out to the northern suburb on the day of Lidong to welcome the winter, dressed in the black of Water, the last of the four welcomes of the seasons. The ruler then rewarded those who had served and saw to the widows and orphans before the cold. The Huainanzi, in 139 BC, sets the day among the twenty-four.

Families mark the start of winter at table: in the north with dumplings, in the south with warming dishes shared at home, the habit some call “making up for winter”. The term opens the quiet season of the farming year, the time for repairs, for weaving and for the long evenings.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes the Start of Winter as the instant the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches 225°, from its table of the solar terms computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800 to 2200. The Pig month and its pillar begin at that instant, whatever the clock or the time zone. In 2026 it falls on 7 November at 09:52 UT.

Correspondences