MIDNIGHT

'Midnight', literally "the middle of the night", is a time designated to determine a change in date. Originally midnight depended on the time of the sunset and dawn, varying according to the seasons.
'Solar midnight' is that time opposite of solar noon, when the sun is closest to nadir and the night is furthest from dusk and dawn. Due to the advent of time zones, which makes time identical across a range of meridians, it rarely coincides with midnight on a clock, but can be computed on a number of websites that perform solar time calculations. Solar midnight is dependent on longitude rather than on a time zone.

Contents

Start and end of day

Cultural meanings

References

External links

Start and end of day

Midnight marks the beginning and ending of each day in civil time throughout the world. It is the dividing point between one day and another.
With the 12-hour time notation, the most unambiguous notation for 12:00 is "12 noon" or "12 midnight".
In the 24-hour time notation, "00:00" or "00:00:00" refers to midnight at the start of a given date and 24:00 the end of another. Noon is 12:00:00.
While it has become common practice for computers and digital clocks in these regions to display "12:00 a.m." for midnight and "12:00 p.m." for noon, these notations provide no clear and unambiguous way to distinguish between midnight and noon. It is actually improper to use "a.m." and "p.m." when referring to 12:00. The abbreviation a.m. stands for ''ante meridiem'' or ''before noon'' and p.m. stands for ''post meridiem'' or ''after noon''. Since noon is neither after noon or before noon, neither abbreviation is correct (although the length of the error is determined by the smallest unit of time — 12:00:01 p.m. would be correctly notated). Similarly, midnight is both twelve hours before as well as twelve hours after noon, so both are ambiguous as to the date intended. The most common ways to represent these times are, (a) to use a 24-hour clock (00:00 and 12:00, 24:00), (b) to use "12 noon" or "12 midnight", although unless the person is referring to a general time and not a specific day, "12 midnight" is still ambiguous, (c) to specify it between two successive days or dates (Midnight Saturday/Sunday or Midnight December 14/15), and (d) to use "12:01 a.m." or "11:59 p.m." This final usage is common in the travel industry, especially train and plane schedules, to avoid confusion as to passengers' schedules. ^[1] The U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual recommends noon be designated as 12 a.m., and midnight as 12 p.m.^[2]
Some religious calendars continue to begin the day at another time — for example, at dusk in the Hebrew calendar and the Islamic calendar.
In many developed nations, particularly in Northern America, the colloquial "beginning of the next day" is sometime between 2-5am, as many people with daylight work schedules stay awake past midnight. A majority of TV stations advertise in accordance with this. In the United Kingdom and in Australia, television and radio broadcasters consider a day as starting and finishing at 6am, although this is for their own purposes only.

Cultural meanings

In traditional magical thinking, midnight refers to 'solar midnight', which is opposite 'solar noon'. These form an axis linking the mundane world with otherworlds by being the apogee of darkness and the perigee of light. Thus, traditional midnight is associated with chaos, death, underworld and mystery. It was seen as a moment when sacrum manifests itself and epiphanies were most likely. Of course the epiphanies expected were those associated with darkness, so it was thought that at midnight, visitation from spirits, ghosts, demons and devils were common.
All the supernatural creatures of darkness — reminiscent of feared nocturnal predators — were believed to haunt the night, their potency greatest at its central point, midnight. According to Slavic folklore, midnight was time when strzygas rose from graves to suck the blood of mortals, zmoras assailed the sleeping to steal their breath, and devils came for sinners. Polish Jews believed that it was the time when dybbuks possessed folk, causing insanity.
As night's attributes are chaos and primordiality, all the acts of summoning from otherworlds were easiest to perform at the culmination of the night. Supernatural entities like demons and devils universally answered a human call — be it death wish, curse of famine, prostration or pact with the devil. All the acts of sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy were easiest then. While some beliefs stated that elaborate rituals were needed, some other folklore ascribed unholy power to such simple acts as calling the devil at crossroads at midnight. Even peeking into a mirror at night (without a reliable clock one could never be certain what time it was) was dangerous, as the devil himself could have looked back.
Midnight was also the time to gather the ingredients used in magical acts done at other times, so various herbs were thought to be most potent when harvested at midnight.
A piece of Christian folklore held that, because Jesus had been born in a stable, animals could speak at the midnight between Christmas Eve and Christmas.
In the Doomsday Clock of the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'', midnight represents nuclear war.
Midnight as time also appears in fairy tales like cinderella in which a time(midnight) is given to someone to complete a task.

References

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology's Physics Laboratory, Time and Frequency Division
2. U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, p. 181.

External links

★ National Institute of Standards and Technology