&gt; The British approach of starting a season on the solstice &#x2F; equinox has always seemed somewhere between weird and quaint (more towards the inconvenient end of weird).<p>Surely the reasons for the definition of seasons was for farmers to know the position of earth relative to the sun so they could make good decisions about the likely weather for growing?  To say it&#x27;s weird is quite an extreme position to take, there are clearly rational reasons for it.  Even if they&#x27;re not as important to our society as they once were.