Midnight
Midnight, literally "the middle of the night", was a time arbitrarily designated to determine the end of a day and the beginning of the next in some, mainly Western, cultures. Originally midnight depended on the time of the sunset and dawn, varying according to the seasons. With the advent of clocks and the division of the day into twenty-four hours, midnight was fixed at 12 am in the 12-hour clock.
Midnight now marks the start of the day in civil time throughout the world; however, some religious calendars continue to begin the day at another time — for example, at dusk in the Hebrew calendar or the Islamic calendar.
Each day thus has two midnights, one at the start and one at the end. In the 24-hour clock these are written 00:00 and 24:00 respectively; the 12-hour clock has no notation for the midnight at the end of the day (it has to written as 12 am on the next day).
In Western tradition, midnight is the time at which spirits, ghosts, demons and other supernatural entities prefer to appear, and also the time to begin the "witches' Sabbath". This is mainly due to the fact that many pagan festivals, portrayed by early Christianity as demonic or evil, began at midnight.
The opposite of midnight is noon.
Midnight in some Western languages
- Danish: midnat
- Dutch: middernacht
- Finnish: keskiyö
- French: minuit
- German: Mitternacht
- Italian: mezzanotte
- Norwegian: midnatt
- Old English: middaneaht
- Polish: pólnoc
- Portuguese: meia-noite
- Spanish: medianoche
- Swedish: midnatt
- Greek: Μεσάνυχτα (mesanikhta)
