Major Cold大寒

Major Cold (大寒, Dà Hán) is the twenty-fourth and final term of the solar-term cycle, sitting at the midpoint of the 丑 month that Minor Cold opened two weeks earlier. It is an astronomical instant: the moment the sun reaches 300° of ecliptic longitude, landing on 20 or 21 January depending on the year.

Being last in the sequence does not make it an ending in the way a calendar year ends. The cycle it closes reopens almost immediately: Beginning of Spring, the term that started the whole count at 315°, falls only about two weeks later.

Astronomically it sits between Minor Cold and Beginning of Spring, the final stretch of the coldest quarter of the northern-hemisphere year. In the agricultural calendar it traditionally marks the last of the deep-winter rest before preparation for the new growing year begins — the quiet before the cycle turns over again.

Major Cold is a 氣 — a mid-month term — so it changes no pillar. This site's engine confirms the general pattern across a full year's scan: the twelve month pillar switches land only on the twelve 節, and this term, like every 氣, is not one of them.

A birth at this instant still carries the 丑 month pillar that Minor Cold opened, exactly as a birth a week earlier or later in the same month would. The next pillar change of any kind — month and year together — waits for Beginning of Spring.