> I still kind of resent the imposition of an official start date for the seasons.

Interesting perspective. I guess it's a question of whether you're more interested in using the season to describe the weather in your local environment, or to describe the position of the earth in its orbit.

The former is probably more practical for day-to-day use, but I guess I'm a proponent of the latter. Where the earth is in its orbit defines how long daylight lasts each day, regardless of what the weather's like, and if the weather is "unseasonably" warm or cool, I'd rather know it's out of season and try to learn why, rather than defining a season such that the question need never be posed.

At least, though, the calendar is not simply being arbitrary and imposing artificial parameters to the world around us. Minutes, hours, and weeks may be manmade, but days, years, and seasons are not.