Copyright
© 1999 by Michael Segers, All rights
reserved
With Hallowe’en falling
on Sunday this year, the fairly recent controversy about the nature of the
holiday grows more heated. Are we opening our doors to pagan, even satanic
horrors when we open the doors to kids in bed sheets? Hallowe’en, however, is
not the only date with a pagan past. In fact, you can hardly tell anyone what
day it is without making a pagan reference. Let’s see what surprises the
calendar, something so much a part of our daily (literally) lives, holds for us.
You think there is a problem about deciding which year is the first year of the
third millennium, how about these:
> Will the year 2000 be
a leap year?
> How about the year
2100?
> Was George Washington
really born on February 22nd? (The answer to that, by the way, is
no.)
> How is it that every
day is a holiday?
> And, what is so fat
about fat Tuesday?
Just hold your bag open,
and we'll find plenty of unexpected treats and tricks on our calendar. The most
arbitrary part of our system of keeping up with the date is the seven-day week.
There is nothing in nature that runs in such a seven-day cycle. At least, that
is, to our modern eyes. When our calendar was developed, however, people
recognized seven planets, so it seemed logical to assign a day to each planet:
Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. Except for Sun and Moon,
those names all refer to Roman gods and goddesses, and those names are preserved
in the languages that derive from Latin, the language of ancient Rome.
In Italian, for instance,
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are Lunedì, Martedì, and Mercoledì.
The word for Monday comes from the Latin luna (moon), while the words for
Tuesday and Wednesday honor Mars and Mercury. In Spanish, the words for Thursday
and Friday are Jueves (Jove, or Jupiter) and Viernes (Venus,
sharing the origin of the English word venereal). In both languages,
Saturday, the seventh day, is referred to as the Sabbath; in Spanish, Sábado,
in Italian, Sabato. And Sunday is in both languages the Lord’s day, the
day of the one who has dominion over us: Domingo (Spanish) and Domenica
(Italian).
In English, we honor other
pagan deities, those of the Germanic peoples such as the Vikings or the Angles
and Saxons, who contributed so much to our culture and language. Sunday and
Monday, of course, honor Sun and Moon, but Tuesday honors Tiu; Wednesday, Wotan
(Odin); Thursday, Thor; Friday, Fricka (or Frigga). Strangely, Saturday honors
the Roman god Saturn, and I have no idea why, especially since the Romance
(Latin-derived) languages do not honor him.
The month is another odd
concept, referring to a period of time that ranges from 28 to 31 days. It
roughly corresponds to the time for the moon to circle the earth (28 days). Some
calendars, such as those used in Judaism and Islam, are based on lunar cycles,
so that makes their holy days move around on our solar calendar. The names of
the twelve months commemorate pagan religious practices so much so that during
the French Revolution, new names were proposed for the months to reflect
politically or revolutionarily correct thinking. As far as I know, however, no
Christian groups have ever proposed Christian names for the days and months.
In French, the first four
months are Janvier, Février, Mars, and Avril. In German, the next
four months are Mag, Juni, Juli, and August. To finish the year in
Spanish, we have Septiembre, Octubre, Noviembre, and Diciembre.
I’m not trying to show off the languages I know (only English and Spanish). I
just want to show you how similar the words are in different languages and also
how well the translation function of Altavista works, at:
January honors Janus, the
god with two faces, who could look back into the old year and forward into the
new; February, the Februa, a Roman festival. March honors the god of war,
the only deity to be honored by both a month and a day, but that’s the only
way a god of war would have it. April has a bit of controversy around its name.
Some sources say that it was named for a festival of the opening up of nature in
the spring (in Spanish, for instance, "to open" is abrir), but
it may also be linked to the name of the goddess Aphrodite.
May recalls the almost
forgotten goddess Maia, and June, the queen of the gods, Juno, wife of Jupiter.
(You may recognize them by their Greek names of Hera and Zeus.) July and August
honor the Caesars, Julius and Augustus. Strangely, the names of the ninth
(September) through the twelfth (December) months correspond to the Latin words
for the numbers seven through ten, because those were originally the seventh
through tenth months, with July and August added later.
The four seasons reflect
natural phenomena, associated with the equinoxes (which begin spring and fall)
and solstices (the start of summer and winter). But, they are also associated
with four great feast-days of the Church. In spring, the most important
Christian holiday is Easter, which can occur from March 22nd to April
25th, not—as I was once told when I was a child—depending upon
which company prints the calendar, but instead, because Easter occurs on the
Sunday after the full moon after the equinox. That lunar element makes Easter
one of the "moveable feasts" of Church tradition.
Summer is marked by
Midsummer, or the feast of St. John the Baptist, on June 24th. Not
much observed in this country, St. John’s day has in many countries a wealth
of traditions, involving ways in which a young woman can see in her dreams the
man that she will marry. The most important holiday in the autumn is St.
Michael’s Day, September 29th. Although most saints’ days
commemorate the day that the saint died, that is, left the work and ministry on
earth, since Michael is an archangel, his feast day commemorates a famous
appearance that he made. Finally, in winter, the dark of the year, there are the
festive lights of Christmas, December 25th.
And we've raved through
almost the whole year, reaching Christmas, without touching on the problems with
Hallowe'en. We still have to consider the possibility of February 29, 2000
(which will occur, unless the Y2K bug is even worse than predicted) and February
29, 2100 (which will not) and the other questions I asked you at the start of
this year, uh, article. So, taking a cue from Hollywood, on which I keep a
watchful eye on, as you know, look for a sequel next week in which, the way
we've been roving in this installment, we may even find out where Darth Vadar's
grandfather came from.
So, let’s close with a
site that might be appropriate for Hallowe’en, "News of the Weird,"
very strange but true stories which you can truly find at:
Now, for the best treat for
Internet users in a long time, the Encyclopedia Britannica is now
available on-line at no charge. Previously, it has been available on-line but
only by subscription. The Britannica is the standard against which all such
compedia of human knowledge must be measured; it now adds a new dimension of
scholarly integrity to the search for information on the Internet. I am sure
that this is not the last time that I shall write about it. As of this writing,
however, I am looking forward to the first time that I get through to the site,
which, on this, its first day on-line, has so far been too busy for me to
access:
Keep your feet dry and your
heart full of noble thoughts, as you join me for another rove
through the year next week.
Religiously Rovin': Internet Pilgrimages