Keeping Time

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How we keep time (or better, mark time) is fascinating to me.  Unlike our concept of schedules, the earth’s revolution and rotation do not give us evenly long days or years.  Yet we still work 9-2-5 and even though many studies show a four-day work week is more productive, we just can’t give up old ways of marking time.  A weekend (a fairly new development) is two days only.  A leap year, however, contains an extra day for “the man.”  That’s because today is not a holiday.  It’s a necessary day to keep months in sync with years, otherwise March would slowly have September weather.  All of this is human convention, of course.  As is capitalism and its “more is always better” outlook.

Our lives have changed with both the internet and the pandemic.  We work more, not less.  And I, for one, think we need to give working stiffs another day off.  We could start with today.  (I know, big man, that you fear losing money—I realize this is important to you!  What I’m suggesting might make you wealthier, however.)  After all, today is a gimme.  What would we do with a whole other day if we had one?  I know, our standard answer is work, but what if life were more than just what you were paid to do?  It would be a holiday.  The thing about holidays is that we don’t know what ancient events prompted the origins of some of them.  Those for solstices and equinoxes are obvious enough, but other days became special for unknown reasons.  Why can’t February 29th be such a day?

Some employers make up the difference by making election day a holiday.  That one should be a national holiday, really.  And since presidential elections fall on leap years, I guess we get February 29 off on the first Tuesday in November.  Holidays have always fascinated me since they project an aura of something special happening on that particular day.  Something that makes it different from other days.  People born on this day joke about aging four times slower or faster, depending on your perspective.  Doesn’t that seem enough to qualify as a special day?  For most of us, however, today is just another Thursday, and for many it’s just another Thursday at the office.  And it propels other marked days in the year ahead so your birthday next time around skips a day.  There’s a kind of magic to today.  Maybe we should mark it in some way.

Relinquishing Control

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Controlling the weather is a dream as old as humanity itself.  Once when I was fervently praying for a rain-free day as a child, my mother pointed out that other people could be praying for rain.  I realized then that weather was a personalized preference and that, on some level, prayers cancel each other out.  Well, it’s Groundhog Day and we’re all wondering whether those who love winter and want more or those who are ready for spring will prevail.  For this we’ll rely on a woodchuck.  The observation of animals for signs of spring seems to have been a germanic practice, and it could also involve badgers (which I’ve never, ever seen in the wild) or bears as well as groundhogs.  The idea is that the majority are looking forward to spring when they can plant and grow food, hopefully enough to last through the next winter.  And so the cycle goes.

We hear a lot about January as a month of transitions.  It is, but so are they all.  February, both the dead of winter and start of spring, provides variety as we continue the cycle.  I’ve already seen my first robin of the year and I’ve been hearing sporadic bird song.  The mating season, after all, comes around the middle of the month.  According to some renditions of the Celtic calendar, Imbolc, which was yesterday, is the start of spring.  Celebrated with fires to encourage the light and warmth, we know that cold and snow and wind chill still lie ahead.  We are reminded, however, that this wheel is still turning.  Slowly, slowly, but ever turning.

I’m writing this post before Punxsutawney Phil even awakes.  The sky is dark and it’s cold outside.  Like Phil Connors I’m thinking about how we want things to stay the same, but when they do they quickly haunt us.  Time forever moves and all seasons are mere transitions to the next.  In this endless cycle we have to come to appreciate where we are at the moment.  There’s a stark beauty to winter.  A snowy landscape can become a transport of rapture.  We have to heat our houses, however, and pay the bills to do so.  We keep our house cool enough that some days I just don’t have the heart to venture outside at all.  Still, I wouldn’t change it.  These cycles are old friends now.  I’ll glance to the west and wonder what Phil might see, but I’ll be praying that we will never control the weather.

Washington’s Birthday

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Today’s post is an excerpt from an unpublished tween book I wrote on the origin of American holidays a few years back. Other excerpts are available on the Full Essays page of this blog.

Our founding father, a little worse for wear

Today is the earliest of only three government holidays devoted to an individual, specifically George Washington. Also called President’s Day, this holiday comes on the third Monday in February. Washington was born February 11, 1731. In an interesting twist of fate, when the Gregorian calendar was finally accepted in the United States in 1752 Washington found his birthday shifted to February 22. Washington died in 1799, but the idea of national holidays for a single person had not yet been invented. It took almost a century for someone to do something about it. When Washington’s Birthday was first observed in 1880 only the government offices in the District of Columbia (named for Washington, of course) got the day off. Naturally, they celebrated it on February 22. Five years later, in 1885, all federal offices took the day off.

Now, the problem with government holidays is that Post Offices, which are run by the government, are also closed. That means no mail. For businesses that used to mean an interruption of work – believe it or not, before the Internet was invented nearly all business relied on snail mail! It is hard for a business to take a day off in the middle of a week, so in 1971 George Washington’s birthday was moved again so that it would always be on a Monday. Washington, being long dead, said nothing.

When I was a kid I always thought Abraham Lincoln’s birthday (February 12, 1809) was a holiday too. It came before Washington’s birthday, but still in February. Since junk mail hadn’t yet been invented, I didn’t notice whether the mail came or not. Lincoln’s birthday was printed on the calendar, but it has never been an official federal holiday. Now, here’s a funny thing: individual states have the right to set state holidays or even rename federal holidays. Lincoln’s Birthday, for example, is a state holiday in Illinois.

In the 1980s Washington’s Birthday underwent another transformation. Noticing that Lincoln’s Birthday was ten days before Washington’s (remember, on the Julian calendar Washington’s birthday was February 11) businesses could call it President’s Day and stores could offer sales. So, wait, what is this holiday called and when is it? Its official, federal name is Washington’s Birthday. Many people, and some states, call it President’s Day. It is always observed on the third Monday in February. And George Washington would have been just as confused as anybody, because he is the only president with three different birthdays!

A Sigh for Cybele

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As we fall out of the holiday season into that distinctly chilly and sometimes cheerless February, Cybele comes to mind. Over the past several weeks I have added posts focused on the holidays associated with December and January. In the course of my research for a children’s book on American holidays (not published), I was astonished at how frequently Cybele appeared among the origins of current holiday practices. Having researched ancient Near Eastern mythology long enough to complete a doctorate in the field, and to write a book on an ancient goddess (Asherah), the lack of reference to Cybele in my sources was unexpected. I pushed this question mark to the back of my mind, but as I was reading H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Rats in the Walls,” I found Cybele once again.

Cybele eventually became a major Roman goddess, although she was never among the Greek Olympians. Her importance shows in her connections with several Roman festivals and practices of antiquity, some of which have survived even to the present. Greco-Roman adherents to Cybele worship considered her to have been of Phrygian origin. Many scholars, however, see in her name and character echoes of a Semitic goddess named after Gebal, or the native name for Byblos in Phoenicia. If so, she is one further piece of the puzzle connecting the classical world with that of the fertile crescent.

Wikipedia Commons Cybele

A standard title for Cybele was Magna Mater, or “great mother.” As such, she was frequently associated with the earth itself, widely considered to have been a primordial female deity in the ancient Near East. In many respects she resembles Asherah, although the two are never explicitly identified. In myths where she is associated with Atys (later Attis), she becomes the spouse of a “dying and rising god.” She is prominent in festivals around mid-March, at the time of the renewal of fertility in the Mediterranean basin. Matronly, stolid, and powerful, Cybele lurks in the background of religious sensibilities. Her association with spring offers something to look forward to as the overly long, yet short, month of February starts to become visible.