Spring cleaning

Just a few more hours (Seattle time) until January comes to an end.  January.  Named after the Latin word ianua, or gate.  But popularly thought to have been named after the god of gates, Janus.

Nasty two-faced Janus.  One face looking backward, in 2017, to a year of political turmoil -- but also a year of stable and competent government.  The other, looking forward to something new under the American sun.  To a "New Political Order" as Stephen Bannon, our new de facto ruler, has declared.  Who knows what it means?  We can only wait and see what the unkempt gentleman has in store for us.

Tomorrow is February.  From the Latin word februum, meaning purification.  Named after the Februa, the Roman rite of purification, held mid-way through the month.  A festival appropriated by the Catholic Church as the Feast of the Purification of the B.V.M., celebrated on America's Groundhog Day, February 2.

The Februa was essentially a two or three day period of spring cleaning.  Apparently everything washable or cleanable was washed and cleaned.  The Romans washed tangible objects.  This year, we need to wash our minds, our dispositions, our souls.  This year, we need a lot of purification.  Unlike the Romans, we do have detergent and chlorine bleach to aid us in our striving for purification.

Originally, the Romans had no January or February.  Those months were yet unformed -- a vast winter wasteland at the end of the year, a stretch of time not yet dignified with names.  You just worked your way through that period each year until you saw March -- the beginning of the Roman year -- hovering ahead of you on the horizon.  The wasteland was subdivided and short platted, if you will, in 713 B.C., with January and February becoming the last two months of the year.  Even then, February was the 97-pound-weakling of the months, a month that sort of petered out at 28 days.  (Except when an "intercalary month" was interposed between Februrary and March, but you don't want to know about all that.)

In about 450 B.C, it became the second month of the year, as it has remained ever more.  Then adoption of the Julian calendar in 45 B.C. offered us the fun idea of leap years.

In non-Latin countries, like old England, the month had other names -- the Old English words for "mud month" or sometimes "cabbage month."  But let's remember it as purification month.  We're in need of purification -- not at all of mud or cabbage.  And we'd better get to work purifying fast.

This isn't a leap year.  We have only 28 days to wash the slime of January from our nation's collective body. And psyche.