February

At the stroke of midnight tonight, we gratefully leave two-faced January behind, and trip lightly into February.  In many ways, it's an odd month.

First, and most obviously, it's a runt.  Only 28 days under normal conditions, expanded to 29 during presidential election years.

But it has other oddities.  It didn't used to exist.  The Romans had ten months, originally, beginning in March and ending in December.  They didn't bother giving names to that desolate wasteland between the end of December and the first of March.  It was like an undeveloped tract of land in the middle of an otherwise tidy neighborhood -- it was there, but there wasn't a whole lot worth saying about it.  Even in Rome, where winter wasn't quite as dismal as in Minnesota.

Then, in 713 B.C., the fellow who is considered the second king of Rome decided to subplat the wasteland into two months: January and February.  I'm not sure whether those were the original names, but those names do go back a long way.

January was of course named after Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.  Most months were either named after an appropriate god, or just given a numerical name, the way that September through December still are.  (Two numerical months were much later named (by themselves) after Julius and Augustus Caesar, but let's not make Trumpian jokes). 

But February was, somewhat lamely, simply named after the month's most important holiday, the ritual of purification, or Februa (later incorporated into the Lupercalia).  Kind of like naming November Turkey.

February remained the last month of the year until about 450 B.C., when December was relegated to that position.  I suppose that celebrating New Year's Day in January thereafter made more sense.

Tangentially relevant, but interesting (to me), is the fact that until Julius Caesar proclaimed the Julian calendar, the calendar year was only 355 days long, which meant that the months tended to get out of whack with the seasons.  So every two or three years, whenever proclaimed by the Pontifex Maximus, a leap year would be observed with February shrunk to only 23 or 24 days, and an "intercalary month" of 27 or 28 days called Mercedonius ("work month") or Intercalaris was inserted between February and March.  Just when you thought spring was almost here, Mercedonius loomed up before you.

That funny little month straightened the calendar out for a while, until the ten day disparity between solar year and calendar year once more caused the month and season to be out of alignment.

When I was young, there was a recurring proposal for a 13-month calendar, with every month having 28 days.  This would mean that if the third day of January fell on a Tuesday, the third day of every month also would fall on Tuesday.  This would put calendar makers out of business, and was never adopted.  Since the year would have only 364 days, there would be an intercalary day between June 30 and July 1, a day that would not have a day of the week attached to it.  Every four years would be a leap year, as now, when there would be two intercalary days.

This idea sounded fun to me as a kid, but it was devised by the same kind of people who are uncomfortable with towns not laid out in a grid pattern, or insist on instant replays in every sport to insure absolute perfection in rulings.  But that's a subject for another day.

So Happy February, and don't forget to run naked through the city, striking by-standers with strips of flayed goat skin.  It's part of your Februa celebration.
--------------------------------

Apology -- After writing this entry, I discovered that I had written a similar essay in the past. Even using some of the same clever analogies. I feel like the guy that tells the same joke to the same group of friends every time there's a party. But this covers some matters not discussed earlier. And besides, I can't bear to just throw it away.