Old Number One

March isn’t what it used to be. Oh, sure, it’s the only month with a command – March 4^th – and yes, it was named for a commanding god. But March used to be Number One.

Mars, relaxing

Early calendar designers in the Northern Hemisphere were logical. March is the month of spring’s arrival, the time when life returns to the earth – a reasonable place to begin a new year. So the Romans made March the first month. So did the Saxons, who called it Lenet Monat, or length month, referring to the longer days. Even until 1752, the British considered March 26 the beginning of the legal year.

Since the month was so important, the Romans named it after a leading deity, Mars, their god of war. The Romans were, after all, a militaristic nation, conquerors of much of Europe.

Alas, the reshuffled modern-day calendar gives us a leading month, in the dead of winter, that’s named for Janus, the god of doors. Yes, doors.

Let’s face it: The whole year isn’t what it used to be.

Intercalation

Yes, it’s a leap year and Friday is leap day, but why are we all leaping?

“Leap” means many things – mostly to do with jumping or bounding – but none seems to relate to Feb. 29, when we attach that quadrennial day to the calendar. In fact, adding Feb. 29 would seem to delay the leap from February – the worst month weatherwise in the year – to March, the most hopeful month, the one in which spring begins.

A century-old edition of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary fails to clarify the issue. In explaining “leap year,” it offers: “The name may refer to the fact that in the bissextile year, any fixed festival after February falls on the next week-day but one to that on which it fell in the preceding year, not on the next week-day as usual.” Back when feast days meant more to people than they do today, that sentence probably quickly made sense.

Perhaps we can be thankful that, for whatever reason, we call it leap day. Its other name is more of a mouthful: intercalary day.

Yet, intercalary day makes a lot more sense. It simply means to insert something – like a day – into a calendar.

And intercalating is exactly what we do Friday.

July’s power

July is the month when the sun is strongest. In our neighborhood, high temperatures average 84, five degrees warmer than in June and three higher than in August.

Because the sun shows so much power in July, Mark Anthony had the month Quintilis changed to honor his late friend, Julius Caesar, a man of great power. The change also eliminated the nasty problem of the seventh month being named five, its old position in the Roman year.

The ancient Saxons were more down to earth about naming their months. July was Hay Monath, when they mowed and harvested hay, or sometimes Maed Monath, supposedly because the meads – the meadows – were in bloom then. However, mead is also an ancient alcoholic beverage made from fermented honey.

And since it’s said that mead imbues the drinker with wisdom, courage and strength, perhaps Maed Monath is the time to sit back, sip some mead, and quietly seek these admirable qualities.

June air

June, as they sing in Carousel, is busting out all over, developing May’s lushness and adding the colors of roses and rhododendrons, and the brilliance of early field flowers like daisies and fleabanes. It is the month that moves us from the rebirth of spring to the verdure of summer.

June offers close to ideal weather, with an average high of 79 degrees and an average low of 56. At 71 and 47, May is just a tad too cool for those of us anxious to dive into summer’s warmth.

June’s name fools many people who think it commemorates a Roman god. In fact, June is short for a Junioribus, the lower or junior house of the old Roman legislature. May recalls the upper house, a Majoribus.

Perhaps the timing of the names involves an ancient political joke about lower-house oratory. June is the warmer month, after all, and offers more hot air than May. In modern Junes, we offer our own version of hot air: graduation speeches galore.