Short month for busy calendar
By BILL DUNCAN The ground hog has come and gone, but winter is far from over, at least not where I live in Oregon. There was frost on the roof when I started writing this column and despite what the old codger found when he poked his head out of his burrow last Monday, I see no signs of spring, even though I am itching to dig into the soil for the renewal of my garden. I have been fooled before by false springs and if the weather follows its pattern, February is too “iffy” to stick a shovel in my black mud. Instead I will just wait it out repeating a long memorized ditty from my school days: “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one except February alone, which hath but twenty-eight most of the time ‘til Leap Year gives it twenty-nine.” The last Leap Year was in February 2008. The first calendar had only ten months until Roman Emperor Numa Pompilius created January and February. In ancient Rome March was the first month of the year, until Pomilius added January and February, making New Year’s Day on January 1 and February as the second month of the year. The word February comes from the Latin word “februa,” which means to purify and the Romans had festivals to purify the celebrants. Unfortunately, the new calendar didn’t follow the solar calendar. History says Julius Caesar gave February 29 days and added one extra day every four years to keep in rhythm with the sun’s orbit around the earth. Augustus took one of those days and added it to August leaving only 28 days in February. This threw things out of balance again, thus came Leap Year, which has 366 days, one more than the normal 365 days. A Leap Year comes every year that can be divided evenly by four. Since February is the shortest month on the calendar that extra day ended up in there. Most of my readers live in the northern hemisphere and in our half of the world, February is a cold month, but it is midsummer in the southern hemisphere. For such a short month, it is a calendar crowed with celebrations. With all the media hype, I am sure you all know that Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday, but did you also know that it was Internet Blackout Day? Of course Monday was Ground Hog Day, but it was also Candlemas Day in which all candles are blessed. This coming Sunday is Boy Scout Day, honoring the founding of the Scouting program in England on Feb. 8, 1910. World Marriage Day is on Feb.12, which used to be the national holiday for Lincoln’s birthday, now celebrated as President’s Day on Feb. 16 along with honoring George Washington’s birthday that used to be celebrated on Feb. 22. Then there is Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, followed on Feb. 20 by Black History month, a combined holiday with International Friendship Day. On what used to be Washington’s Birthday on Feb. 22 we will celebrate World Thinking Day. Two days later we will be whooping it up for Mardi Gras, followed in quick succession on Feb. 25 when we somberly mark Ash Wednesday as the beginning of 40 days of Lent. That somber event hopefully will pause on the last day of February for International Floral Design Day, a time when we consider the art of flower arranging, something historians say had its origins in Japan, although it is an art that was practiced by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. That would certainly be a proper prelude to March and the promise of spring, which is said to begin on March 20 – not a day too soon, I say. (Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)
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