Oh My Gods’ Part 1 Of 3

The New Year has started off in incredibly uninspiring fashion in the sense that very little has happened to inspire me.  It was whilst toying with my lack of inspiration when I decided that my problem may be the fault of the month of January.  I started idly browsing through my calendar and as expected found that very little happens aside from a few notable personal anniversaries.  With this thought in my head I found myself wondering if it was perhaps that I don’t understand January, and therefore cannot appreciate her.  There was only one solution.  Research.

January is named after Janus, the god of the doorway.  I don’t know what troubles me the most about this very statement.  Clearly January has origins which date back to roman times when polytheism was still rampant, before any God laid claim to a monopoly.  However I always thought that roman gods were for more important things than doorways.  I can’t help but wonder what exactly happened in a doorway at some point in history to make King Numa Pompilius name a month after Janus?  Was there a lobby group of door manufacturers bribing members of the senate?  What on earth are we meant to do nowadays?  I live in a flat.  I don’t have a doorway.  How am I supposed to celebrate January?  I must clearly be doing it wrong.

February was named after the Latin term februum which means purification in honour of an old roman purification ritual.  This confuses me slightly as it has nothing to do with any Gods’.  Rationally speaking February surely would be better in January’s place as thousands of people try to purify themselves with any number of New Year’s resolutions.  Another thing caught my eye.  Europeans are always obsessing how we English do our best to try to distance ourselves from the continent and whenever I get the opportunity I like to prove how wrong they are.  Therefore I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the old English word for February was Kale-monath which means cabbage.

March is most famously named after the Roman God of War and inventor of that fantastic chocolate and caramel combination, Mars.  Interesting March used to be the first month of the year despite the fact it has absolutely nothing to do with doorways.  The God of War should be a pretty cool God with a big sword, an icy glare and a beard which could make men weep tears of jealousy.  Unfortunately he was a part-time agricultural guardian, wore a skirt and didn’t even possess a sword.  And his beard was barely average.

April is even less clear in origin.  The traditional etymology is from the Latin aperire meaning to open, a reference to the pre-global warming era when trees and flowers begin ‘to open’ or blossom.  Nowadays thanks to Al Gore and his ilk we are all too aware that we shouldn’t be surprised to see tulips in november.  In all honestly the world warming up(to be fair I do live in Poland) isn’t such a bad thing.  Regardless of the climate changes it is clear that April is no longer needed as a month so I propose removing it completely.

Lets recap the new Scottorian calendar.

February or Cabbage as it shall now be known.

January

March

Each of those new months shall have an extra ten days, that way we won’t even notice the absence of April, after all nothing important happens then anyway.

Tune in next time for May, June, July and August

All research taken from Wikipedia.