So today has been Leap Day. Every four years an extra day is attached at the end of February. Which made me think of why February is so short in the first place when the months could be more even. One theory I've heard is that they wanted to make the winter seem shorter, but that doesn't make sense to me because it just extends further into March that way. Not that I really mind winter in the first place, but still.
Tomorrow is St. David's Day, which is hard to find ways to celebrate in this country. At least I'll be wearing a flannel shirt.
Tomorrow is St. David's Day, which is hard to find ways to celebrate in this country. At least I'll be wearing a flannel shirt.
2 comments:
You're right that's a curious thing about February. I looked it up only to learn (Encyclopedia Britannica) a complicated story about the Romans having an agrarian based system that only had ten months in it - the growing months from March to December. The others were called winter. Apparently this became messy when they realized the year didn't accord with the twenty-eight day lunar cycle. The emperor at that time, who was superstitious, added two extra months but thought even numbered months were unlucky and wouldn't agree to thirty day months (I said it was complicated). February became the month for honoring the dead and since that was already unlucky he made it twenty-eight days long.
I suppose it's hard to find many Welsh people in one area of the US so St. David's Day isn't well known. However, RI is the only place I ever lived that celebrates St. Joseph's Day. It was the one day of the year when my Italian friends brought delicious zeppoles to work.
Happy March 1st - Spring is on the way.
You're right that it's a complicated story. But of course it would be. We take for granted a year that has twelves months, with 365-6 days distributed not-quite-evenly among them. But the length of a year wasn't self-evident to ancient peoples. Calendars had to be made from scratch, from observation and imperfect measurements, throughout the Bronze and Iron ages. Different cultures came up with slightly different solutions, and none had it completely right.
It's not so much a question of "how many Welsh people" as it is "how many self-aware Welsh people." There was a big migration in the eighteenth century and a smaller one in the nineteenth. But there's no equivalent to the strong Irish-American community. Partly, perhaps, because Welsh names sound like English ones and in a lot of cases are because the country was a late adopter of the idea of surnames.
We're getting a pretty clear preview of spring now.
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