OCTOBER 4, 1582: TEMPUS FUGIT, REALLY FUGIT

In 1582, the Gregorian Calendar was adopted for the first time with Poland, Portugal and Spain leading the way. The calendar was implemented by and named after Pope Gregory XIII . He didn’t like the Julian Calendar in use at the time because Easter kept creeping back to an earlier time of the year so that eventually it would fall in the middle of winter, even on Christmas Day (which wasn’t creeping) and really confuse Christians.

Jews didn’t care a whole lot because they were already up to year 5303. Muslims were back at 1001. The Chinese were celebrating 4278 (Year of the Horse). Certain scientists were way ahead of everyone else at 11582, having added 10,000 years to the current year to make the starting point the beginning of the human era (like they knew what day that was) instead of the birth of Jesus who they say wasn’t born in 1 BC but in 4 BC (lied about his age) and wasn’t born on his birthday (Christmas).

But back to the Christians for whom it was October 4, 1582, and also for whom tomorrow would be October 15, because Pope Gregory took ten days right out of the calendar to put Easter back where it had been when he was a boy.  calendarWell, you can just imagine how upset folks who had birthdays or special anniversaries or doctors’ appointments between October 5 and 14 were.

Some people just refused to use the new calendar. Many European countries fell into line later in the year. But many Protestant countries thought the new calendar was part of a Catholic plot . Britain (and its colonies) didn’t come along until 1752. The Greeks didn’t start using it until 1923. And a few malcontent members of the U.S. Congress are still demanding a recount.

Calling All Crimestoppers

An all-American, tough but smart, police detective arrived on the crime scene on October 4, 1931. Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy comic strip first appeared in the Detroit Mirror. The strip continues to run to this day, although drawn by others since Gould departed for that precinct in the sky back in 1985.

Along with police procedure and gadgets such as the two-way wrist radio, the strip featured a bevy of colorful characters. There’s Tess Trueheart, Tracy’s lady friend and eventual wife, his adopted son Junior and his wife Moon Maid (an alien), their daughter Honey Moon, Junior’s second wife Sparkle Plenty and her parents B. O. and Gravel Gertie. An almost endless list of villains: Abner Kadaver, Art Dekko, Breathless Mahoney, Cueball, Flattop, Gruesome, Junky Doolb (blood backwards), Littleface Finny, the Mole, Mrs. Chin Chillar, Mumbles and Pruneface.

Faraway Places With Strange Sounding Names

The Trojan Horse dates way back to the war between the Trojans and the Greeks in a thousand or so BC. Having been unable to topple Troy, the Greeks pretended to sail away, leaving the large wooden beast as a going away gift. But weren’t there a gaggle of Greeks hiding inside. Laocoon, a Trojan priest warned the others that he feared the Greeks bearing gifts. Perhaps if he had been more precise, counseling the Trojans to beware a gift bearing Greeks or not to look a gift horse in the mouth or you might see a Greek looking back at you, the outcome may have been different. But it wasn’t.

The Trojan Horse became a symbol of Greek might and was revered through the ages, resting at its home in the Trojan Horse National Park. Inexplicably, the Greeks tired of it and it was eventually converted to a condo. The horse which had once been filled with ancient Greek warriors came to house only five Greeks, the Thermopolis brothers — Dmitri, Ergo, Aristotle, Zorba and Smitty.

January 1, 2024: Deconstructing the New Year

It’s a new year, a new beginning, a fresh start and all those cliches.  It’s a cold slap in the face after last night when you celebrated and then made that resolution while licking the wassail bowl dry.  You don’t remember?  Your resolution went something like this:  I hereby resolve to read Wretched Richard’s Almanac every day so that I might be well informed, sophisticated and attractive. And I will recommend it to all my friends so they too might be well informed, sophisticated and attractive.

Here Come Januarius

As we previously pointed out, today is January 1, New Year’s Day, the start of a brand new year. It wasn’t always thus. There wasn’t always a January. According to legend, the first calendar was created by Romulus who along with his twin brother Uncle Remus founded Rome. This calendar had only ten months (these were leaner times), the ten being Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Innius, Quintilis, Sextilis, Aquarius, Donner, Blitzen, and the ever-popular Decembris.

The year consisted of only 298 regularly scheduled calendar days. The authorities would add bonus days here and there as they saw fit to bring the total number to the magic 365. (Martius 3, a Tuesday, will be postponed so we can bring you a special wear-a-toga-to-work day. Martius 3 will return on Thursday.)

A fellow by the name of Numa Pompilius (no need to memorize his name)  succeeded Romulus who had murdered Uncle Remus in a typically Roman display of sibling rivalry.   In an effort to Make Rome Great Again, Pompilius added two months to the Roman calendar. The first of these was Januarius, dedicated to the two-faced god Janus, the deity who presided over doors, looking back through the doorway to the past and ahead to the future. Clever, what?

More Wolf-monat, Van Helsing?

Wolf contemplating a Saxon snack

The Saxons (the Almanac is a big tent, they’re welcome too) didn’t hold much with naming things after Roman gods. They had a different and more colorful name for the month of January — Wolf-monat or Wolf-month, because Saxon folks were more likely to be devoured by wolves during Wolf-monat than at any other time of the year.  But we digress.

Et Tu, Sosigenes

Even though Januarius was added some 600 years earlier, New Year’s Day was celebrated on Januarius 1 for the first time in 45 B.C. On that day the Julian calendar went into effect — created by Julius Caesar himself — with the aid of his trusty sidekick Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer.

Sosigenes advised Caesar to dump the whole Roman calendar and start from scratch. New Year’s no longer came in March. A one-time bonus of 67 days was thrown in, with the promise of an extra day every four years in February.

But Caesar couldn’t stop there. In 44 B.C. (that’s a year later than 45), he changed the month of Quintilis to Julius (July, to friends). He would no doubt have done more damage had not a group of noble Romans assassinated him that same year.  But didn’t Augustus come along and keep fiddling with the calendar. (There’s something about Caesars and fiddling.). Sextilis became (what else?) Augustus. But it only had 30 days, compared to Julius’ 31.  What’s a Roman emperor to do?  Steal a day from Februarius, of course.

. . .And on the Eighth Day

For those folks who just can’t get enough ’tis the season, today is also the eighth of a dozen days of Christmas.  This is infamously celebrated by the carol in which on this day, the first day of Christmas, someone’s True Love bestows upon him or her a gift of a partridge in a pear tree.  While we might point out that a crock pot or a circular saw would be a bit more practical, we won’t quibble with the sentiment.  A flock followed: turtle doves, French hens, colly birds, geese, swans, all calling, clucking, cooing and squawking around that pear tree.

But now on the eighth day, True Love, having at last run out of feathered friends, has created an entirely new category of giving — the gift of people. The first contribution to this premise consists of eight maids a-milking, a lovely gift with nary a cackle or a caw. Of course this requires the addition of cows — one can’t very well expect the recipient to go out and find his or her own cows (True Love could have added a disclaimer of cows not included, but that would be a cheap trick.) We suppose there might be just one cow with all the maids milking it, but that would be one very sore cow.

Charles Dickens, it would seem, missed the Christmas boat by failing to take advantage of this twelve day gimmick.  Imagine if you will the twelve ghosts of Christmas.