History of the Week
by Seth M. Fisher
Contents:
The Pro-American in Parliament
Dec. 5, 2005
How a well-respected MP, sympathetic to the American
cause, became the foundling nation’s greatest enemy.
Dec. 12, 2005
The origins of the 7-day week, and the meaning behind the
names of its days. A great “Tiw’s Day” read.
Dec. 19, 2005
Traditions surrounding Christmas are explored,
from holly and mistletoe to Christmas trees, the Dec. 25 date, and Jolly
Ol’ Saint Nick
Dec. 26, 2005
One of the greatest stock swindles of all time gives rise
to a familiar bestial analogy, turning traders into bulls and bears.
An Elephant Races a Camel: Now THAT’s a
Rose Bowl!
Jan. 2, 2006
The Granddaddy of Them All used to be a chariot race,
before they turned it into an ostrich race and a few other very
non-football-like events.
Jan. 9, 2006
It was the best of drugs, it was the worst of drugs:
Within two weeks, a German chemist invents both the world’s greatest miracle
pill, and the world’s worst narcotic.
Jan. 16, 2006
When the Ottoman Empire’s armies set forth to conquer
Austria, Europe would be changed forever, at least insofar as what they eat for
breakfast.
Thankfully, Columbus Was Wrong
January 23, 2006
How a bit of bad math led to the discovery of the New
World
Jan. 30, 2006
The story of a simple groundhog who learned to predict
the end of winter.
Feb. 6, 2006
The remarkable reign of Norway’s Saur I, the Slobbery.
Feb. 13, 2006
Take a goddess of marriage, a hawkish emperor, a defiant
priest, and mix them all in a big Roman orgy, and what do you get: Valentine’s
Day.
The
Pro-American in Parliament
Dec. 5, 2005
In 1766, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act,
because, according to one well-respected MP, of “consequences greatly
detrimental to the commercial motives of this kingdom.” In other words, the
Americans were boycotting any product the Brits could put their silly little
tax stamp on, and enforcing their tax would have cost more that it's worth to
make us knock it off.
Well, after a backtrack like that, certain members of
Parliament certainly didn't want us to feel like we could ignore their taxes
whenever we wanted. So they passed the Declaratory Act, which basically stated
that Britain could tax its colonies (read: Yankee bastards) whenever and
however they pleased.
Much has been written about Benjamin Franklin's grand oratory
and Pitt's impassioned letters in opposition to the Declaratory Act. But we
hardly discuss the greatest oppositional speech that day, although the MP doing
the speaking comes up often in American Revolutionary tales.
The member of the House of Lords was a well-respected Whig,
a nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Aide-de-Camp to the King. Yet the
gentleman had oft shown himself to be sympathetic to the grievances of the
Americans. His staunch resistance to the act, and the persuasiveness of his
case and personality, led to several former proponents of the act changing
sides, something neither Franklin nor Pitt could boast.
This parliamentary pro-American continued to speak and vote
against the later Intolerable Acts and other suggestions of British retribution
toward the recalcitrant Yanks. That is, until he was called back into military
service to serve as a Major General in what became the American Revolutionary
War.
He proceeded to move up through the ranks, taking command of British forces in the South by 1780. In that capacity, on Oct. 19, 1781, surrounded by American troops and cut off from the sea by the French, General Charles Cornwallis, our truest friend in Parliament, signed the surrender of the British army.
Dec. 12, 2005
For this week's history of the week, I thought we'd actually delve into
the History of the Week.
The 7-day week is old in Western culture. Why 7 was chosen still remains a mystery. A 5-day week would have been easier on the solar calendar of 365 days, and a 6-day week would better correspond to the roughly 30-day lunar cycle. My best guess is that the ancients meant to correspond to the lunar phases: Full, wane, new, and wax. The bible sets forth a 7-day week in Genesis (historically, the earliest stories). But in later books, the text presents a certain adamancy toward Hebrews keeping to 7 days, which could suggest that nearby civilizations had a different number.
Suffice to say, by the time of Alexander the Great, most major
civilizations had a standard 7-day week, and this was reconciled with the solar
calendar by adding a short-week or elongated week at year’s end.
Seven is also the number of heavenly bodies in our solar system that you can see without a telescope. It makes sense, then, that the heavenly bodies gave their names to the days of the week:
Solis, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn
Those were the Roman names for the non-stars in our sky, and if you look at Latin language versions of the week names, the Roman nomenclature is still quite evident, e.g. the French week:
Dimanche ("Dies Soleil" or "Day of the Sun"), Lundi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi
The reason English week names are different is because we replaced the Roman gods with Norse ones.
Voila: Sun-day, Moon-day, Tiw’s-day, Woden’s-day, Thor’s-day, Freya’s-day, and Saturn-day. Actually, at the time, it was more like Wodensdaeg (Anglo-Saxon).
Why that order? We're still guessing. I think they're ranked in order of how fast they move in the sky if you're looking from Earth, but that's just speculation.
Dec. 19, 2005
When you're sitting around next Sunday with your family, whether
you're alighting by a Christmas tree, kissing beneath the mistletoe,
exchanging presents, watching a special on Santa and his reindeer, burning a
Yule log, sipping eggnog, or, like me, simply wondering why your great-aunt has
all of this X-mas regalia when you're Jewish, here's a little history of the
modern American Christmas, and all its fixings. That way, when you run out of
family-friendly stories for Aunt Helen, you can just act like an insufferable
know-it-all, like Hermione.
The Date:
If you believe Luke, then Jesus wasn't actually born on Dec. 25.
Actually, it's pretty clear exactly what day he was born. Don't freak out: It's
September 11, 3 B.C. We know because the story of his birth is rife with
references to Yom Kippur. The short version is, Mary comes in for her
purification and passes this girl Anna, who had been there all
night. There's only one day of the year you can do that: Yom Kippur,
the 10th day of the 7th month of the Hebrew calendar. In Judaism, a woman's
purification comes 40 days after her birth. So if Mary was coming in on the day
after the Day of Atonement, subtract 39 days from Yom Kippur and you
get the kid's birthday: the 1st of Elul. Transcribe that to our calendar and
it's 9/11.
Good thing he was born in 3 B.C., because if it was 1 A.D. you'd be
really freaked out right now, wouldn't you? Anyway, if he was born that close
to the high holy days, it helps explain why there were wise men walking around
in Bethlehem holding gifts. They'd be on their way to services.
The Christ Mass came be to celebrated near the winter solstice because
of the work of a bishop centuries later, whose main goal was to snuff out a
number of pagan holidays. Chief among these was the Roman light festival, but
the nix list also included the birthday of Zeus, Bacchus and several Germanic
gods.
The Tree:
The apocryphal story is that about 1,000 years ago, when Germany was
still being converted, St. Boniface found a bunch of pagans worshipping an oak
tree around the winter solstice. Infuriated, he cut down the oak. In its place
grew a fir tree, which became the symbol of the Christ Mass.
However, the fir was a symbol of winter solstice festivals long before
Boniface (evergreens are great winter holiday symbols in cold climates, for
obvious reasons). Ancient Egyptians would bring in palms. Romans celebrated
Saturnalia by decorating their homes with greens. Druids also used evergreens
as a symbol for their solstice mysticism.
Anyway, by the 15th or 16th century, the Germans and
Scandinavians were bringing them inside and Lutherans were decorating them
with candles and glass (light is another widespread them of solstice
holidays). Queen Victoria's husband, Albert of Saxe-Coburg, set up a great
tree at Windsor and decorated it with hand-blown glass. The Brits, who copied a
lot of Victoria's household examples, started to follow suit, and the
Americans, some of whom had already picked up the tradition from Revolutionary
Hessian troops, soon caught on.
Yule Log:
Remember how light was associated with the winter solstice across a
number of cultures? Well, this was especially true in 12th century Scandinavia,
where mid-to-late December meant as little as a few hours per day of sunlight.
This was the time of a festival for Odin, also known as Jolnir (the
"J" is a "y" sound). The festival, called Jol (pronounced
"Yule"), was basically an all-night beer bender. The townspeople
would fell a large tree, get it lit, and party hardy until the thing burned
itself out. Over time, as the festival moved indoors with civilization, the
practice became to cut an especially large log and have it burn in your
fireplace, often after dousing it with wine or beer and performing a variety of
local rites. It developed a number of varied magical charms and wards, and in
some cultures, the girls of the home would hide a few pieces of it each year to
be brought out as kindling for the following year's log. This most global of
Christmas traditions symbolizes pretty much every aspect of a good winter
solstice holiday, from light, to continuity, to gathering together as a family.
Mistletoe
To begin with, mistletoe and holly are evergreens, thus a popular symbol
for the winter holiday across a number of cultures, and are often attributed
magical properties. The version that grows in America is a parasite, and not
good to have around at all, but the larger European version has a symbiotic relationship,
to a degree, with certain plants. Druids especially thought of it as having
magical powers, but it's the Norse who thought to use it as an aphrodisiac.
There's a Norse myth that has the goddess Freya (her second appearance
thus far in History of the Week) making every plant and animal promise not to
harm her newborn, Baldur. Except she forgot mistletoe, so mischievous ol'
Loki got another god to kill the kid with a spear made from the evergreen.
After the gods brought Baldur back to life, Freya decreed that mistletoe should
bring love rather than death from here on in. Young kissers remember the myth
by kissing beneath the plant.
Historically, it seems there used to be a lot more going on than
kissing. Afterall, erotic festivities are another common thread between a
number of winter solstice holidays, especially the promiscuous Roman
Saturnalia. In Victorian times, to cut back on all the kissing, it was
decreed in York that a berry be removed after each kiss, and the kissing
would cease once all the berries were gone.
Santa Claus and Gift Giving
The jolly old fat man in a red suit who appears in more commercials this
time of year than that moron who keeps stalking Dodge truck owners (www.jonreep.com)
is known by a number of names (Santa Claus, Sankt Niklaus, Sinterklaas,
Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Belsnickle and Peltz-Nickle) that all lead
back to the same very real human being.
Saint Nicholas would have actually been about the same
age as Constantine, and likely had several dealings with the man himself.
He was a wealthy man by inheritance, and one of the first true philanthropists.
Nick grew up in Patera, a Greco-Roman town in modern-day Turkey, traveled to
Jerusalem, and became the Bishop of Myra (now Demre, Turkey)
when still a young man. It wasn't usual at the time for a layman to go right to
bishop, but it seems they were willing to make an exception for such an
exceptional (and exceptionally wealthy) candidate. He became especially known
for his generosity toward the sick and children, to whom he would often give
small gifts of food. In his generosity, it is said that Nicholas actually gave
away his father's entire fortune. If he didn't, by the time of the tetrarchy
under Diocletian, he would have lost the rest, as he was imprisoned and
probably tortured.
Nicholas was one of the most senior and respected participants at
the Council of Nicaea, and died a few decades later, Dec.
6, 343, to be buried in his Cathedral. Supposedly, some liquid with
healing properties, dubbed "Manna of Saint Nicholas" formed over his
grave, and he was christened a saint for it. He became known as the patron
saint of children and the sick, and basically anyone else in need, including sailors.
In 1087, those sailors nabbed his bones and moved them to Bari, Italy,
where he supplanted a cult around a kindly grandma saint who used to leave
presents in children’s stockings. The Nicholas cult that grew up there had a
tradition of exchanging gifts between each other every year on Dec. 6. That
tradition was promoted further by the Catholic Church to supplant a similar
gift exchange practice around the pagan holiday of Saturnalia.
Even without America's Santa fever, he's probably one of the most
popular saints in Christendom.
His image hasn't changed all that much, believe it or not. A fresco on
his church (yes, you can still go visit it, as well as the church in Bari)
shows him in red and blue robes, sporting a long, white beard in the Greek
fashion, and if not rotund by today's standards, let's just say when he
retraced Jesus' footsteps in Israel, it wasn't the boy from Bethlehem
who left the deeper footprints of the two. However, if he was known to
wear any color more than another, it probably would have been light blue, which
was what bishops wore in those days. The red comes much, much later.
Nick is involved in so many postmortem tales, he could be the patron
saint of Tupac. One of the most prevalent in Western Europe was of Sinter
Nicklaus (German for Saint Nicholas), or "Sinter Klaus" for short,
bouncing from rooftop to rooftop as an elf and putting coins in peoples'
chimneys.
The Dutch brought Belznickle (a corruption of "Peltz Nickle,"
which means "Saint Nick"), to New Amsterdam, which became New York,
but there wasn't much St. Nick tradition to speak of. One thing that did happen
was the Anglicization of "Belznickle" into "Kris Kringle."
But it was really the Germans of Pennsylvania keeping the Santa Claus party
going party going every December. However, after the Revolutionary War, New
Yorkers re-attached themselves to the city's Dutch roots and made St. Nick the
city's patron saint.
Not long after, Washington Irving popularized St. Nick by publishing a bunch
of stories about him as a satire of Dutch culture. In 1823, the poem we now
know as "The Night Before Christmas," which used Washington Irving's
bag-carrying, chimney-visiting, pipe-smoking version, was published, and
became an instant holiday classic.
The famous cartoonist Thomas Nast started drawing the rotund,
rosy-cheeked elf in the late 1800s. He also gave him a home in the
North Pole, his sleigh and reindeer, his workshop filled with elves, and a list
with every good and bad child in the world. Meanwhile, over in England, Queen
Victoria changed the date to celebrate St. Nick from 12/6 to 12/24 to formalize
his Christmas tie-in.
The present-day, life-sized version – commercial tie-ins and all – was
actually from a 1931 ad for Coca-Cola. In the drawing by Haddon Sundblom,
Santa's wearing a fur-trimmed suit, bright red for Coke, and sports a
cheerful, chubby face.
All told, the modern Christmas is a conglomerate of a number of Western
civilization festivals and holidays that came around the same time. It has
heavy ties to evergreens, continuity, family, sex, light, giving of gifts, and
seeking community pleasures in the face of a most miserable oncoming season. In
fact, the one thing it has the lest to do with, celebrationally speaking of
course, is the birth of the Christian god.
Dec. 26, 2005
I wonder how many stock optimists and pessimists on the market floor know (or care) where "Bearish" and "Bullish" come from. Fortunately, we liberal arts majors are around to do their caring for them.
The bestial terms actually derive from some old words of wisdom: "Don't sell the bear's skin before one has caught the bear." In the early 18th century, some traders began selling stock, to be delivered at a future date, before they bought it, with the expectation that the price would drop in the meantime. Using the well-known saying for ironic context, such speculators were dubbed "bear-skin jobbers."
Gradually, the term was shortened to "bear" (remember, these are the same people who turned "I would like to buy 3,000 shares of your stock, please" into a hand gesture) and began applying it to anyone who was pessimistic about a stock price.
The term came into widespread use as the result of a scandal in England known as the South Sea Bubble. The South Sea Company, which had been formed in 1711, assumed the entire national debt in 1720 in return for an annual payment from the government plus a monopoly on trade with the South Seas and South America. Inflated by extravagant tales of the riches to be had (and by well-placed bribes), the price of the company's stock soared to over 1000 pounds. Speculation mania took over, and the bears had a field day selling stock for a few legitimate companies and many bogus schemes. Late in the summer, the South Seas stock plummeted, causing England's first great stock market panic and ruining thousands of investors.
Of course, they also needed something to oppose all of those
pessimistic bears. Considering "bull-baiting" was as popular a term
in England at the time as "bear-baiting," it has been suggested that
the bull made the most natural antonym for the bearish.
Both were in use at the time of the South Seas Bubble, but it took the stock market swindle and a famous Enlightenment poet, who was reportedly quite bullish himself, writing about it to popularize the terms:
Come fill the South Sea goblet full;
The gods shall of our stock take care:
Europa pleased accepts the bull,
And Jove with joy puts off the bear.
---Alexander Pope
An Elephant
Races a Camel: Now THAT’s a Rose Bowl!
Jan. 2, 2006
As with several seasons since the implementation of that infernal BCS system, Big Ten fans must suffer another year without a conference representative in the Granddaddy of Them All. But it could be worse. After all, for 26 years the conference didn't even allow postseason games. And for 14 years, the Rose Bowl didn't even have football!
In 1890, a group of hunters who had moved to Pasadena from colder climates decided to show off the winter warmth of their new home by holding an outdoors New Year's festival. Then, as now, Southern California was populated largely by transplanted Northeast- and Midwesterners. The Valley Hunt Club, as they were called, began inviting marching bands as well as hosting athletic skill tournaments like jousting, wrestling, foot races and a big tug-of-war.
By 1900, the festival had grown too big for the hunters to handle, so they turned it over to a planning committee. Looking for a signature event, in 1902 they invited Midwest football powerhouse Michigan, coached by Fielding Yost, to play California's top team, Stanford.
The game was a slaughter. Without breaking a sweat, a partial Michigan team put up 49 points on the Cardinal by the 3rd quarter, when Stanford's players decided they had had enough and walked off the field. The spectators booed and worse, and by the next morning, the planning committee was telling local papers they agreed the football match had been a mistake.
The following New Year's, Rose Festival goers were happy to find Roman-style chariot races and polo matches as the main event. Wrote local papers, "Footballing is a gruesome, bloody pastime, unworthy of a civilized man's attentions."
By 1912, footballers were no longer dying on the field with regularity, but the same could not be said for the Rose Bowl, where a tragic chariot race accident led planners to shut down that event. So in 1913, the festival planning committee turned to staging curiosity tournaments like ostrich racing, bronco busting, and a race between a camel and an elephant (victor: elephant). The ostrich race was particularly unsuccessful, after a jockey got thrown from his bird and kicked across the track. So in 1916, the Rose Bowl brought back football.
They didn't invite many Big Ten teams, though. In 1921, Ohio State came, and got blanked 28-0 by Cal. Just several years later, they lost all access to the Big Ten, when the conference decided to ban post-season play in 1923. It wasn't until after the war, in 1947, that the Big Ten allowed Illinois to play UCLA, and the Big Ten/Pac-10 tie-in was established.
Yes, it's depressing to see all this sponsorship and commerciality and the January 4th date that the horrid Bull-Crap System brings with its stupid attempt to claim a "National Champion," but hey, at least it's not an ostrich race.
Jan. 9, 2006
2400 years ago, Hippocrates wrote that a powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree could help heal headaches, pains and fevers. Throughout the 19th century, scientists like Henri Leroux and Charles Frederic Gerhardt were experimenting with this compound, then called Salicin.
But it wasn't until the end of that century, 1897, that a chemist for Bayer (then a German dye company) named Felix Hoffmann rediscovered Gerhardt's formula when trying to help his father with arthritis. Hoffman was told to develop the drug by head chemist Arthur Eichengruen, pending a go-ahead from their boss, Heinrich Dreser. They dubbed it “ASA,” and Eichengruen proceeded to prep their discovery for public consumption – at least until the boss put the kibosh on the program.
You see, Dreser was a man of pet projects, and he was about to find one
to take the lion’s share of his attentions.
While ASA was being tested – just two weeks after the initial
discovery – Hoffmann synthesized another compound, a derivative of the
morphine opiate that could deliver the same effects with much less
product. Dreser marked this second chemical concoction as the wonder drug that
would make them all rich.
Eichengruen begged his boss to focus on the first discovery, but his
pleas fell on deaf ears. After trying it on sticklebacks, frogs, rabbits, other
Bayer chemists and himself, Dreser had become ‘hooked’ on the possibilities of
what he called the “hero drug,” alternately: Heroin.
Heroin was fast-tracked and hit the shelves running by August 1898.
Marketed as a cough remedy much more effective than codeine, as well as a pain
reliever, the drug was considered a godsend to a world in which tuberculosis
and pneumonia were the leading causes of death.
But the high didn’t last long, and within a year, reports of
habit-forming, tolerance-building, and recreational users selling scrap metal
to get a fix (hence the term “junkie”) slowed sales considerably.
So Dreser went back to the other drug Hoffmann had come up with, which Eichengruen had been persistently investigating and lobbying for. By February 1899, the drug was registered, repackaged and prepared for a June launch under a new name, "Aspirin."
The new drug made Dreser a rich man, especially because he “forgot” to
compensate Hoffmann or Eichengruen for their efforts. By 1914, when Heroin was
finally made illegal, Dreser (and Bayer) had become so rich off of Aspirin that
losing the first baby hardly mattered.
There’s an addendum to this story. In 1946, Eichengruen, who also holds the distinction of being the second-oldest man to survive a Nazi concentration camp, emerged to write a definitive – and quite scathing – tale of Dreser. The boss himself never even saw the Second World War. Having reportedly taken a measure of his preferred wonder drug every day, he died of cerebral apoplexy in late 1924. Knowing what we do now about Aspirin’s effects on heart disease, it’s quite conceivable that had he taken a daily dose of his other wonder drug instead, the stroke could have been avoided.
Jan. 16, 2006
In 1683, the city of Vienna was under attack from the Ottoman Turks. The Austrian capital was the key to conquering Europe, and though it had withstood Sultan Suleiman I in 1529 (one of the bloodiest sieges in history, and one which featured lots of tunnel fighting) the Turks were now at it again, tunneling under the walls and everything.
Vienna’s bakers, who did much of their cooking in stone basements early in the morning, heard the drilling and warned the guards. To commemorate their role, the bakers made flaky, fatty pastries in the shape of a crescent (from the symbol on the Turkish flags). Voila: the croissant.*
The Austrians later won the Battle of Vienna in 1683, thanks in large part to the appearance of King Jan III Sobieski of Poland. Sobieski’s army of about 85,000 men ran into the roughly 140,000 Turkish warriors, and after a bloody battle, the Poles managed to break their fearsome hussar riders through the Turkish lines. For his efforts, Sobieski was called the savior of Vienna.
Now, Eastern European Jews already possessed a bread-making technique in which they boiled the dough before baking it. There is even a reference dating to 1610 of this type of bread being fed to pregnant women.
Anyway, with this “let’s bake a commemorative treat” thing already established, legend has it that the bakers of Vienna, which had a sizeable Jewish population, shaped their boiled bread into rings (or, in German, “beigels”) in honor of the stirrups of the oft-horsed Jan III. The shape was repeated in Poland and across Eastern Europe, especially whenever the hero Polish king was in town** Polish Jews in America popularized them a century later by selling them in New York, still baked in the shape of Sobieski’s round stirrup.***
Apocryphal Disclaimers:
*It has been suggested that the croissant stories are a
bit, shall we say, flaky, mostly by people who aren’t Austrians. The French say
it was a French baker in service to the King of Austria who made it so his boss
could “consume” his enemies. Hungarians think it took place in Buda (now the
Western half of Budapest), when Austrians retook the city in 1686. A more
likely Hungarian origin is that the treat was devised during the occupation to
placate the Turks themselves, as they would have had access to pastry dough,
but not pastry filling. Either way, everyone agrees that within a few years, it
was a specialty of primarily Viennese bakers, and the French got it from them.
**The bagel story also doesn’t have much in the way of
proof, except that it seems by 1700 and onwards, a lot of Poland’s non-Jewish
population, as well as a lot of Russians and other Eastern European areas, had
started baking and consuming the doughy delectables.
*** Some historians believe that when the bakers returned from presenting their culinary tribute to Jan III, their mothers responded, “What, you want I should be impressed because you gave some king a bagel? You want to impress me, bubela, become a doctor like your father. He was a mensch, that man.”
Thankfully, Columbus Was
Wrong
January 23, 2006
Popular myth has it that Christopher Columbus envisioned his epic voyage to the West because he knew the Earth was round – as opposed to contemporary assumptions that it was flat – and thus able to be circumnavigated.
Actually, most people, most every educated person, and pretty much every
sailor, was well aware that the Earth was spherical. The Greek mathematician
Pythagoras had this figured out 2,000 years before the Voyage to the New World,
and it has been suggested even he wasn’t the first. Ancient philosophers knew,
for example, that a ship’s stern would disappear over the horizon before its
mast, that the Earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, and that the view
of the stars changed when you changed latitudes.
Truly at issue in Columbus’ day was not Earth’s shape, but its
circumference. Around 200 B.C., the Alexandrian philosopher Eratosthenes (who
deserves a History of the Week of his own one day), calculated the globe’s
circumference quite precisely. However, most scholars in the late 15th
century were using Ptolemy’s slightly less accurate figure – about 24,900
miles.
Columbus was going by neither, preferring the more contemporary math of
one Pierre d’Ailly, who put the equatorial circumference at around 19,000
miles. With most experts going by Ptolemaic reckoning, Columbus had a tough
time convincing sponsors that the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was
only 2,400 miles (reachable for a good ship), as opposed to the impossible, and
more accurate 10,600 miles.
A bit of misplaced trust in a bad mathematician shouldn’t undermine the
importance of Columbus to Western history, and neither should the fact that
natives, Vikings and possibly even Egyptians made their way here first. The
voyage of 1492 began the Age of Discovery, gave early Renaissance Europe
knowledge of the American continents, and set the modern age in motion.
As for the world-is-flat falsity, that comes from Washington Irving’s
popular 19th century novel, The Life and Voyages of Christopher
Columbus. Perhaps he figured a little historical misconception was preferable
to children believing they could fail Geometry and still change the world.
Jan. 30, 2006
This we know: every February, Punxsutawney Phil climbs out from his hibernating hole, glances toward the ground, and announces whether he sees his shadow (meaning six more weeks of winter), or he doesn’t (an early spring cometh). Then he climbs back into his burrow, presumably to prepare for next year’s prediction.*
So as we await this years' proclamation from the indolent prognosticator
of prognosticators, I thought it might be interesting to know how a groundhog
got such amazing powers to begin with.
Phil has been delivering official weather forecasts for the town of Punxsutawney, Pa. since Feb. 2, 1886, when the town’s newspaper dubbed the rodent “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary.” But the town was actually just formalizing a celebration at Gobbler’s Knob** that had been going on in the town much longer.
In the 1700s, the town was settled mostly by Dutch, but the early 1800s brought a large German population. Among the German customs was a superstition attached to Candlemas***, a Christian holiday celebrated on Feb 2. Supposedly, if there was sun on Candlemas, a second winter, i.e. more storms, was on its way, while a cloudy day would portend a milder February.
This superstition surrounding Candlemas was widespread throughout Christendom, and was known to the Dutch settlers of upstate Pennsylvania. But the Germans brought with them a 2,000-year-old Roman tradition of leaving the sighting up to a hedgehog. Finding no indigenous hedgehogs in their new accommodations, but plenty of groundhogs, the Americanized Germans simply switched to the marmot.
It should be noted that the Canadian town of Wiarton, Ontario (Wiarton Willie), has the same exact tradition, with similar origins.
Occasionally, Phil does go beyond his duties as Seer of Seers, etc. He’s met four presidents, been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and volunteered for the armed services in 1941 (he was turned down as “4-F”). In 1981, he wore a yellow ribbon in honor of American hostages in Iran. During Prohibition, he threatened to impose 60 weeks of winter on the town if he were not allowed a drink. And in 1958, he announced that a United States “Chucknik” would beat the Russians in the space race.
Forgiving the 9 times nobody thought to record the result, since they started using Gobbler’s Knob, Phil has seen his shadow 95 times to just 14 early springs predicted, the last in 1999.
*Actually, he spends the year in the town’s library eating ice cream and dog food. Rough life.
**Contrary to what you might have seen in a Bill Murray
film, Gobbler’s Knob is on a wooded hill just outside of town, not in the town
square of Woodstock, Ill.
***Candlemas in
Christianity is the celebration of Mary’s purification 40 days after the
birth of Jesus. Like many holidays of pagan origin, it has a solar date –
midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It marked the
beginning of the Festival of Februa (old Latin for “purification”), the origin
of the month name of February. The festival would last all month, but the first
day would features several purifying rituals before getting to the good stuff
(see upcoming Valentine’s Day HotW). When the church moved the date of Jesus’
birthday to late December (see the Christmas entry), the purification of Mary
celebration could thus supplant the Roman festival.
Feb. 6, 2006
Saur was a pup of potential. In the 11th century, European aristocracies had already begun specialty breeding of dogs. Despite his likely distinguished breeding line, however, Saur was still known to beg at the table, urinate in public, and bark excitedly whenever somebody entered the room – not exactly a perfect pedigree for ruling a powerful Viking kingdom.
The 11th century was an exciting period for Norway. Most of the country was united under Saint Olaf at the beginning of the century. His predecessor, Svein Forkbeard, and Svein’s son Cnut (“Canute the Great” to the English), who eventually ousted Olaf, ruled an empire that included Denmark and England. However, the southern region of modern Norway was still controlled by several subkingdoms, or petty kingdoms, which were subjugated under Olaf but soon split again.
A grandson of the legendary king Raum the Old, Eystein the Wicked was already making a name for himself among the competing Norwegian rulers. Already the top landowner amongst Raum descendents, he conquered a large swath of neighboring Trondheim, home to Olaf’s old capital of the same name, giving the rule of the acquisition to his son, Onund.
The locals, however, revolted against their new ruler and in the process, offed young Onund. Eystein was furious. After subduing the revolt, he gave the people of Trondheim a choice: if they wouldn’t be controlled by his son, they could be ruled by Eystein’s slave, or Eystein’s dog. The people chose the dog, our friend Saur. Eystein had the canine crowned, and ordered that the dog be treated as a king, with all the dress, pomp, food and bowing befitting one of his station.
Yes, there was some humor to it. But he was also making several points: First, in Norwegian culture at the time, your ruler was a direct reflection on you and your worth, so this was meant to be an insult to the revolting subjects. Second, Eystein was driving home the point that no matter who sat on the throne, they were under his yoke. Third, as Trondheim had been the capital of a united Norway, by putting a canine on Olaf’s throne, this petty kingdom monarch could well have been thumbing his nose at Olaf’s memory and the idea of a single Norwegian sovereign altogether.
The pooch ruled for three years, relatively ignored by Cnut’s drunken heir Harthecnut*, who thought the embarrassment of fighting a dog-king on the battlefield wasn’t worth challenging Eystein’s incursion. Unfortunately, Saur the Slobbery’s reign was cut short when he picked a fight with a wolf, as Norwegian kings were known to do, and lost.
*Writing to Rome during Saur’s reign, a Danish bishop
noted that he “had met the dog-king of Norway, and found him hairy, bestial,
barking and not worth praying for.” He was talking about Harthecnut.
Feb. 13, 2006
History of the week fans would recall how the church changed the beginning of the Roman feast of Februa into Candlemas (though they couldn’t get rid of rodents and their propensity for weather forecasting). But the Februa holiday the Catholics really had a problem with came in the middle of the month.
There was no singular tradition among the worshippers of Greco-Roman gods for the annual celebration of Juno (Hera to the Hellenistic among us). But pretty much the lot of Juno-Day traditions were abhorrent to anyone who believed Saint Paul’s behavioral ideals. February 14 would go smoothly enough. As goddess of marriage, Juno’s festival usually meant lots of nuptials.
During the reign of Claudius II, the emperor was having a hard time getting men to join his army, and knew married men, especially Christian ones, were less likely to seek the soldier’s life. So in 268 A.D., Claudius banned weddings on February 14. It wasn’t the most successful law ever passed. Priests, Christian and pagan, kept performing secret marriages (the modern church’s PR department doesn’t like it one bit, but historians have found more than ample evidence to suggest pre-Constantine Christians, especially in Rome, were often quite active in pagan ritual.)
One well-respected Christian priest by the name of Valentine (his name suggests he was of a noble military family), was caught, tried and convicted for breaking Claudius’ edict. It has been suggested – and this would certainly be congruent with Claudius’ personality – that Valentine was singled out more because he was Christian than for performing marriages. Anyway, Valentine was held for a year, generating a number of stories. Among them was a goodbye note he left for the jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended (the first Valentine card?). On Feb. 14, 269 A.D., Valentine was executed, or martyred if you prefer.
Now, like most weddings, once everyone’s done celebrating the young couple, the focus quickly shifts to those without a wedding band. Across the Roman Empire, February 15, called the Feast of Lupercalia, became a day of promiscuity. Young boys and girls would draw lots to be coupled for the day, orgies opened their doors, and in Rome itself, a tradition grew up of social place-trading.*
It was Lupercalia, not Juno’s celebration, that really got under the early church’s robes, and once Rome became a Christian empire, successive Popes and Emperors attempted to diffuse it. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius set aside February 14 to honor St. Valentine, effectively supplanting any residual pagan rituals.
Gradually, Valentine’s Day became the date for exchanging love messages and St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. The date was marked by sending poems and simple gifts such as flowers. In the Renaissance and after, there was often a social gathering or a ball.
In the United States, Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first valentine cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800s.
Some Lupercalian traditions survived in pockets of Europe.
For example, in medieval England, boys and girls would still draw each others’
names from a bowl and pair up, wearing the name of their partner on an armband
for a week or so, the origin of the phrase “to wear your heart on your sleeve.”