The Rembis Report And Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CXLII

It can’t just be me, right?

I mean, March has too many things that nobody cares about all at once, yet we still make a big deal out of them.

Speak for yourself, Laddie!

Okay, maybe it is unfair to say that nobody cares. Sure, some people care about some events, but others will dismiss those same events entirely. March is a good example of this. Not all events are for everybody. A lot of what happens in March, I just don’t participate in. Scheduled holidays are extremely important and culturally significant to those who celebrate so I do not want to diminish them.

But finding out what’s so special, that’s my thing.

Let’s start with what may be the biggest celebration of all. Saint Patrick’s Day. What for? What did Saint Patrick do that was so spectacular that he got his own annual celebration every March 17th? The quick answer, that I have heard my entire life, is that he drove the snakes out of Ireland.

Now, I don’t know which snakes they are talking about or why Patrick was in the right place at the right time to give them a ride or what kind of car he had, but that’s what I have always heard. I am guessing that The Snakes were an Irish rock band who never became as big as U2.

And, what do you know - I no sooner think up something weird like this, look it up to fact check it, and here they are.

I have no explanation for this. Maybe I conjured them into existence from another dimension just by thinking about it.

Back to Saint Patrick, who wasn’t really Irish and wasn’t really a saint. He was a kid who got kidnapped from England and enslaved by the Irish sometime in the 5th century AD. Just about everything we know about him should start with “Legend has it -” because he is one of those colorful characters who rose to legendary folk hero status through oral histories passed down for centuries and exponentially embellished into fantastic tales.

Here is the short version. Legend has it that Patrick escaped his captors, went back to England, became a priest, and later returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary. Nothing was written down about him (except his personal diary) for centuries, so take what you will of the stories, but the reason he got popular probably stems from a parable about his interaction with a woman who ran an inn and pub. He saw that she was stingy with the whiskey and told her that if she were more generous, she would have more repeat business. This tale morphed into one with a demon lurking in her basement and Patrick dropping a three-leafed clover into his glass, maybe for luck. Patrick went on his way, but when he returned to the woman years later, he found her to be the most popular among innkeepers and that the demon was gone. Add these tidbits to a story about a guy who died during the Ides of March, on the 17th, and -

Faith and Begorrah, we’ve got ourselves a holiday. Let’s have a drink!

There is way more to it than that, but one fact is that Patrick was never officially canonized by the Catholic church as a real saint. It basically became an honorary title that Irish Catholics prefer to overlook.

Keep talking nonsense, boy, and your backside will be having an intimate discussion with my shillelagh.

Okay, fine. Don’t believe me. Believe the internet. They did the research, I am just repeating what I heard, like everyone else did for years.

Oy Mikey, you daft punk, suppose you are going to give us a history lesson on the Ides of March, are you? Are you going to tell us they were a rock band, too?

Indeed, they were. The Ides of March adopted their name from ancient Roman terminology meaning the middle of the month of Martius which eventually became March when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. The term became infamous in 44 BC when a seer warned Julius Caesar to watch his back on “The Ides of March.” Caesar met the seer on the 15th, and scoffed that nothing had happened. The Seer replied that the day was not over yet. Soon afterwards Julius Caesar was assassinated by around sixty people who took turns stabbing him on the Senate floor, led by political rivals Brutus and Cassius. Politics was not pretty back then.

Legend has it -

Oy!

Legend has it that a month before he was killed, Julius Caesar declared himself dictator for life. It’s a long story. Caesar made multiple reforms of government that did not sit well with a lot of lawmakers, particularly the Senate. While most of what he did had no lasting effect, one thing he did, that we still abide by today, is revise the calendar. The Julian calendar has 365 days with a leap day every four years. This calendar was followed for about 1,600 years until Pope Gregory XIII realized that something was out of whack. The days of his later years were not the same as those of his youth. Legend has it that Easter seemed to keep showing up earlier every year.

Just as Julius Caesar had inquired of his mathematicians and astronomers to solve the problem of why the seasons were out of sync with the dates, Gregory went to his scientific advisors, too. By Caesar’s decree, to get on track and start the new 365 day calendar off right, they put January first right where they wanted it, and the Roman year 46 BC had 455 days. This probably contributed to disgruntling the Senate and anybody who worked on salary, especially when people had made vacation plans and stuff. How are you supposed to work around that?

In 1582 Gregory introduced his new and improved calendar because the same thing was happening, but this time, instead of adding a bunch of days, he just cut ten days from history. October 4, 1582, was directly followed by October 15. So, nothing happened on October 5-14, 1582 because those days never existed.

Oy, the ides of October.

Right. Imagine trying to get everybody on Earth on board with the same calendar through ancient communication capabilities. They couldn’t just Tweet it out there. This information took days, months, maybe years, to reach everyone. By the time it got to the fringe sectors of the globe where people were relying on the Julian calendar, to find out that their kid, who was born on October 10th, 1582, was actually born on the 20th, was probably a mind-blowing experience. Not to mention all the paperwork they probably ended up having to revise. Imagine trying to explain the reasoning behind it to anyone without being able to convey the science.

To top it off, some people didn’t even use the Julian/Gregorian calendar. They had their own. There are over thirty other calendars out there, overlapping what Julius and Greg set up. October and March don’t even exist for them.

Oy, no wonder they killed Julius and Greg.

Gregory was not assassinated. Pope Gregory XIII died from complications due to a fever on April 10th, 1585.

Which would have been April Fool’s Day, had he not changed the date.

Actually it would have been March 30th. Let’s just stick with March, shall we?

Speaking of calendar changes, another thing we do every year is spring forward with daylight saving time. This is done all over the world, but they don’t do it in some places at all. Antarctica, I’m not sure, but most of Africa doesn’t bother. A couple of states, like Arizona and Hawaii do not participate. I don’t particularly care about it one way or the other, but I do get a kick out of seeing the clock on the dashboard of my car suddenly be corrected. It will show the right time until November, when I will need to start doing math again to know what time it is.

In addition to pagan rituals like dying rivers and beer green there are some big religious celebrations this March, 2024. Ramadan, Holi, and Easter.

Ramadan is a holy month in the Islamic calendar that is marked by fasting. This year it starts on March 11th, last year it was March 23rd, next year it will be on March 1st, and after that it will start in February. This is because the Islamic calendar follows a lunar cycle and those months are only 28 days long. No additional days for any reason. Twelve years from now Ramadan will be celebrated in October and November. This calendar is sacred to many people around the world and no reforms are on the horizon.

Lunar calendars are the basis for many cultural observances.

Holi is celebrated every year on the full moon day of the month of Falgun. This year it is on March 25th. If you thought Julius had some confusion to contend with, get a load of the Hindu calendar. It is extremely complex, following both lunar and solar cycles to find harmony and balance through synchronicity of astrological influence. Six different Sanskrit texts break the year down to seconds based on around 30 days per month and there are variants for seven different Indian dialects to interpret.

Turns out that Holi is a big deal no matter what language you speak.

Colorful springtime celebrations predate calendars. Pagan rituals incorporating the egg as a symbol of birth and renewal for the Spring equinox naturally dovetailed into the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and Easter was born.

Easter Sunday, like Holi and Ramadan, changes every year. Easter is the first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. If the full Moon falls on a Sunday then Easter is the following Sunday. This is because, legend has it, Jesus died on a Friday and came back to life on Sunday. You always hear Bible quotes about Jesus rising on the third day, but technically, it was about 48 hours. They are counting Friday as day one, Saturday as day two, and Sunday as the third day. It is stuff like this that messes up calendars.

One thing we know for sure is that Jesus died on a Friday. That is one fine detail that has never been in dispute. But what day of what year? Well, astronomer Isaac Newton figured it out, knowing that it was a Friday and basing calculations or other astronomical reports from the Bible, he narrowed it down to April 3, 33 AD. By the way, AD does not mean After Death. It means Anno Domini, which is Latin for "Year of our Lord," which started with the year Jesus was born. If you decide to apply the Gregorian Calendar, Jesus would have died on March 23rd, but that was a Monday. It is pretty easy to sneak out of work on Good Friday, some places close down completely, but have you ever tried to take off on a Monday? You just can’t. There is all kind of work to catch up on from the prior Thursday.

The whole celebration is based on Easter being a Sunday, just like the Super Bowl. Side note - this puts the Last Supper squarely on Wednesday, April Fool’s Day. Seems like a better day to celebrate. I mean, now that’s a party!

So, technically, what you are saying then, is that the original April Fool’s Day is basically St. Patty’s Day!

Technically, when you do all the math, it would be March 21st, which is generally the first day of Spring.

Close enough! Never say no to a four day weekend!

If that is how you see it, who am I to argue?

Sláinte!

Thanks for reading.

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.