Seasoning

Most ancient calendars began at the vernal equinox, which marks the beginning of spring; under the current system that falls on March 21, give or take a day depending on the year. There were numerous exceptions that began the year at the hibernal solstice (December 21 plus/minus a day), but most began at the equinox. This is reflected still in the names of the months, the last four of which are simply wrong. September, October, November, and December mean the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months: in each case off by two. Prior to 45 BC those months were what they purported to be. In that year Julius Caesar, as part of the general calendar reform, reset the start of the year arbitrarily to January 1; inexplicably, he didn’t bother at the same time to change the names of the months to fit the new arrangement.

Bone lunar calendar c.25000 BCE

Calendars based on the lunar and solar cycles preceded formal writing. Among the earliest representational symbols ever found are notches on sticks and bones marking the lunar cycle. Neolithic peoples were very good astronomers as Stonehenge famously attests. The reason the ancients commonly began a year at the vernal equinox (or at the full moon following it) is obvious. Earth in the Northern hemisphere finally shakes loose of winter. Spring is a rebirth. Ancient mythologies are full of resurrection stories symbolizing vegetative rebirth at the start of spring. In ancient Babylon it was the return of Tammuz to Ishtar, in Greece the resurrection of Persephone, in Phrygia the return of Attis to Cybele, and in Egypt of Osiris to Isis. In Japan there are parallels in the tale of Izanagi and Izanami and in Mesoamerica in the return of Quetzalcoatl. The seasonal cycle is such an obvious analogy for a human lifetime that it is a mythological universal. This led poet, classicist, and scholar of mythology Robert Graves to assert in The White Goddess (an indispensable text for Western mythology along with Frazer’s The Golden Bough), “All true poetry is about love, death, or the changing of the seasons.” Verses about other things are just wordplay, he argued, not real poetry.

I can relate to this. It’s my atavistic practice to host solstice and equinox parties when the weather cooperates – as it did not this past snowy March 20. It snowed again yesterday (April 10) in this locale, though just a bit and plainly as a last gasp effort of winter to stay past its time. Persephone must have missed her boat connection back across the Styx this year and had to reschedule with Charon; she likely got a scolding from Demeter for being late. Yesterday’s light snow is what prodded my reflections on the season twenty-one days after its arrival however. My response to spring always has been mixed. It’s the season of new beginnings, of course, but you can’t have a new beginning without an ending, and the endings tend to stand out in my mind.

An outsized proportion of the biggest endings in my own life have come between a vernal equinox and the next estival solstice: not the deaths of friends or family members – those occur randomly at any time of year – but endings involving some volition. Examples: two graduations, a contract to sell my first house, the closing of a business, and the end of all five of the most serious romantic involvements in my life. (One of those five was my idea, the others weren’t.) This isn’t a unique pattern. While January is notorious for a rise in relationship break-ups after a lull during the holidays, according to University of Washington research presented to the American Sociological Association in 2016, consistently over a 15 year period more divorce filings occurred in the equinox month of March than in any other month of the year; a second but smaller bump occurred in August. (Note that “autumn” in the US tends to be regarded popularly as starting with the school year rather than with the autumnal equinox, so it’s a seasonal end-of-summer bump.) Starting afresh just seems an exceptionally good idea when surrounded by the new growth of spring. More often than not, that requires saying “goodbye to you” to what or whom went before; more often than not it’s also the right thing to do or it wouldn’t be seriously considered at all. So, whatever endings and beginnings the reader may be experiencing this particular spring, may you remember the fields you are leaving fondly and may your new fields be ever green.

That time Michelle Branch played The Bronze: Goodbye to You