Category: by Month

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Berchtold’s Day – Switzerland

January 2

Berne Coat of Arms

We made it to day 2 of the new year and the Swiss are already celebrating their second holiday.

Berchold’s Day, January 2, is named after Duke Berchtold V of Zahringen who founded the capital city of Switzerland in 1191.

Local legend goes that Bertchtold announced he’d name his future city after the first animal he slay on his hunting trip. He scored a bear, and thus the city is called Berne. (Good thing he didn’t kill a donkey.)

A duller theory is he named it “in memory of Dietrich of Berne (Verona), a favourite hero of Alamannic poetry.” (Names and Their Histories, Isaac Taylor, 1856″)

The Great Bear Hunt

St. Brechtold’s Day is celebrated mostly in the area around Berne. Though the confederacy of Switzerland is 700 years old, each region has maintained their own culture and identity. Switzerland’s central location in Western Europe makes it the “melting pot” of very white people: French, German, Italian, and Swiss. So I guess it’s more of an assorted cheese wheel of cultures, since it hasn’t really melted yet.

According to sacred-texts.com:

…the second day of January is devoted to gay neighborhood parties in which nuts play an important part.

You know, I’m not even going to quote you the rest of that.

Okay, yes I am.

In early autumn children begin hoarding supplies of nuts for Berchtold’s Day, when they have “nut feasts.” Nut eating and nut games, followed by singing and folk dancing…One favorite stunt of the boys and girls is to make “hocks.”

Hocks are made up of five nuts—a pyramid with four nuts on the bottom and one on top—and apparently they’re harder to construct than you’d think. We don’t know why nuts are involved. Officeholidays.com theorizes that Berchtold really killed a squirrel.

Whatever the reason, there’s no better way to usher in the New Year than by breaking out some nuts, build those pyramidal hocks, and sing the national song of Switzerland:

O Great Berchtold
You killed a bear
You founded Berne
We stack nuts in your honor.

— Ancient Swiss Canto*

Photos of Berchtoldstag Parade

[*Ok, just to clarify, this is a made-up song, not the Swiss anthem. — Ed.]

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Tweeda Newa Jaar – South Africa

January 2

flag_south_africa

In Cape Town one day isn’t enough time to celebrate the New Year. So residents celebrate Tweede Nuwa Jaar, “Second New Year.”

On this day thousands line up along the streets to watch, or participate in, one of the most fascinating New Year’s celebrations in the world. The world-famous Coon Carnival.

Regarding the name, says one participant:

“The Americans come and they don’t want us to use the word Coon because it’s derogatory for the people. Here Coon is not derogatory in our sense. For us the minute you talk Coon, he sees New Year day, he sees satin and the eyes and mouth with circles in white, the rest of the face in black, like the American minstrels.”

Yes, on this day Cape Town musical groups called troupes or kaapse klopse don colorful uniforms inspired by American minstrels of the previous century. They paint their faces bright white and march down the Bo-Kaap part of the city. It has been called “a riot of color and sound” and, though it has no equal, might be compared in feel to the Mardi Gras celebrations in Brazil.

The celebration has been shunned by some members of the upper echelon, who prefer the more refined Malay Choirs and Christmas Bands. But in 1996 when Nelson Mandela put on the outfit of a minstrel troupe to open the Carnival, the traditional march outgrew its working class roots and gained a little more acceptance among the intellectual elite.

Denis-Constant Martin writes in Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town

“To the sounds of wind instruments, ghoemas, and tambourines, they march, dance and sing along Darling Street, past the Grand Parade, into Adderley Street, up Wale Street, into Chiappini Street, then Somerset Road and to Green Point where they go into the stadium for the second round of competitions.”

These troupes are from different parts of the city, and can number over a thousand members. To become part of a troupe all you need’s a uniform. You can beg or buy them from the group captain or bargain with him for a price. Indeed that’s how the groups make their money, from the sale of uniforms. Without a uniform, you’re not in the band, period.

The colorful outfits change each year and were inspired by the American minstrels who visited Cape Town in the mid to late 1800’s. They would smear burnt cork on their face to simulate “black face.” Locals imitated the outlandish dress, hat, and umbrella, but reversed the make-up to wear “white face” and the carnival was born.

The significance of January 2nd is that it was the one day of the year slaves were given holiday. Today the parade is an expression of the joy of life, of victory over the struggle of slavery and then apartheid, and a symbol of freedom and independence.

With the popularization of the carnival though, residents are concerned about the ideals the parade represents. Writes Joel Pollak

There is a widespread fear that organizing the Coon Carnival to appeal to foreign tourists and commercial sponsors would mean taking it away from the local communities that have kept it alive for over a hundred years, in effect reserving the best seats for tourists just as they were once reserved for whites at the segregated stadiums.

Time will see what’s in store next for the Minstrel Carnival, as city officials call it now.

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O-Shogatsu: Japanese New Year

January 1

Countries all around the world celebrate New Year’s Day. But nowhere do they celebrate it like they do in Japan. Think Christmas on steroids, and you’re halfway there.

Shogatsu, named after the first month of the Japanese calendar, lasts three full days. It’s the biggest holiday of the year, barnone.

The Japanese hold special “bonekai” New Year’s parties, or “year-forgetting” parties. (These differ from American New Year’s parties where attendees hope to forget what they did at the party the next morning.)

At the end of the year, Japanese wish each other “Yoi otoshi o omukae kudasai!” which means “I wish you will have a good new year.” But if that’s too much you can just say “Yoi otoshi o!”

Businesses close down for at least three days as well as schools. The rituals and activities associated with the festival however can carry on for over a week. Every “first” of the New Year must be handled with great care. It’s believed that the way in which events unfold the first time will be representative of how they will occur throughout the year—from the first sunrise (Hatsuhinode) to the first temple visit (Hatsumode), to the first tea ceremony (Hatsugama).

Japan used to celebrate its new year during the Chinese lunar new year in late January or early February, but the country adopted the Gregorian calendar during the Meiji Restoration of the 1870s. So the Shogatsu traditions are hundreds of years old even if the January 1 date is not.

Yoi otoshi o!

Shogatsu photos

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Cuba’s Triumph of the Revolution Day

January 1

Just like the child born on Christmas, Cuba gets the short end of the stick when it comes to celebrating its “Triumph of the Revolution”. That’s because on January 1 the rest of the world is busy celebrating New Year’s. To the Cubans, the world is celebrating with them. It’s all a matter of perspective.

This small island 90 miles to the south of Florida has been the focal point of the struggle between capitalism and socialism in the Western hemisphere for half a century.

On this day in 1959, U.S.-backed President Fulgencia Batista fled the country after his troops faced a disastrous defeat at the hands of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s and Camilo Cienfuegos’s rag-tag guerrilla armies. This allowed former baseball player and enemy-of-the-state Fidel Castro to assume power of the country, a position he held onto with an iron grip until February 2008. Suffering from an undisclosed illness, Castro turned power over to his brother, Raul Castro. By that time Fidel Castro had become one of the longest reigning rulers in the history of the Western hemisphere.

Cuba has spent the past 50 years defying world expectations. First in 1959, and again in the 1990s, when its sugar-daddy—the Soviet Union—collapsed. But Cuba outlived its supporter, and subsisted without its aid.

That’s not to say the country has flourished economically, or that its one-party government permits basic freedoms. But its people–at home and abroad–understand how to live each day.

It’s illegal for United States citizens to visit Cuba, part of the economic embargo the U.S. has placed on Cuba for over 4 decades. But many Americans do visit the island via other countries. Cuban officials just know not to stamp their passports.

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Why the Fuss of January First?

January 1

Today is the Granddaddy of all holidays. Celebrated around the world, New Year’s Day transcends culture, language and religion.

The strange thing is, how of all days did this arbitrary night–December 31 to January 1–come to represent the changing of the solar calendar? It is neither a solstice nor equinox, nor the anniversary of any momentous event.

  • Russia once celebrated the New Year on September 1.
  • The Chinese New Year falls in late January through early February.
  • The French chose September 22, the autumnal equinox, during the French Revolution.
  • Iran celebrated (celebrates?) on or around March 21, the spring equinox.
  • The Hebrew calendar celebrates in early Fall.
  • The Cambodian, Thai, and some Indian provinces in mid-April.

So what gives with January 1?

In fact the Roman calendar, on which ours in based, began with March. Which makes sense if you think about the names of the months:

  • September: 7th month
  • October: 8th month
  • November: 9th month…

I was told in elementary school another reason why the months were off: it was because July and August, the months named after Julius Caesar and Augustus, were inserted after June.

Good theory. Wrong, but good theory.

The months of July and August were not “added” to the calendar but replaced the already existing months Quintilis and Sextilis. (Quintilis meant 5th and Sextilis 6th.)

So even in the time of Julius Caesar (45 BC) were 6 of the months of the year out of whack?

Yep.

The original Roman calendar, supposedly created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, began in March and ended in December. March signified the beginning of the planting year and December marked the end of harvest. The remaining 60 or so days, when crops were neither sowed nor reaped, weren’t counted as months, but an amorphous winter period. As Cecil Adams puts it:

“…3,000 years ago not a helluva lot happened between December and March. The Romans at the time were an agricultural people, and the main purpose of the calendar was to govern the cycle of planting and harvesting.” – How Come February Has Only 28 Days?

This amorphous period allowed farmers to based their months on lunar cycles, not on the solar calendar. Hence the unoriginal names:

  • Quinctilis, 5th month, ie. 5th moon
  • Sextilis, 6th month, ie. 6th moon
  • September, 7th month, ie. 7th moon
  • October, 8th month, ie. 8th moon…

Farmer Ted (or Theodocus in ancient Roman) knew he had to plant such and such during the first or second moon and harvest such and such during the 8th or 9th moon.

They didn’t number the dates of the month like we do (1-31), but counted forward or backward based on the different stages of the moon each month:

The Kalends: first day of the month, or new moon
The Ides: middle of the month, or full moon
The Nones: the quartermoons

As in:

Beware the Ides of March. (Shakespeare) ie. Beware the full moon of March, ie. March 15th.

or

Damn, I’ve got to renew my driver’s license by the fourth day before the Kalends of Quinctilis. (Nestor the Chronicler) ie. four days before new moon of July, ie. June 27th. (The Romans included the day they were counting from as day 1.)

If you’re not confused yet, wait. It just gets better.

So sometime around 713 BC Roman King Numa Pompilius decided to name and fix this no-man’s land between December and March. He named January after the god Janus, and February after the Latin word Februum, meaning purification. It was the end of the year and marked a time of atonement. (Maybe that’s why it’s the shortest month!)

Years at this time were not numbered, but were referred to by the names of the two consuls elected that year. So this year might be Bush-Pelosi, except consuls were elected yearly.

In the third century BC the date officials took office was fixed on the Ides of March (March 15).

A law in 153 BC arbitrarily moved that date up two and a half months to January 1st.

The Cambridge Ancient History states that this was done to hasten the appointment of Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, so he could quell uprisings in Northern Spain. (Liv. Per. XLVII, Cassiod. Chron.) [More on this here.] My theory is that, as stated earlier, Romans had nothing better to do in January and February.

The date stuck and January 1st marked the beginning of the Roman legal calendar, though it was not yet considered to be the start of the new year by the general Roman populace.

Below: Caesar celebrating New Year

[Oops, wrong picture]

By the time Julius Caesar came to town a couple of problems were apparent with the Roman consular calendar.

The most important being that it was 355 days, roughly twelve lunar cycles. That worked fine for a few years but after enough years March would fall in the dead of Winter and September would mark the beginning of Summer, leading to very confused farmers, not to mention cows.

The Roman Head Honchos (Honchos Headus Romanus) tried to fix this problem by periodically inserting an extra month called Intercalaris after February. (Think Leap Month.) However, with the lack of DSL and decent cell phone service among ancient Romans, it took a while for an Intercalaris to make its way to the average farmer in the countryside, causing citizens to be in different months.

Also, the government could neglect to declare an Intercalaris for an extended time, as with the Punic Wars, leading to the “Years of Confusion” when the seasons went completely askew.

By the time Julius Caesar took power the calendar was off by approximately 100 days. He fixed this problem by extending the year 45 BC to 455 days. Then he changed the number of days in each month to create a 365-day solar calendar, rather than a lunar calendar. (Thank you Juli!)

Afterward, the calendar was also changed to refer to the year by the Emperor. So instead of being the year of Bush-Pelosi, for example, 2007 would be the 7th Year of the Reign of the Bush.

But wait there’s more!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the calendar, the Roman Church in the 6th century AD chose March 25, the date of the Annunciation, as the official start of its New Year.

The March 25th date also explains why December 25th, exactly nine months after the Annunciation, was chosen as the birth of Jesus.

However, the centuries-old Roman tradition of celebrating January 1 as the New Year could not be suppressed. January 1 was declared a Church holiday by Pope Boniface IX in 615 AD and called “Octave of the Lord.” The Pope’s mass was conducted at Rome’s Church of St. Mary. Hence the celebration became connected with the Virgin Mary and became known as “The Feast of St. Mary.”

The Gregorian calendar, proposed by Aloysius Lilius and approved by Pope Gregory in 1582, fixed the inaccuracies of the Julian calendar and set January as the 1st month yet again.

By this time many countries had already reverted back to the January 1st New Year:

  • 1544 Holy Roman Empire
  • 1556 Spain and Portugal
  • 1559 Prussia, Denmark/Norway, and Sweden
  • 1564 France
  • 1576 Southern Netherlands

Other governments followed suit:

  • 1583 Northern Netherlands
  • 1600 Scotland
  • 1700 Russia
  • 1721 Tuscany
  • 1752 Britain and colonies

It should be noted that the people of many of the above countries celebrated the Roman New Year’s Day on January 1st long before their governments recognized it. Britain for example considered March 25th as the beginning of the legal year, like a tax year, while the general populace celebrated on December 31st as the year’s end.

In essence, as late as the 1700’s the English-speaking world was continuing the 3,000 year-old Roman tradition–a year starting in March and ending in December.

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New Year’s Eve

Tonight as you count down to midnight, if you’re wondering why we picked such a completely random date to celebrate as the New Year—neither solstice nor equinox nor anniversary—take a moment to thank the folks of Segeda, Spain, a town that stood near present-day Zaragoza.

Celtiberia

Up until the 2nd century B.C., the Roman civic calendar began in mid-March, around the spring equinox and the beginning of the planting season; officials convened in Rome on the full moon (Ides) of that month.

The number of the year was determined by which consuls were in office that term. e.g., the “8th year of the term of Glutimus Maximus”. [We use a similar system today in the West, though we don’t generally say it’s the “2009th year of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (2009 Anno Domini Nostri Jesu Christi). We just say 2009 A.D.]

Around 154 BC. the Romans were extending their empire westward into Spain, which was then inhabited by the Celtiberians. That year the Celtiberians of Segeda, having no respect for the Roman civic calendar, inconveniently rebelled while the government was not in session.

Rather than waiting until March to respond, the Romans called an “emergency session of Congress”, so to speak, in January, in order to appoint Quintus Filvius Nobilior as consul to deal with the western territories. His mission: go to Spain and kick some Celtiberian butt.

Filvius wasn’t very successful. In fact, it would be a hundred years before the peninsula was fully subdued.

But the January tradition stuck.

Most folks continued to celebrate the New Year in March as they always had. (Persians still do celebrate Norouz on the spring equinox.) But over the centuries the Julian calendar–implemented by Julius Caesar–replaced the older agrarian traditions.

15 centuries later Pope Gregory XIII overhauled the calendar to correct the 11 extra leap days that had misaligned the Julian calendar from the solstice. Northern Europe was the last to adopt the new “Gregorian” system. Britain, and by extension, the American colonies, only did so in 1752. Before that, most of us still considered March to be the start of the New Year.  March 25 to be exact–believed to be the anniversary of the conception of Christ back in 1 A.D.

So had the folks of Segeda just been a little more patient and waited a couple of months to rebel, we might still be celebrating New Year’s in March.

But as it is, we toast a cup ‘o’ kindness on December 31, to days of Auld Lang Syne, and to the Celtiberians who made this night possible.

See you in 2012!

Why the Fuss of January 1?

The Celtiberian War and Numantia

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Jose Rizal Day

December 30

Polyglot:

1. A person having a speaking, reading, or writing knowledge of several languages.
2. A book, especially a Bible, containing several versions of the the same text in different languages.
3. A mixture or confusion of languages.

Today the people of the Philippines mourn the death and celebrate the life of their national hero Jose Rizal.

“I die without seeing the sun rise on my country. You who are to see the dawn, welcome it, and do not forget those who fell during the night.”

This eerily self-fulfilling prophecy was spoken not by Rizal, but by Elias, a character in Rizal’s great novel Noli Me Tangere, written almost a full decade before Rizal’s own execution.

Rizal wrote Noli Me Tangere (literally, “Touch Me Not”) at age 25. By that time Rizal had earned his Bachelor’s degree (at 16) in the Philippines; he had studied medicine at the University of Santo Thomas, but after witnessing discrimination against Filipino students, he sailed to Spain to complete his studies at the University of Madrid; he specialized in ophthalmology, due to his mother’s worsening blindness; and he earned a second doctorate at the University of Heidelberg.

“I spend half of the day in the study of German,” Rizal wrote, “and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a week, I go to the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends.”

Rizal spoke at least a dozen languages–some sources say 22–including, Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, German, Portuguese, Italian, English, Dutch, Japanese. He translated works from Arabic, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, and Sanskrit into his native tongue of Tagalog. While in Germany, he was a member of the Anthropological Society of Berlin, for which he delivered a presentation in German on the structure and use of Tagalog.

But it was his novel Noli Me Tangere that would earn him fame in the Philippines and infamy in Spain.

Jose Rizal (Museum of California History)

Noli Me Tangere exposed the hypocrisy of the Spanish clergy in the Philippines and the injustices committed against native Filipinos. And his follow-up non-fiction work demonstrated that contrary to 300 years of colonialist teachings the Filipino people had been an accomplished nation before the Spanish set foot in the country. That in fact, colonization had resulted in a ‘retrogression’.

In response to Noli Me Tangere, clergy members circulated pamplets warning Catholics that reading the novel was equivalent to “committing mortal sin.”

The book was banned in many parts, and one anonymous “Friar” wrote to Rizal, “How ungrateful you are…If you, or for that matter all your men, think you have a grievance, then challenge us and we shall pick up the gauntlet, for we are not cowards like you, which is not to say that a hidden hand will not put an end to your life.”

Rather than give in to harassment, Rizal followed it up with a sequel, El Filibusterismo. Rizal’s novels became a rallying point for nationalists in the Philippines. In Spain he continued to fight for equal rights and representation for his countrymen. Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892. After a rebellion broke out, Rizal was arrested and sent into 4 years of exile.

While in exile in Dapitan he managed a hospital, provided services to the poor, taught language classes, and worked with soldiers to improve the area’s irrigation and agriculture.

In 1896 the Philippines Revolution broke out. Though Rizal emphasized non-violence in his works, he was again imprisoned, and this time sentenced to execution.

Just before his death, Rizal wrote his final poem, which he ‘smuggled’ out to his sister by hiding it in the stove in his cell. The poem has no title, but is often called “Mi ultimo adios”…My last good-bye.

“My idolized country, sorrow of my sorrows,
Beloved Filipinas, hear my last good-bye.
There I leave you all, my parents, my loves.
I’ll go where there are no slaves, hangmen nor oppressors,
Where faith doesn’t kill, where the one who reigns is God.”

–from Mi ultimo adios

He was executed by firing squad at 7:03 am on December 30, 1896, and buried without a coffin.

Rizal Monument, Manila; photo © Carlito Scholz

His tragic death only strengthened Filipino resolve for self-determination.

In April 1898, the fight for independence, led by Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo, received a boost from an unexpected party: the United States. The Spanish-American War, which had begun in Cuba, soon stretched to all of Spain’s remaining Pacific territories.

That summer the Philippines Army, headed by Aguinaldo, defeated Spanish troops, and handed over 15,000 Spanish prisoners to U.S. forces, along with valuable intelligence. Aguinaldo declared the Philippines an independent nation on June 12, 1898.

The Philippines soon found they had rid themselves of a demon only to make a deal with the devil. In defeat Spain ‘ceded’ the Philippines to the U.S., which immediately rejected Philippine independence. Whereas the Spanish had sought to bring Catholicism to the Philippines, the U.S. sought to bring “freedom” and “civilization”. The war that followed, the U.S.’s first overseas experiment in nation-building, took the lives of over a quarter million Filipinos (a low estimate), the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Disease and famine were a prime cause of civilian deaths. But torture, mass executions, internment camps, village-buring, and other atrocities against civilians were also staples of the war.

Battle of Paceo, Philippine-American War

The war officially ended in 1902, but fighting continued until 1913. English, spoken by a minority of Filipinos, was declared the official language.

The Philippines would not see independence until after World War II, fifty years after the death of Jose Rizal. Through that time and even to the present, Rizal and his writings continue to symbolize the Filipino spirit and their long fight for equality and self-determination.

 

Our Mother Tongue

The Tagalog language’s akin to Latin,
To English, Spanish, angelical tongue;
For God who knows how to look after us
This language He bestowed us upon.

As others, our language is the same
With alphabet and letters of its own,
It was lost because a storm did destroy
On the lake the bangka in years bygone.

Jose Rizal, age 8 (originally in Tagalog)

Jose Rizal Website

The Philippine-American War

Lessons from the Philippines “Insurrection”

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Ujima & Ujamaa and Muhammad Nassardeen

December 28 & 29

December 28th and 29th are the 3rd and 4th days of Kwanzaa. The themes of these days are Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) and Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics). On the surface these do not sound like the general feel-good (or feel-bad) sentiments that accompany most holidays. For the record, other days of the celebration include themes such as Unity, Purpose, and Faith–themes more consistent with older holidays. Ujima and Ujamaa may be overshadowed by these more traditional holiday themes, but all are equally important.

Umoja, or Unity, is the first step, asking the community to recognize itself as a united group.

Kujchagulia, Self-determination, asks the African-American community to define itself and its future on its own terms rather than through the eyes of others.

Ujima and Ujamaa are the nuts and bolts of the operation. They require not just talk but actual tangible steps to achieve.

One man who did just that was Muhammad Nassardeen. His organization Recycling Black Dollars was an effort to keep the money of the African-American community within the community. White neighborhoods recycle dollars 5 times. Latino communities recycle dollars 3 times. And Asian-American communities as much as nine times. But Nassardeen found that the African-American community recycled the average dollar less than 1 time.

By creating and encouraging businesses and organizations, including local churches, to bank and buy within the Los Angeles African-American community Nassardeen helped to increase the wealth of the community substantially.

Unfortunately Nassardeen died in October 2007 of a heart attack. But his contributions to Cooperative Economics are remembered this Kwanzaa in the city where Kwanzaa first greeted the world.

[originally published Dec. 29, 2007]