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The Varied God

~ On the Human Experience of the Seasons.

The Varied God

Monthly Archives: December 2011

2012: Why Your Resolutions Don’t Work

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by Tom Cooper in Calendar, Gregorian Calendar, Julian Calendar, New Year, Resolutions, Seasons, Winter

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Calendar, Gregorian Calendar, Julian Calendar, New Year, Resolutions

The New Year is upon us: 2012, or, for the superstitious, the last year of our existence on Earth. For the superstitious there have been many last years of our existence on Earth. Somehow, the invalidity of their superstitions demonstrated by our persistence here rarely loosens their grip on those superstitions; something that mystifies me.

            We persist. We cling tenaciously to this third rock from the sun and watch the seasons of our life go by and imagine that all of the little things we do—keeping the house clean, learning to tie a Windsor knot, spending long moments deciding between Emmentaler and Gruyére—are important. The New Year brings with it the usual habit of resolving to do something better. Eat less, exercise more, quit smoking, quit drinking, quit procrastinating, quit spending foolishly, quit doing all of the things that make our lives dreary and start doing those things that hearsay teaches us will make our lives shiny, pretty and sweet, successful and blessed.

            In various libraries where I have worked we have found it important, or maybe just fun, to play along with this game. We set up displays of books on exercise, smoking cessation, managing one’s money, finding a suitable mate, and many other things people claim they will do in the New Year. These books are snapped up within days, carried to the checkout desk by people with the glint of determination in their eyes, and slid quietly into the book return a week or two later. We know that most resolutions are not going to last past January. January is not a time for resolve. January sets you up to fail; New Year’s resolutions are a tradition as artificial as believing that the year begins on January 1st, just because the calendar currently in use says it does.

            The calendar has changed many times in the history of the western world, and recently enough that the dislocations caused by the changes are still embedded in the names of our months. September, October, November and December basically mean seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth, even though they are the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth months. This is because in the old Roman calendar, March was the first month of the year. But this calendar used a solar system of measurement, and because the movements of the Earth around the sun are not precise, it wandered a little each year. By the 40s B.C., the calendar was running along about three months ahead of the solar year.  Julius Caesar was advised by an Alexandrian astronomer named Sosigenes to reform the Roman calendar by implementing a leap year, which brought it closer to accurate, though still not precise. When he implemented the new calendar in 46 B.C., he thought it would be a good idea to move the start of the year closer to the winter solstice, to have some astronomical rationale for the beginning of the year. People who encounter this history for the first time often ask why he didn’t just set it at the solstice. Or why he didn’t move it to the vernal equinox, which was simply later in March. To these doubters Julius Caesar would likely have said, If you’re so smart, get your own empire.

            The Julian calendar was reformed once again in 1582 by Pope Gregory, though he didn’t find it necessary to move the months around, so we’re still stuck with those misnomers for the last four months of the year. We’re stuck also with a year that ‘begins’ in a month that is icy, cold and dreary in much of the northern hemisphere, a month that takes much of our resolve to keep a good attitude, to get along cheerily from day to day—hardly conducive to facing down our worst habits and implementing salubrious new ones.

            Imagine a year that began in March, the first month of spring, when even if there is still snow on the ground, you know the thaw is setting in. That’s a month that would play along, a month that would offer sunshine and the promise of warmer days in support of your resolutions. That would be a beginning of the year that people could feel innately within themselves. If you ask people what their favorite season is, most of them will cite spring or autumn, and if pressed for more definition, the overwhelming consensus favors the first weeks of those seasons, when the incipient warmth or chill begins to break the back of the persistent cold of winter or heat of summer. These are times of change that we all recognize; times when we feel our lives are changing. These are times to make resolutions.

            The calendar has seen a few major reforms, but it has never been reformed to bring it more in unison with the seasons by which we live our lives. This is one of the great mistakes of history, and if there is ever talk of another calendar reform, we should resolve to fix the oversight.

Waiting for the Sun

08 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by Tom Cooper in Depression, Seasons, Spring, Winter

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Depression, Seasons, Spring, Winter

The other day I was driving home around 5 p.m., listening to the radio, and the guys who run the blues show I listen to at that time were lamenting the gloomy dark of winter. One of them suggested that people get mood lights to help keep up their spirits. Kind of ironic, guys who spend their time playing blues songs worrying about whether people are depressed. His partner noted that it was only a few weeks until things turn around: he was guessing December 23 as the date when the days begin to lengthen again.

He was close. The winter solstice is on December 22 this year, at 5:30 a.m. The day varies from year to year, between the 21st and 23rd in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, it happens between the 20th and 23rd. The solstice is not only the point when days start to lengthen–it’s the official beginning of the winter season. Funny that we have lived through the darkest gloom of the season before the season ‘officially’ starts. But there has always been a disagreement between the astronomical concept of seasons and our cultural definitions.

Just a few days prior to this, I had been working out in the early morning. It was early enough to still be dark, and it would still be dark for another hour at least. I thought fondly of the days of late spring and summer when sunlight streams through the windows while I am stretching and rowing and lifting. And this troubled me. We have a lot of ways that we wish away portions of our lives. We wish the cold and dark days of winter were gone and then, once it’s hot, we wish the heat of summer was past. We’ve all found ourselves standing in shirtsleeves on a sunny, temperate day of spring or fall and saying I could take this weather all the time–or some variation on that theme.

What I would urge people to do is to live all the seasons of their lives. Find what it is about winter that you love. Yes, there are the holidays of December to keep us occupied, but once they are past we still have January and February to get through. In many areas, March is still a winter month, if not April. My birthday is March 7, and I have seen it come as a beautiful spring day and a winter day deep in snow. I think our lives are enriched by finding what there is to love about these weeks of cold and snow: the long, cold nights when you read mysteries by Swedish authors; an evening spent with the kids playing board games in front of the fire; sharing a moment over hot cocoa or herb tea with your spouse. Then there’s the wide variety of winter sports–or maybe just dressing warmly and taking a walk through a local park. They don’t close the parks just because it’s cold out, and there is still much of beauty to observe in wintry landscapes. Stargazing is best at this time of year, when clear, crisp nights are lit with millions of twinkling lights.

Our lives transpire in the seasons, all of them, and wishing them away by pining for the glories of the season to come is not good for the spirit; we can only enrich our lives by learning to appreciate every time of the year, and yes, that includes the ‘bleak midwinter.’

In Winter, 2011

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by Tom Cooper in Uncategorized

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Autumn, Fall, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Weather, Winter

One day a long time ago, it occurred to me out of the blue that autumn is the only season that has two names. Spring, summer and winter all get along with one name; but Autumn requires two. I wondered why. I am a librarian by profession, so finding answers is what I do. I pursued an answer to this question. I have been pursuing that answer for most of my life.

The pursuit led me, a few years back, to begin working on a book about how humans, as a species, and within our multitudinous cultures throughout history, have experienced, and learned from, and been shaped by, the seasons.

Earth has changed immensely throughout geological time. From a ball of fire to a ball of ice and everywhere in between, the planet has seen more species of plants and animals come and go than can ever be accounted for. But the one constant is that there have always been seasons. Always.

This blog is a selection of essays, thoughts and gleanings from my ongoing research. The book, should it ever come to fruition, will also be called The Varied God. The title is a quote from James Thomson, most famous for his set of poems called The Seasons:

                                                      ‘. . . these

are but the varied God. The rolling year

is full of thee.’

James Thomson, A Hymn on the Seasons

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