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The Varied God

~ On the Human Experience of the Seasons.

The Varied God

Category Archives: Easter

The Winter that Won’t Go Away?

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Tom Cooper in Anthropomorphism, Autumn, Christmas, climate, Easter, Fall, Halloween, History, Mythology, Nature, Ovid, Puritans, Religion, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Weather, Winter

≈ 1 Comment

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History, Seasons, Spring, Winter

Late March and we are still buried in snow here. A March snowfall is not unusual in the American Midwest, but it is usually an unexpected freak of a thing, coming after some lovely springlike days, covering banks of yellow and purple crocus and stands of glowing daffodils. This year we have had none of that. Rather we have had unrelenting cold and gray days and now two major snowfalls in March, this last setting the record for a one-day event.

All of which has led to many references by newscasters and local weather personalities to ‘the winter that just won’t quit’ or ‘the winter that won’t go away.’ It seems a fitting appellation, but I wonder if we know how much cultural perception there is in the idea of winter ‘going away?’ When the seasons change, does one season go away, to be replaced by the next? Actually, seasonal change is mostly incremental. Some people who study this say that it is all a continuum. Scientists, for instance, usually only speak of the extremes, winter and summer, cold and hot, with everything else just a passage between them. But as humans we have a need to segment large swaths of reality to make it more manageable to our limited and easily fooled powers of perception. Landscape, which is also a continuum, becomes forest and field, valley and hill, river and bank, and we are more comfortable seeing things that way.

One of the earliest trends in human culture was to not only strictly segment the seasons, but to personify, even deify them. An example of this comes in the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18).  In the story of Phaeton and his quest to prove that he is the child of the sun god Phoebus, Phaeton seeks out his father’s palace. There he sees many wonders, such as the Day, Month and Year all personified. And–

There, flower-crowned,

Stood Spring; and naked Summer, wreathed with stalks

of grain; and Autumn, stained with trodden grapes;

and glacial Winter, with his stiff white locks.

For a long time in the history of Western Civilization–particularly European history–the seasons were portrayed either as deities or as persons. Summer tended to be a married couple either tilling their fields or raising children. Autumn was almost always people involved in the harvest, usually of grain or grapes. In paintings, in home decor, on calendars, in poetry, and even in music, when artists and artisans wanted to show the seasons they were usually represented by these standard, anthropomorphic motifs.

This all changed in the New World, particularly in the United States, though nobody is sure why. Some think it’s because of our more intense natural seasons: winter is colder, summer is hotter, spring more gloriously beautiful, and autumn!–well, autumn in America is so thrilling in its multicolored glory that we had to have a second name for it: fall, which is a shortening of the archaic term ‘fall of the leaf.’ So our representations of the seasons have tended to depict natural scenes, not abstract deities or persons. But of course most of Europe is covered in deciduous trees which change color in autumn, and people from Greece to England see the natural changes in their own homelands as stark and varied. Another theory is that our Puritan forebears found the need to purge our national ethos of these vestiges of pagan religion. This goal has been less than successful, given Christmas and Easter observances that are imbued with multiple pagan symbols, and a Halloween which is little more than a pagan Celtic harvest celebration. But at least we have cleared the ancient deities out of our seasonal art and mythology.

This is kind of a shame. When we talk about a winter that won’t go away, it might be helpful for it to have a face, a stubborn old man with ‘stiff white locks’ who refuses to leave and make way for flower-crowned spring. If there’s anyone from that ancient pantheon who deserves the heave-ho right about now, it’s that guy.

Harbingers of Spring?

29 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by Tom Cooper in Astronomy, Birth of Jesus, Calendar, Easter, History, Science, Seasons, Spring

≈ 1 Comment

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Astronomy, Easter, Nature, Spring

I stepped out for a run a few nights ago, just past eight o’clock. It was just dark, the sky steely blue but carrying the memory of daylight, and high in the western sky was a crescent moon standing with Venus a few inches away. Unusually close and unusually bright, it seemed that if you stood still and watched you could see them move towards each other, like things swimming in a calm pool.

I am a librarian. Once upon a time, people came to me for answers. One of the things they asked repeatedly at this time of year, and which I had to find in the Almanac each year, was the formula for figuring the date for Easter. It is a curiosity, since Easter Sunday can fall anytime from March 22 to pretty late in April. I know the formula by heart, it is engraved in my memory, though it has been years since anyone asked: the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. This is because, in scripture, Jesus was executed the day after the Last Supper, which, according to many traditions, was a Passover Seder. Passover, by the Jewish lunar calendar, is observed the first full moon after the spring equinox. Thus the Sunday after that would be the day Jesus arose.

That swimming crescent moon is waxing now, and will be full on Friday, April 6th. Sunday the 8th is Easter. No matter how early or late it comes, by Easter, we are deep into spring, and most of the cliches are past. Spring has sprung. The harbingers of spring–whatever you perceive them to be–have come and gone. Robins, crosuses, daffodils, asparagus. It is time to move on to tomatoes and corn, baseball, the opening of swimming pools and the things of summer.

It’s funny that we recognize ‘harbingers’ of spring, and don’t use the word for much of anything else. (I have heard ‘harbingers of death,’ which is closer to its original meaning.) The word comes from an old French word meaning hotel or inn, or, by transference, a place of refuge. In French military parlance (and after the Norman Conquest, English military parlance) a harbinger was a person who traveled ahead of an army seeking places for them to stay. So you can see how the word eventually came to mean something that comes before something else, announcing its coming. Still, I don’t know why it took on its cliched use with symbols of spring, while it is hardly used anywhere else.

It puzzles me that while I am keenly interested in the seasons and their effects on us, I am at the same time put off by what I just referred to as seasonal cliches–crocuses in spring, photographs of falling leaves in autumn, a snowman in winter. Somehow it seems to me that the seasons, or what I mean by the seasons, is more profound. What do I mean by more profound? Probably nothing.

You can have the deepest respect or appreciation for the things of nature, and still find them to be represented in its simplest manifestation. Some people see God’s handiwork in each little flower. (For one of the best expressions of this sentiment I will refer you to the John Updike short story Pigeon Feathers.) Even for people who don’t believe this, the mystery of a flower coming to life when the ground starts to warm is often all the mystery they need.

I tend to look to the night skies for seasonal indications. Is the appearance of Venus or Jupiter, or Orion rising on the horizon any more profound than a robin building a nest in my pear tree? Perhaps my attitude is that anyone can spot the robin. Knowing the names of stars and planets is a lost skill for most people. But whether we are looking up or down, when we find the signs of seasonal change we are all participating in a pastime that goes back to our beginnings as a species, whether we find them scattered in the night sky, or in Mrs. Barton’s flowerbeds.

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