Circle Of Useless Knowledge

— I saw a weird looking sign, my husband tells me, on a Chinese restaurant. It had a large “七” – Chinese for 7 – with, underneath, the mention “Sept”.

— Yeah, “sept” is French for “seven”.

— What! (He reacts as if I’ve just proffered the most absurd of facts.) But isn’t sept the abbreviation of septembre? I was sure it was nine!

— Ohhh, yes well we do abbreviate the ninth month sept., but underneath a big Chinese 7, I take it to mean 7. Septembre and sept are quite unrelated, really. (I lie with conviction.)

— Really? I don’t know. September, October, November, and December; they sound like Latin numbers to me.

— Oooooh! You’re so right! The last months of the year are numbered from seven to ten! I hadn’t noticed!

Once again the immigrant teaches the native about her own land. «Teaches» is a euphemism! I’m blinded with this shiny truth!

… And, I can’t explain why.

So I checked. The story begins with the Romans being a military people: their calendar starts when war is launched, and that’s in March. (They fight in sandals, the Romans, so they prefer to wait for the snow to melt before campaigning.) The names of the first four months of the Roman calendar honor gods: in March we make war (Mars), in April we make love (Aphrodite), in May we sow our fields (Maïus), in June we marry (Junon). The following months are called #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, et #10.

So what happens after December? Nothing. The calendar finishes. There’s about fifty days left until the beginning of the next year in March, which don’t count! This time in-between has no name and days are no longer counted, except for the few days before the start of the new year, which are called calends.

Under Julius Ceasar, two extra winter months are added: one named after Janus, the god of doors, and the other named after Februa, the god of death. The sunny month of Quintilis is also renamed in Ceasar’s honor, Julius. Later Augustus Ceasar got Sextilis to be renamed after himself, and not only that, but since he deserved as many days in his month as Julius, a day was removed from the end of the calendar year in February and appended to August.

So far, September is still month number seven. It’s only with the official adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (this calendar removes 3 leap days per 4 centuries, for better precision) that European citizens are all encouraged to shift their celebrations of the pagan new year, around the spring equinox in March, to the fiscal and political new year day of January 1st. Thus, the 2 month shift in the Latin numbering of the months.

To make fun of the few ignorant poor souls naïve enough to keep thinking New Year’s is at the spring equinox and wondering why they haven’t been invited to any parties this year, people started to create empty gift packages and fake invitations to non-existent parties, for the April Fools.