Groundhog Day 08

By The New Star Hustler,

Kevin J. Walker

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We have the custom of celebrating many things of which we have lost the knowledge of their ancient origins. These rituals, seasonal celebrations and other calendar conundrums are explored in occasional articles on things astronomical and historical, with something extra added in celebration of African American History Month.

We will soon address the scientific question: ¿Where did White People come from? But for now we deal with a holdover Pagan holiday.

Groundhog Day is a minor holiday with astronomical connections. You notice how the days are staying brighter and for longer in the evening, perhaps you even feel more energetic and invigorated. Ancient peoples who lived and died at the whim of a cruel Nature certainly noticed, and made rituals based on their observations. We still celebrate their origins, but its good to know why.

CROSS QUARTER DAYS

Most of the observations of CROSS QUARTER DAYS have vanished, except for Groundhog Day on February 2, the midpoint between the Winter Solstice of Dec. 21-22 and the Spring Equinox of March 21-22.

German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch ("Duetsche") region imported the celebration with them. Since everybody likes a party we American mutts -- mixed with everybody and everything and darn proud of it, too -- clasped it to our bosom, much like what's happening to Kwanzaa, St. Patrick's Day and Cinco De Mayo.

TV stations gather without fail every year to see if the various large rodents such as Pennsylvania's Punxatawny Phil see their shadows, without even delving into the real reasons why the Sun’s angle and the shadows are such a big deal in the first place!

This is a direct link to the just completed celebration of the Solstice, or the Christmas, Noel and Yuletide rituals. They are based on the life-giving Sun's return to the Northern hemisphere, and the hopeful breaking of winter's icy grip.

There are four astronomical Cross Quarter Days, although the other two aren't celebrated much. May Day is one; the one between the September Equinox and the Winter Solstice is the basis for the old Pagan European New Year. WALPURGIS NIGHT is Oct. 31, All Hallow's Eve, or now corrupted to Hallowe'en. That continued Pagan holiday receives an article of its own.

The memory of "MIDSUMMER'S NIGHTS EVE" Cross Quarter Day in late July in Brotha playwright William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" would be even more distant except for the pervasive popularity of Shakespeare's plays of the 1600s. The subtleties of which are even better enjoyed in their original Swahili. The days after the Solstice / Christmas holiday that led to January 6 and Michaelmas, also the EPIPHANY or THREE KINGS DAY as some Catholics call it, is one of several astronomical holidays that was absorbed into the Christian tradition.

I actually had a family of groundhogs near the south-facing lot of some property I rented near the Milwaukee River for a few years, which was a stroke of luck for a Star Hustler.

I only had to look out of my south-facing kitchen window on Feb. 2 to see if the scampering squirrels on steroids noticed their shadows, which is only of passing interest to an amateur astronomer/Stargazer.

I also know groundhogs have such bad eyesight -- and hearing -- that whatever it is that people think groundhogs see doesn’t count for very much. The “six weeks more of Winter” doesn’t mean much to us here in Wisconsin, where we’d be only too happy to have only six more weeks of below-freezing temperatures and city stopping snowstorms that aren’t unknown in early May!

FINAL SOLUTION FUTURE FICTION

Continued race-based attacks, even after self-imposed Segregation after the few survivors leaving America and Europe, necessitates our mass escape from planet Terra to the outer Asteroid Belt. That's Part One.

After mining the asteroids and converting atmospheres from the outer Gas Planets, a bold gambit is hatched: an attempt is to make a desperate jump to the stars beyond, because we can’t even share a solar system in peace, or at least they won’t let us. I’m working on it, that was the first and middle parts. But I digress.

The four Equinoxes and Solstices that chart the Sun’s progress and determine the seasons on our sorta rounded globe were further divided, with May 1st the marker between March 21 and the Summer Solstice on June 21, and made into the May Day holiday. The peasants were all for that too, as they had more time off from tilling and hoeing the land.

It is known that the early Church tried in vain to get the populace to stop celebrating these old Pagan holidays and ways with little success. When they instituted their own competing holidays it only doubled the off days for the peasants, and that was all good!

Then, they hit upon the one idea that worked, but it would take centuries: the Catholic church just put the holidays right on top of the old Pagan ones, knowing that they would in time whither away and the original meanings become lost to the hearts and minds of humanity. This is the reason there are so many different symbols for the Easter and Christmas holidays, from the patchwork of nations and Pagan societies from the lands that were converted from the British Isles to the Middle East.

There is a connection to EASTER / ISHTAR to the MARDI GRAS celebrations, and the Lunar or Moon-based Pagan calendar. This is why neither Mardi Gras, LENT nor Easter are on the same days every year, which they would be if they were based on a real event.

Remember as kids during Easter when you thought it was odd for the mixture of rabbits and eggs? Rabbits didn't lay eggs; we were only kids but we were pretty sure of that. Then we dismissed it, grew up, taught our own kids fables about the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas, that the patsy Lee Harvey Oswald Killed President John F. Kennedy, and just moved on with our lives.

CROSS-QUARTER MAY DAY WAS A GAY DAY

It was also hoped that the sexual power of Creation would be transmuted into the land, so it too would give birth in the form of a mighty harvest. This was also seen in some African tribal rituals. Young women walk around with their breasts open to be seen and judged, but after marriage the no-longer Maidens have to cover up.

Children were substituted in our times, and would gather ‘round the Maypole with streams of ribbons leading back to the now G-rated pole. Quite lost are the origins of the holiday, which was the whole point of suppression.

The once big-time Pagan holiday of May Day has since been appropriated by workers groups and Socialists in Europe such as the Green Party to agitate for whatever, with their fellow travelers having antigovernment celebrations on this side of the Atlantic.

APRIL FOOLS GET DISSED BIG TIME

The Roman Empire fell from within and after continued southern attacks from CARTHAGE, or northern Africa, near about where modern day Tunisia and Libya; as well as northern Barbarian attacks from the Germanic tribes of Saxony. The Saxons invaded the old Angle-land, or England, and became the ANGLO-SAXONS, but that’s another article for the big pile.

But one thing the Romans left of abiding usefulness is a fairly cohesive calendar, which because of celestial mechanics only needs a bit of tweaking every four years or so. When the new calendar was instituted by the Holy Roman Church which succeeded them a couple of new months were kept that were added at the beginning of the year and the middle for a couple of emperors, which threw off the neat Ten Month calendar.

That's why all those "–EMBER" months at the end, with Sept = 7, Oct = 8, Nov = 9, and Dec = 10. They stuck a extra days on them too, so some are 30 or 31 days, except for February which was new and for a less powerful emperor, so nobody much cared when a few of his month's days were borrowed. Originally, they all had 28 days to sorta match things up with the 28 day LUNAR CALENDAR, once called a "Moonth" and its Viking names. Woden's Day, Thor's Day, and his wife Freya, which became Friday. Saturday is still Roman, for the Pagan god Saturnalia.

But it worked out better this way anyway, unlike trying to squeeze in 365 days for 360 degrees, which already was tried by the BABYLONIANS who had a thing about circles, even numbers, and especially the number 12. But they made the same mistake the Northeast Africans did, because the Earth globe isn't round!).

Twelve months can be divided by 2,3,4,5,6,8,10, and 12. Not so for a Ten Month Calendar, which had to have many holidays to make the weeks come out straight, and a strong central authority to enforce universal compliance, which the Romans were and could.

Until their final fall in 476 CE, when under Emperor Constantine they tired of the ceaseless barbarian onslaughts and relocated the Roman Empire's capital East to CONSTANTINOPLE, at the opening of the Bosporus Sea, now Istanbul by the Caspian Sea in present day Turkey. This also meant the establishment of another competing church, the EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH, but that's another article. We're up to about a book's worth now I think.

SHOW HOW ME THE 'INTELLIGENT DESIGN'?!

This now meant that the date of the New Year had to be moved from the Spring Equinox time. It was relocated to the month of JANUS, who was a Greco-Roman god who had two faces. This was apropos, because he could look forward and backward, as the month of January does, back to the end of the year and the beginning of the new one.

But as usual there were some holdovers against Progress who refused to give up their old ways, and they continued to celebrate the Old New Year of April First. They were ridiculed by the more modern people, and so they were called “APRIL FOOLS.” So now you know. The Star Hustler says keep looking up – the price is free! --kjw

¿Where There Ancient African Explorers To The Americas? Intriguing traces of Pre-Columbian contact and artifacts in Central and South America may rewrite the book of the North and South American continent exploration.

Kevin J. Walker, Netitor
The Word NetPaper website
http://wordnetpaper.tripod.com
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walkerworld_2000 @ yahoo dot com
Milwaukee, WI USA 53201