The ski season has started. The conditions – dismal. But hey, there are six more months to get better coverage on the slopes. I can feel those powder turns whenever a snowflake falls while I hope said snowflake has a ton of friends.
Until then, lets talk
about November. 30 days has September, April, June and November, all the rest
have 31 except February which has 28 and every leap has 29. Remember having
to learn a version of that jingle in grade school?
Did you know November means ‘nine’ in Latin? Kind of odd since it’s the eleventh month of the year, don’t you think?
The original Roman calendar started in March which made November the ninth month. The calendar was 304 days long which caused a problem because it was too short to align with the solar year which has 365.25 days. The end result – the calendar got out of sync with religious events and agricultural happenings.
To correspond with the changing seasons, the Romans added January and February. November got to keep its name because they didn’t want to confuse people by changing it so late in the game. Even back then, people did not do well with change.
Here’s more November trivia:
- In 1953 the first TV dinner was made when a Swanson employee ordered way too many turkeys for American Thanksgiving. Those turkeys didn’t sell. A combination of the rise in families watching TV while eating supper and an ambitious executive who suggested cooking and packaging the meat in foil trays with sides of mashed potatoes, gravy, peas and cornbread dressing brought TV Brand Frozen Dinners to the American culture. I wish my mistakes came with such ingenious and profitable results.
- The Jingle Bells song was originally a Thanksgiving song written by James Lord Pierpont in 1857. It was called The One-Horse Open Sleigh. Speculators debate its original intention – some even say it was written to be a tune about drinking and a comical incident during a sleigh ride. Regardless, it became so popular that in the 1860s people began singing it during Christmas festivities. I tried to find the original words to the tune, but darn Google let me down which makes me even more curious what the comical incident was all about.
- Babies born in November are often thought as even-keeled and have a higher chance of being left-handed. I wonder what tests are done to determine an ‘even-keeled’ temperament. Possibly an explosion to record a person's reaction? If they didn't react, they were considered even-keeled?
- And don’t forget about the whiskers. November is known as Movember when moustaches become unruly to raise awareness for men’s health issues.
World War 1 ended on
November 11, 1918. In 1919 The British Empire called it Armistice Day and King
George V urged people to take two minutes of silence to remember those who lost
their lives.
In 1921, the Canadian Parliament renamed Armistice Day to Remembrance Day and it was set for the first Monday in the week of November 11th. Veterans and citizens were upset that the day was not acknowledged on November 11th. Parliament had to rejig their thought process. In 1931 it was established that Remembrance Day would always fall on it’s given day - November 11th. Again, change is hard sometimes.
Do your part, remember those who sacrificed for all of us.
Baker,
Barbara - BWL Publishing Inc. (bookswelove.net)
Barbara Baker Author Page Facebook
Summer of Lies by
Barbara Baker — BWL Publishing
What About Me? by
Barbara Baker — BWL Publishing
Jillian of Banff
XO — BWL Publishing
