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　　Probably the most important units of time that govern our lives are the months of the year and the days of the week. Here are their stories.

　　Months of the Year

　　JANUARY

　　When the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve and December

　　Passes into January, we say farewell to the year just gone and we hail the New Year ahead. It is fitting that first month should be called January, for the Roman god Janus who gave this month its name was always represented with two faces, one that gazed at the past and one that looked to the future. However, before the name January was adopted in English, this month was called Wulf-Monath, or “wolf-month”, because at this time of the year the bitter cold brought wolves into the villages to forage for food.

　　FEBRUARY

　　The middle of the month of February was marked in ancient Rome for a religious ceremony in which women were beaten for barrenness. This was called the festival of Lupercalia and was held in a cave by the river Tiber. Two youths were selected to play the leading role in the celebration. After the goats were sacrificed, thongs were cut from their hides and given to the youths.these thongs were called februa, or “instruments of purification”, and should they strike a women, she would no longer be barren. The two young men in question would run around the city with the sacred thongs and give smart and “curative” slaps to any barren girls they saw. No one knows just how they knew whom to hit although the barrenness of a women would probably be common knowledge in any village. However this may be, the magic power of the thongs came from Juno, whose epithet as the goddess of fertility was Februaria, and from this word we took the name of our month. February had 29 days, but the Roman Senate took one away and gave it to August, so that August would not be inferior to July. It’s a long step down from all this romance to the original native name for February. The factual English simply called it SProte-kalemonath because the cabbages were sprouting.

　　MARCH

　　Before the time of Julius Caesar, the Roman New Year began with the month of Marth. This was not only the beginning of the year but was the open spring season for the waging of war, so the month was dedicated to mars, the god of war, and was named sfter him. Its Old English name was Hlyd-Monath, that is, “boisterous-month”, because of the winds. And, by the way , the expression “mad as a March hare “ comes from the fact that March is the mating season for hares, and are supposedly full of whimsy all month.

　　APRIL

　　This was the month of the first flowers in ancient Italy, as it is with us, and the opening spring buds gave the month its name. The Rome name was Aprilis, based on the Latin word aperio with means “open”. The early Britons, on the other hand, lacked the poetry of the Mediterrancen. They rather flat-footedly called April Easter-Monath, or “Easter-month”, Of course, April brings in April Fool’s Day, and this recalls the festivities held by all ancient peoples at the vernal equinox, beginning on their New Year’s Day, March 25th, and ending on April 1st . It was not until the 18th century in Great Britain that April Fool’s Day, as we know it, was created. The theory about this day traces the tradition back to the medieval miracle plays that used to represent the sending of Christ from Pilate to Herod.

　　MAY

　　This is when “the time of the singing birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land”. Sir Thomas Malory called it “the lusty moneth of May”. It is strange that the romantic time of May has always been considered unlucky for marriage. The Romans objected to it for the quite understandable reason that it contained the feast in honor of Bona Dea who was the goddess of chastity. Also the festival of the unhappy dead fell in the month of May. The name May, in Latin, Maius, is believed by many to have come from Maia who was the mother of the god Hermes. The native English had a less romantic but much more practical name for the month . They called it Thrimilce because , in the long , spring days , the cows could be milked three time between sunrise and evening .