Is it spring yet?

by Pat Laster

 

                Now that the Christmas things are put away and the snow has come and gone, I’m ready for warmer weather—at least 50 degrees, Mother Nature, if you don’t mind. Then I can get the last 4 kitchen cabinet doors--plus the end pieces—painted and be done with the project that’s taken thirteen months.

                Alas, I know it’s not to be, except for an occasional warm-up, and that the coldest part of winter is still ahead. In Edward F. Dolan’s The Old Farmer’s Almanac: Book of Weather Lore I found these older sayings about months and their weather: predictions, both optimistic and pessimistic.

                “January warm, /The Lord have mercy.”

                “January wet, / No wine you get.” (grapes won’t produce?)

                “If you see grass in January, / Lock your grain in your granary.”

                If the following proverb/belief ever works out as true, credit goes to coincidence, Dolan says: “The date of the month on which the first snow falls gives the number of storms that the winter will bring.” Oh-my-goodness! If that be so, we’re looking at 25 more winter storms! Let’s hope . . . . [insert your own hope in this space.]

                Contradictions in much weather lore makes for a fun read, but 4 other factors play a part in these adages about January weather: local weather, times of the month, religious hopes for what the weather on a feast day portended, and local interpretations of what was intended by certain wordings.

                “March in Janiveer (January), / Janiveer in March, I fear.”

“Remember on St. Vincent’s Day, (January 22)/ If the sun his beams display, / Be sure to mark the transient beam, / Which through the casement sheds a gleam; / For ‘tis a token bright and clear/ Of prosperous weather all the year.”

                “If St. Paul (St. Paul’s Day January 25) be fair and clear, / It promises then a happy year; / But if it chance to snow or rain, / There will be dear all sorts of grain; / Or if the winds do blow aloft, / Great stirs will vex the world full oft; / And if dark clouds do muff the sky, / The fowl and cattle oft will die.”//  

                According to the Trivia feature in this month’s Arkansas Living, January is National Soup Month. The 3 most popular soups are tomato, cream of mushroom and chicken noodle. We consume nearly 10 billion bowls of canned soup each year.

None of those is my favorite-- homemade vegetable with a can of chili added does it for me.

From the same page, we learn that celebrating the arrival of a new year dates back 4,000 years to ancient Babylon.

The first New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square took place in 1904 and included fireworks. In 1907, because of a ban on fireworks, a 700-pound iron and wood ball that was illuminated with 199 25-watt lightbulbs was lowered in the square at midnight, marking the beginning of a celebration that continues today.

This last item is unfathomable: The Times Square New Year’s Eve ball is designed by Waterford Crystal. It weighs 11,875 pounds, is 12 feet in diameter and has 2,668 Waterford crystals. I wonder where it is stored during the year? Does anyone know?

A benediction from another flea-market book, Prayer Poems, compiled by O.V. and Helen Armstrong, published by Abingdon/Cokesbury in 1942:

 “For bringing us this fair New Year,/ We lift our love and praise./ Go with us, Father, every mile,/ And bless us, all the days.” – Nancy Byrd Turner.

Amen and amen.