Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner DECEMBER IS THE TENTH MONTH. Yes, the tenth. Just look at the spelling which begins D-E-C. D-e-c-, deka, means ten in ancient languages like Latin! December was the tenth month in the Roman Republic calendar, March being the beginning of the year when it came to be that. September was the seventh month because septem was seven and October, o-c-t, was eight like octopus add octagon with d-e-c telling us about the decagram and decameter, ten grams and ten meters. A decagon is a polygon with ten angles. So why don’t we pronounce December, Dec-ember?

Counting time whether minutes or years is in-born in humankind. Oog, the cave man, doubtless, put a mark on the walls of the cave to track from when he’d killed that mastodon. Gradually more sophisticated methods came along. Time counting evolved from counting time from the past to looking ahead till something would occur and calendars were born. The first told the illiterate populace when a church ritual or festival would come about, symbols aiding the unread. In some cultures the calendar priests or pontiffs were held in high respect because they controlled the important market days, when special religious days would be celebrated around which village life turned if they’d turn at all.

At first, of course, market days would be scheduled when crops came due. Perhaps it was why March was the first of the year and remained so for a long period because in March crops might be sown in climates of moderate temperature with harvest towards the end of the year. Every culture, every climate had their own “week” which could be four, six, even ten days apart. And years, too, might be two hundred sixty days or three hundred and fifty-four; eleven days short of the present Sun go round. Marks on the wall may not come out even with the “dawns” (not days) marked on the wall.

As time passed each “dawn” was given a name and, naturally different according to the country naming them. The following stuck to that which we know today: Sun’s day, Moon’s day, Tiw’s day, Woden’s day, Thor’s day (Nordic gods), Frigg’s day and Seterne day. Those cultures that went either by a solar year or a lunar year didn’t match up with one another’s time-keeping at all. By 46 BC the Roman Republic calendar was so seriously out of whack between the calendar equinox with the astronomical reckoning that three months separated them because there were no fast methods of communications, it didn’t really matter much that somebody’s year was either thirteen months or eighteen months according to what neighborhood they lived in. In the Mayan civilization whose year totaled two hundred sixty days, or whatever, their calendar was so complicated that it took an interpreter to figure it out. And, by the way, isn’t 2012 when their calendar ended?

Seasons first governed how time was spent and interpreted, the Church dictating what and when. The Church gave vast importance to the calendar. As villages became towns, then cities, calendars became even more valuable because they listed civil events, not just religious. Putting a mark on the cave wall, then on that of the home sweet hovel or as time passed and a few people were educated and the marks were on the wall of a manor house, it began to dawn on a thinker or two that a particular number of marks meant that that number was the same as what was occurring currently, or three times ago.

Seasons were an easy way to divide up a “year,” months made it easier. Yet, Kalendae, or calendar, once was referred to as when the accounts were due, not it tells from when the accounts are figured.

And besides the seasons there was huge way to calculate time that by gazing into the night sky and eventually learning to read the stars. It came to be that earth-bound man figured out that the stars turning overhead eventually came ‘round in so many days totted up on the tree or cliff wall. Imagination led thinkers to find pictures in them like gods, heroes, animals, mythological creatures became calendars, too, long before calendars and timepieces. Months, by the way were counted as “lunations.”

Each country all over our planet interpreted the stars and seasons in their own way. The information about calendars is intriguing, the Chinese calendar, for instance, was formulated centuries ago by reckoning the days, months, years in a complex cycle combining ten celestial “stems” and twelve terrestrial “branches.” Their culture pays close heed to days of birth, and so forth.

There are Muslim calendars, Jewish calendars, Babylonian and Assyrian, Mayan, Middle American even the Eskimo kept track of time by using the simple gnomon, a straight stick or bone planted upright in the earth for the Sun to make a shadow to mark TIME. Pioneers of our Northwest used the gnomon, too, as told in “Recollections to one of Lee County pioneers.” A basic timepiece.

The calendar we use today is called the Gregorian for Pope Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century who saw the importance in accurate measurement of time in days and beyond. The Julian calendar before it was fairly accurate except that its “year” was three hundred sixty-five and a fourth days, and over-estimated the year by eleven minutes and eleven seconds so that by AD 730 the vernal equinox had advanced three days from the actual event. Pope Gregory those centuries later wanted correction and got it.

Calendars today have become an art form. Yours truly is a calendar freak, a current fave being one with grain elevators pictured in lonely majesty. The image with this article is from “A Birthday Book,” another way of telling time, past and present, mark time with monthly calendars to tell birthdays, an innate urge, knowing our years.

Here we are at the last calendar month, the most meaningful. It’s Christ’s birthday though only an estimate according to Biblical teachings. His birthdate was tied in with the festival of the month celebrations, the Saturnalia, tied to Saturnalia time. Pope Julius fixed the date of December 25 for Jesus’ birth. The Bible didn’t specify, but it doesn’t mean we have to have the most accurate date. Any one would do. The 25th helps us focus on what’s important. Think of what Christ has done for the world. Merry day. Happy year.