Calendork: January

It’s January-the month named for the Roman god Janus who was simultaneously able to face both the past and future. This is impressive to me since I can’t face either without Lexapro. Janus had it easy, though; he had two faces, which makes him the only god suitable for a sideline in politics.

The beginning of the year hasn’t always been January. It’s bobbed around a bit thanks to Julius Caesar who changed the names of some months and added some mystery months for good measure. Ergo, the erstwhile month of Quintillis. You would think that Caesar’s invention was a newfangled fifth month (“quint” being a numerical prefix for five and all) but surprise, it was a new seventh month. Because-why not? When Caesar died they changed it to July in his honor, apparently having missed his “Ides of March” memo.

Later, Pope Gregory did a partial rebrand of the calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, Janus is more of a middle month and Martius (now March) was first. In the “Gregorian Brady” edition of this factoid, a jealous Janus would thus lament “Martius, Martius, Martius.” And, yes, in a past life, I was the warm-up act at the Coliseum.

Calendar reform is a perennial topic in some circles (ironically, those circles never have dates). Among them is the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, which has the peculiar feature of every date always falling on the same day of the week…