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On The Table Read, “the best book magazine in the UK“, Grace Sammon shares her passion for writing and the research she has been doing into why December is called December… instead of actually writing.
Written by Grace Sammon
It’s December, an array of holidays is drawing near and the New Year, with all that it promises is around the corner. There is an air of expectation of things to come. Yuletide carols are being sung by a choir and folks dress up like Eskimos. Everybody knows that writers are settling in at their desks, readers are arranging their “To Be Read” piles for cozy nights, and I’m, just to be honest, stuck in a rabbit hole. I’ve been toying with book five and novel two for a few months now. But rather than writing I fall, often delightedly, prey to the distraction of the research.
Hop down with me. This is how it works.
Down The Rabbit Hole
I sat down to write this piece and thought – “Ah, December! I’ll write about how much I love the holiday season, tossing logs on the fire, family recipes, and…” then, “Wait, why is it called December when it’s the 12th not the tenth (as in deca) month?” I thought I knew this, but I was wrong.
Quick diversion from actually writing this piece to a little research – the Romans borrowed most of their calendar from the Greeks. It was 10 months long – 304 days. The Romans totally ignored that there were, apparently, some random 61 days tucked into the middle of winter. Romulus, the twin of Romulus and Remus raised-by-wolves fame, is credited (but only by some) with establishing Rome and adopting this calendar. Things didn’t work out that well for Remus by the way, Romulus ultimately kills his brother. It was the late 400s BCE.
BCE – “before the common era” – that which we previously called just “BC.” The first use of BCE vs. BC in English was in the 1700s (who knew?). BCE became popular, with growing cultural and religious sensitivities, in the 1990s.
But I digress from my digression. We were talking about a ten-month calendar. Back then, December was indeed the tenth month. “Deka” coming from the Greek word for ten which is very similar to the Roman “decem.”
You see how this rabbit hole thing works now, right?
The Romans
So, back to the ten-month calendar. There was an uprising that caused the Romans to move to a 12-month calendar that coincided with a desire to reconcile the lunar year (355 days) and the tropical year (365 ¼ days).
I’m resisting the urge to investigate the uprising right now.
While the Romans were busy adding months and truncated months, I got stuck on the fact that there is a “tropical year” that I don’t know about, let alone that it has a quarter of a day stuck to it. That questioning takes me to the fact that a tropical year is actually the same as a solar year. It is exactly 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long. Seriously, that precise back in a time when they didn’t have clocks? Maybe the creating of a calendar with a quarter of a day attached to it had some of the Romans ready to uprise.
In present day, we have a 12-month calendar. When the Romans converted to it, they tried calling that now defamed 10th month by various names of Roman emperors but the name December stuck. Probably because the early Romans didn’t, for the most part, keep strict calendars.
Alice In Wonderland
Phew, what a rabbit hole this was! “Wait, why do we call it a rabbit hole?”
Well, that gets tied easily to Alice in Wonderland and her adventures with the White Rabbit. So, I can thank Lewis Carol for my rabbit hole. I like a good literary reference when I can draw one. Lewis Carol? Or, should I say Charles Lutwidge Dodgson? Carol is Dodgson pen name. I had to look that up.
Writers typically refer to this rabbit hole as the warren of research twists and turns that motivates, enriches, and inspirers their writing, and devours their time. The rabbit hole is defined by the Oxford Language Dictionary as a “bizarre, confusing, or nonsensical situation or environment, typically one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.”
Christmas
Me? I love it down here. I’m blaming the Romans for my writing stagnation. In England of old, what we now refer to as December was called Gēolmōnað, or “Before the Yule month.” Simply put, I could have stayed up there in paragraph one, Yultide carols playing in the background, happily sipping eggnog, and writing away.
Whatever you celebrate and write, or not, may your days be merry and bright.
About Grace Sammon
Grace Sammon is the author of three non-fiction books on education and a novel, THE EVES a story about lives lived well and lives in transition. She is the host of two radio shows, The Storytellers focused on those who leave there mark on the world though the are of story, and LAUNCH PAD focused on celebrating book debuts and the authors that create them.
Find out more about Grace at www.gracesammon.net. Reach out to Grace at
Gmsammon@Gmail.com
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