August is a hot month and February is a cold month. They are, half a year apart, the two extremes of the calendar. And the lines rhyme.
Poetic way to reference the Julian calendar I guess. February and August are 6 months apart and ‘opposite’ in the calendar.
It doesn’t quite fit, but July has 31 days because Julius Caesar stole one for his namesake month from February.
It occurs to me now that this is a limerick in rhyme pattern and cadence.
The “Julian mother” is the year.
August has 31 days where it should only (and did only) have 30, because the Senate, in its flattering of Augustus, not only wanted him to have his own month, but that it should not be a lesser month than the one named after Julius.
Folly: It approximates the limerick pattern, anyhow.
Good bits of trivia, James and larK.
“Same Julian mother” is still total nonsense, but the post has more than justified its existance.
larK, did they pull yet another day from February to give to August?
I keep bringing up my idea of Summer Savings Time and nobody takes me seriously! You know how we have Daylight Savings Time to give us an extra hour of daylight? Well, what we do is move the calendar ahead one month at the end of January and skip straight to March, avoiding the blizzards of February. Then at the end of August we move the calendar back one month and go through August again, an extra month of summer vacation!
Oh… I didn’t even notice the title was asking about “Julian Mother”. …
That’s just a reference to they are both months on the Julian Calendar. It’s not a very good poem.
“Julian Mother” works for me. I like the poem, although the final visual doesn’t seem to match the text – Arlo looks like he’s having fun, not pining away for hot weather.
When the Senate renamed Quintilis to honor Julius Caesar, it already had 31 days — the months alternated between 30 and 31, except for February, which had 29 and only 30 on a leap year.
When then later the Senate decided to rename Sextillus for Augustus, they had a problem because Sextillus only had 30 days. So that Augustus not have reason to feel in any way inferior, they gave his month an extra day, stealing it from February. They then had the problem that they’d screwed up the alternation, so they revamped all the subsequent months too, switching them around so they alternated after the new August — September used to have 31 days, now it had 30, October had 30, now it had 31, etc.
Apropos, it wasn’t until I was in college that it struck me that September, October, November, December were 7, 8, 9, 10; a friend of mine was right there as I made the connection for the very first time in my life, and he has never let me live it down. It remains our shorthand for only latterly discovering something that should have been blindingly obvious….
“a friend of mine was right there as I made the connection for the very first time in my life, and he has never let me live it down.”
Yeah, it’s great when you can explain something to someone or someone can explain something to you, but in my case it was me discovering all by myself something that in retrospect should have been obvious. My friend enjoyed seeing the comprehension dawn on me. He didn’t know I never realized the connection before, but he could see the enlightenment spread on my face. In a way, it was exactly the joy Randall expresses in the referenced strip, only my friend didn’t need to even provide the explanation to get the payoff — I did it all on my own.
larK, I got to see comprehension dawn on someone. It was about something I knew there was deeper meaning in, but didn’t understand, myself. So I got to ask him about it afterward, and then I, too, was enlightened.
As for your friend vs. Munroe: If he teases you about your ignorance once, you’re less likely to express your ignorance to him in the future. So you might remain ignorant longer, and he might never get to enjoy the coke-and-mentos-type experience with you.
Is it possible they were both born in the same year, of the “same Julian mother”?
February didn’t exist before the Julian calendar (The old Romans just skipped the winter and started counting again in March). And August existed as Sextillus, but they changed the name and added a day.
When I was in 3rd grade our class play was about the month of February. The shortest girl in the class (not me I was tall then, I just stopped growing too soon) played February. There was a Father Time of course, and 11 other children played the other months.
Father Time falls asleep as the various months argue about how many days they should have – they all want more. Just as Father Time awakens little February offers one of her days to resolve the argument.
She is rewarded as she will have more holidays than any other month.
Each of the various holidays in February is mentioned with other children coming out dressed for the holiday. I was dressed in a “toga” (a bed sheet pinned around me in a somewhat appropriate shape) as part of the Valentine group and got to deliver the speech for Valentine’s Day – still remember the start of it.
So, the answer to your discussion is that February gave away a day to stop the other months from fighting.
Comics I Don't Understand 
August is a hot month and February is a cold month. They are, half a year apart, the two extremes of the calendar. And the lines rhyme.
Poetic way to reference the Julian calendar I guess. February and August are 6 months apart and ‘opposite’ in the calendar.
It doesn’t quite fit, but July has 31 days because Julius Caesar stole one for his namesake month from February.
It occurs to me now that this is a limerick in rhyme pattern and cadence.
The “Julian mother” is the year.
August has 31 days where it should only (and did only) have 30, because the Senate, in its flattering of Augustus, not only wanted him to have his own month, but that it should not be a lesser month than the one named after Julius.
Folly: It approximates the limerick pattern, anyhow.
Good bits of trivia, James and larK.
“Same Julian mother” is still total nonsense, but the post has more than justified its existance.
larK, did they pull yet another day from February to give to August?
I keep bringing up my idea of Summer Savings Time and nobody takes me seriously! You know how we have Daylight Savings Time to give us an extra hour of daylight? Well, what we do is move the calendar ahead one month at the end of January and skip straight to March, avoiding the blizzards of February. Then at the end of August we move the calendar back one month and go through August again, an extra month of summer vacation!
Oh… I didn’t even notice the title was asking about “Julian Mother”. …
That’s just a reference to they are both months on the Julian Calendar. It’s not a very good poem.
“Julian Mother” works for me. I like the poem, although the final visual doesn’t seem to match the text – Arlo looks like he’s having fun, not pining away for hot weather.
When the Senate renamed Quintilis to honor Julius Caesar, it already had 31 days — the months alternated between 30 and 31, except for February, which had 29 and only 30 on a leap year.
When then later the Senate decided to rename Sextillus for Augustus, they had a problem because Sextillus only had 30 days. So that Augustus not have reason to feel in any way inferior, they gave his month an extra day, stealing it from February. They then had the problem that they’d screwed up the alternation, so they revamped all the subsequent months too, switching them around so they alternated after the new August — September used to have 31 days, now it had 30, October had 30, now it had 31, etc.
https://www.infoplease.com/august-history-months-origin
Apropos, it wasn’t until I was in college that it struck me that September, October, November, December were 7, 8, 9, 10; a friend of mine was right there as I made the connection for the very first time in my life, and he has never let me live it down. It remains our shorthand for only latterly discovering something that should have been blindingly obvious….
“a friend of mine was right there as I made the connection for the very first time in my life, and he has never let me live it down.”
I prefer Randall Munroe’s reaction to ignorance:
https://xkcd.com/1053/
Yeah, it’s great when you can explain something to someone or someone can explain something to you, but in my case it was me discovering all by myself something that in retrospect should have been obvious. My friend enjoyed seeing the comprehension dawn on me. He didn’t know I never realized the connection before, but he could see the enlightenment spread on my face. In a way, it was exactly the joy Randall expresses in the referenced strip, only my friend didn’t need to even provide the explanation to get the payoff — I did it all on my own.
larK, I got to see comprehension dawn on someone. It was about something I knew there was deeper meaning in, but didn’t understand, myself. So I got to ask him about it afterward, and then I, too, was enlightened.
As for your friend vs. Munroe: If he teases you about your ignorance once, you’re less likely to express your ignorance to him in the future. So you might remain ignorant longer, and he might never get to enjoy the coke-and-mentos-type experience with you.
Is it possible they were both born in the same year, of the “same Julian mother”?
February didn’t exist before the Julian calendar (The old Romans just skipped the winter and started counting again in March). And August existed as Sextillus, but they changed the name and added a day.
When I was in 3rd grade our class play was about the month of February. The shortest girl in the class (not me I was tall then, I just stopped growing too soon) played February. There was a Father Time of course, and 11 other children played the other months.
Father Time falls asleep as the various months argue about how many days they should have – they all want more. Just as Father Time awakens little February offers one of her days to resolve the argument.
She is rewarded as she will have more holidays than any other month.
Each of the various holidays in February is mentioned with other children coming out dressed for the holiday. I was dressed in a “toga” (a bed sheet pinned around me in a somewhat appropriate shape) as part of the Valentine group and got to deliver the speech for Valentine’s Day – still remember the start of it.
So, the answer to your discussion is that February gave away a day to stop the other months from fighting.