Once upon a time, over 2700 years ago, our calendar here in “The West” had a mere ten months to it. It began in March and ended in December. There were no winter months - no January, no February. The calendar lasted just over 300 days with those extra 60 dateless winter days tagged onto the end.

So where did little February come from?

The history of the Roman calendar, the calendar from which we derive our own, is a complete mess of a story, mainly due to the extremely uncooperative natures of the sun, moon, and stars; their varying movements do not make things nice and neat. The calendar you have hanging on your wall is squeaky clean compared to what Rome first had. Ours is the end result of literally centuries of reform. Here we will focus on one small aspect of those reforms, the genesis of tiny February.

The year use to start in March - a month named for the god Mars - because that is when spring began. That the calendar year used to begin then is still reflected in our names of the latter months such as October, where “oct-” means eighth, or December, where “dec-” means tenth. Back then they really were the eight and tenth months.

It wasn’t until around 700 B.C., when the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, sat on the throne, that things changed. Pompilius plopped an extra 50 days into the calendar and two new months to fill them, specifically January and February.

It was sometime between Numa’s time and the time of the decemviri - a ruling group of ten Roman men back in the 5th century B.C. - that January and February got promoted to the first two months of the year.

January was named for the Roman god of the doorway, the two-faced Janus. We still see his name in our word “janitor” which long ago meant doorkeeper, but evolved into the more custodial meaning we have today.

February was not named for a god like March was, nor for a number like October, nor for a caesar, like July and August were. It was named for a specific rite that happened right before springtime called Februa. This very old ritual had been observed since ancient days to purify a village or city of nasty spirits. It was like a superstitious spring cleaning.

Maybe we can all take a little lesson from little February and start some cleaning up in our own lives this month. I sure could.

Until next month, clear skies!