Though February is the shortest month of the year, it often feels
like the longest in cold, snowy climates. Why does the month have only
28 days?
First here’s a little history of our calendar. The original Roman
calendar only had ten months, because the winter was not demarcated. In
the 700s BC, the second king of Rome Numa Pompilius
added January and February to the end of the calendar in order to
conform to how long it actually takes the Earth to go around the Sun.The
two new months were both originally 28 days long. It is lost to history
why January acquired more days, though there are various unverifiable
hypotheses. At that time, March 1 became New Years’ Day. Later, in 153
BC, the beginning of the year was moved to January 1.
The word February comes from the Roman festival of purification called Februa where people were ritually washed. There is a Roman god called Februus,
but he is named after the festival, not the other way around. Other
months, like January, are named after Roman gods.
The interesting linguistic story, though, lies in England. Before we
adopted the Latin name for the second month, Old English used much more
vibrant names to describe it. The most common Old English name was Solmonath, which literally means “mud month.” It is pretty clear what they were describing. A lesser-used term was Kale-monath, which meant “cabbage month.” We can imagine that the English were eating a lot of cabbage in February in the 1100s.
What do you think of February?
