Despite the regrettable lack of snow, it is still January. A few weeks back, I read that once the months of December and January bore the same name.
That’s strange, I thought, traveling back through my own life to the time I was taught that January was named for the Roman god Janus, whose two faces looked in opposite directions, allowing him to see both the future and the past.
But all of that is simplified, and, like many things made simple, it is wrong. Or, rather, it is not exactly right. The Romans originally had just 10 months in their inadequate, early calendar of 304 days. They chose to ignore winter. But, wait, don’t we call Italy “sunny Italy?” Sunny it may be, but a high temperature for Rome in the winter is 54, definitely “sweater weather.” However, with lows in the 30s, it’s a bit chilly for people wearing togas and tunics.
So, December and January weren’t really one big month. The Romans seemed to pretend that winter, with its long darkness and cold, didn’t exist. Perhaps counting the days made winter drag on longer for Romans.
As for January, linguists and historians now think the word was derived from the Latin word for “door,” which, without our modern English “J,” is ianua. The deity who presided over January wasn’t the two-faced male god (no slight to men intended) but rather the Queen of the Gods, Juno.
Those who took Latin and, unlike me, still remember the declensions, might remember that Juno was the patroness of marriage. She was also the representation of energy and eternal youth. Clad in goatskin and wearing a helmet, she was surprisingly warlike. Her many roles are complicated, as they might be in a society as masculine as ancient Rome was. After all, how much room for a goddess was there?
As consort to Zeus, Juno was one of the official gods of the Roman Pantheon, but poor Janus was not. He was without a temple, a cult or a dedicated priesthood. His domain included beginnings and endings, war and peace, gates and harbors, and, yes, the doors for which the first month of the year is named.
And yet, he was part of every ceremony throughout the year. Instead of an ordinary priest, Janus was served by the rex sacrorum, the king of the sacred rites, who had to have been a patrician, descended from parents whose special marriage, the confarreatio, involved 10 witnesses, the official handing over the bride to her new husband and the sharing of a spelt cake, called the far or the panis farreus.
All this brings us back to Juno, who presides over the month of January. It also demonstrates how much we owe to Rome. The giving away of the bride. The force-feeding of the wedding cake. Even the bags of farro that foodies have in their cupboards.
What strikes me as strange is that, despite English being classed as a Germanic language, we chose to call the months of the year by their Latin-derived names, while the names for the days of the week come down from the German. I love the German-derived name for January, Wulf-monath, or wolf moon. I can imagine the scene in Old Europe: people huddling in the mead hall, listening to a scop or skald, whose recitation is momentarily halted by the howls of a hunting wolf pack. But I can also imagine a later scene, during the Holy Roman Empire, of people scurrying from cowshed to hall, carrying the morning milk, during Wintarmonath. It seems that those early Medieval folk of Charlemagne’s time were more pragmatic, less romantic. They were willing to face the reality of winter.
Perhaps, then, the Romans, who included Janus in everything, were optimists.
As December 2018, drew to a close, more and more people I know expressed hope for the coming year. Looking back, they saw a great many negative events: the passage of certain laws and bills, the refusal of international cooperation, the installation of officials who seem to lack knowledge and skills, the continued denial of global warming. In that, they were as pragmatic as those who lived after the fall of Rome. They wanted Janus to close the door on the recent troubles and to open doors on new solutions.
They look forward to a fresh new year, 2019, with hope that the year will be better and that positive change will come. Hail, Janus!
A native of Michigan, Susan Wozniak belongs to three alumni associations with at least one other woman named Susan Wozniak in each. She is not related to Steve.