March

 

  Welcome to March, the greatest month of the year! At the top of the list is the Feast of St. Patrick on the 17th. This is the first day for a serious party since New Year's Eve. And the first day to have a parade since the Fourth of July. 

  Spring always starts in March. March used to be the first month of the year. That made sense because spring is when Roman farmers and soldiers got back to work.  There were only ten months in the Roman calendar. Winter got stuffed in a shapeless month called Winter. When Winter was divided into January and February, these two were inadvertently stuck onto the beginning of the year. By rights New Year’s Eve should be February 28th (or 29th).

  The Feast of the Annunciation is on March 25 celebrating the Blessed Virgin being told she was to be the Mother of God. The main reason I love March is that my birthday occurs on the 26th. I used to wish I had been born a day earlier when Sister Eubestrabius asked the class if anyone was born on the 25th. I had to grit my teeth when Mary Koontz raised her hand and was given the Saints and Holy Days crown to wear for the day. 

  This crown was a big deal. It was covered in super thin ribbon candy signifying the sweetness of Heaven. The lucky student was allowed to nibble on the candy during the day. Sister would take the frame of the crown back to the convent at night and replace the candy for the next lucky winner. I had already endured the crunchings of Peter Radley on the 19th (St. Joseph) and Patty Crake on the 17th (St. Patrick). I tried to tell sister that in Spain my saint's feast day would be my special day, not my actual birthday. Sister just said, "No way José".

  It could have been worse. I could have been born on Christmas Day. That would have driven me mad. That’s what happened to Johnny Walsh. He would grow thin and melancholy as Christmas approached. He joined the army right after high school and defected to the Vietnamese. I learned later at a class reunion that he had become a Buddhist and had done quite well in his father-in-law's fish sauce business in Ho Chi Minh City.   

  I searched for saints celebrated on the 26th in the Big Book of Saints in the school library and was amazed and gratified to find over twenty of them. I painfully copied out all the names, among them St. Ludger of Utrecht, St. Castulus of Rome, and St. Mochelloc of Killamock. Sister chuckled at my list and said that unfortunately none of them had made it onto the calendar issued by the Archdiocese of Boston. She helped me write a letter to the cardinal but I’m  afraid my petition went into the bin marked nonimportant matters.

  I later learned that I share a birthday with several modern day heroes: Robert Frost, Sandra Day O'Connor, and the Norwegian sprint kayaker Eirik Verås Larsen, so I’m happy with that. 

  One last note - March 17, 1776, is the day General Washington forced the British to abandon their siege of Boston. The day became a civic holiday in Boston called Evacuation Day, so by a wonderful coincidence St. Patrick's Day was always a no school day for us. Sweet!

The Brits are gone. Break out the Guinness!