Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ross Clark Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: March Catch-up Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2025 12:19:48 +1300 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 31 Message-ID: Reply-To: r.clark@auckland.ac.nz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:19:51 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="ac081bec80c0745b230b649bba409a07"; logging-data="2677391"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19jv7k1vOtVP0sLx5cyHEIeQnj7PThedM0=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:wcUfGA8yPngPnQRyUC4+qVzQVzY= Content-Language: en-GB X-Mozilla-News-Host: news://news.eternal-september.org:119 Bytes: 2441 (not crossposting! just got confused and put this on a.u.e. first) It's been a busy time and we've passed through a lot of holidays without comment. Saints: Patrick (Ireland) 17 March -- celebrated wherever there are Irish people Joseph (Malta) 19 March (San Ġużepp) This was on my original list, but this list suggests it is only a public holiday in Rabat, a town in western Malta, not the whole country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Malta#March On the way to finding that out, I ran across the question: Why are there two feasts of St Joseph on the liturgical calendar? (Yes, this is the same guy, husband of Mary and "legal father" of Jesus.) Well, 19 March is the original one, celebrating the Family Man. But in 1955 Pope Pius XII proclaimed 1 May as the feast of St.Joseph the Worker. This was obviously so that Catholics could get out and celebrate May Day along with the Communists. Other notable individuals: Benito Juárez Day (Mexico) 17 March. (More Mondayization -- he was actually born on the 21st, but it's now "third Monday in March"). A great Mexican. President 1856-1872. "A Zapotec, he was the first Indigenous president of Mexico and the first democratically elected Indigenous president in the postcolonial Americas." I did not know that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Ju%C3%A1rez. More to follow