Laughing with Di – March 2021

If we were still ruled by Julius Caesar (could be a good idea), we would be using the Julian calendar, circa 46 B.C., instead of Pope Gregory’s. They were into Latin in those days, therefore, the third month of the year was called March, after the Roman god of war, Mars.
Let’s have a laugh.
Roman emperors named and renamed the months to suit their whims and egos. Think about this, we could be stuck with what Emperor Commodus (a familiar name if you’re a fan of “The Gladiator”) decided on. His January through December nomenclatures were: Amazonius, Invictus, Felix (I kid you not), Pius, Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus and Exsuperatorius (I think we should have kept this one).
Basically, that means we would be in the month of Felix! We would have missed out on John Philip Sousa (the March King), who in the 1900’s composed The Stars and Stripes Forever, which became the National march of the United States. We would not know the actor, Frederick March unless he became Frederick Felix. Of course, not many people really know him anyway. We would have been “bewareing” the Ides of Felix and walking down the aisle to The Wedding Felix. If you were moving along steadily with a rhythmic stride in step with others, you would be felixing. Why, the planet Mars could have ended up the planet Felix.
St. Patrick’s Day would be on the 17th of Felix and no one would receive marching orders, celebrate a triumphal march or, imagine this, all of you NCAA fans would be deep into Felix Madness. “The Marches”, border areas between England and Wales would not have existed and a lot of medieval folks would have been running back and forth unencumbered, but confused.
So, if you hear a different drummer . . . felix away!
Sources: Wikipedia, Websters Collegiate Dictionary