shhhhh.......
nobody? nope.....
*whispers* ok, here goes. closet roman catholic, carefully peeking out and watching for axes.
I looked up info on this on a catholic dictionary on line, but the history provided is so blitheringly complex, it would be useless to post here. one way I've heard it explained is that it is around the time of the year when the days start to lengthen, and conversely, the feast of john the baptist (in the RC Church, again) is at mid-june, when the days are at their longest and now begin to shrink. this lines up rather sweetly with what john said at one point, "I must decrease and he must increase". but it's not the only reason, to be certain. the day was more or less picked arbitrarily, because a number of pagan festivals of mid-winter were placed there as well. fixing an exact date got too confusing, and people started arguing "shepards wouldn't be keeping their flocks in the fields in the middle of the rainy season!" and "they couldn't do the census in the winter because you couldn't move the population at that time of year!" etc etc. so they just had to pick, and pick they did. and of course the protestant churches still keep this date as well, for the most part. (right?)
ps---aurora, you have the most charming sig i've seen in a long time!
