Twelve times a year, some uncounted number of Britons give someone else a pinch and a punch and say, “Pinch, punch, first of the month, white rabbits.”
How many people do that? Um, they’re uncounted, so we don’t know. Enough to create a slight wave on the Odd British Traditions Scale, even if it’s not a big enough wave to sink any ships.
What do the words mean? If Metro knows what it’s talking about, most of the people who do it haven’t a clue. They do it because they do it. That’s one way to spot a tradition: Its origins are so murky that no one really understands it. Explanations range from medieval beliefs about witches to George Washington.
What’s George Washington got to do with white rabbits? Not much, even if you believe the story. The tale is that he met with Native American leaders on the first of every month, serving fruit punch with a pinch of salt in it.
If you believe that, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn and I’d be happy to sell you a share in it.
The medieval origin story is marginally more coherent. Salt was believed to make witches weak, so the pinch symbolized a pinch of salt to weaken the witches and the punch was to keep them away forever. Or at least until the next month, when someone could do it to you again. Basically they were giving you good luck.
And the white rabbits? They’re to keep the person from doing it back to you, because you wouldn’t want any good luck yourself, would you?
The rabbit line also shows up as “white rabbits, no return.”
Did your average medieval peasant do this to your other average medieval peasant? It’s a good question but not an answerable one. What I can tell you is that the medieval world believed in witches and that the first day of the month mattered back then, so your average peasant might well have known when it rolled around, even if it didn’t affect the planting and the harvesting and the shearing. The month was–well, this will be easier to take in if we back up a bit and talk about medieval calendars.
Not that your average peasant had a calendar. Or could read one. But they’re a way to explain the medieval month and possibly the medieval mind.
Calendars were luxury items, hand lettered and hand decorated. They were also religious, as everything in medieval Europe was, with the possible exceptions of rain and mud. And horses. Horses weren’t big on religion. Chickens, to the best of my knowledge, weren’t either, although eggs got roped in on some of the holidays so let’s leave the chickens out of it. They’re ambiguous.
Calendars were about tracking saints’ days and assorted church holidays. So if they were a luxury, in churchly circles they were also a necessity. And they weren’t anything like what we think of as a calendar: You didn’t turn the last page at the end of the year and throw it in the recycling, you just went back to the beginning and started over.
But the differences don’t stop there. The medieval months had the same names we use now, but after that everything familiar breaks down. The month was divided into kalends (the first day), nones (the fifth, unless it was the seventh–it depended on how many days the month had), and ides (eight days after nones, although that’s not where they would have counted from). Those were your fixed points, to the extent that something that movable is fixed.
I was taught that ides–as in “beware the ides of March”–was the fifteenth. I was taught wrong. The ides of March might have fallen on the fifteenth, but any old ides for an unspecified month could also have fallen on the thirteenth.
I’m drawing on the British Library for this, and it has access to experts that my high school English teacher didn’t.
Now here’s where it gets severely weird: Although medieval months had the same number of days as modern ones, people (and their calendars) didn’t count the days by starting at 1 and going to 30 or 31 or–well, you know where this ends, so I don’t need to list all the possibilities. Instead, they counted backwards from the nearest fixed point: three days backwards from the next kalends, or five days before the ides. That number shows up in a column to the left of the main (I assume) information, which is the name of the saint’s day or church holiday (want to celebrate the circumcision of Jesus, anybody?), which is the wide column on the right of the calendar. The important holidays are in red, leaving us the phrase red letter day.
Okay, in particularly fancy calendars, they’re gold, but the phrase we inherited still involves red.
In case the numbers decreasing as you go up is too easy for you, the calendars use Roman numerals.
Another column lists the days as single letters, from A to G. These are called Domenical letters.
Why don’t they use the first letters of the days themselves? Because these were perpetual calendars, rolling over from year to year, so the actual days of the week were a liquid. It’s 2014? E corresponds to Sunday.
“To find the Dominical or Sunday Letter, according to the Calendar, until the year 2099 inclusive, add to the year of our Lord its fourth part, omitting fractions; and also the number 6: Divide the sum by 7; and there is no remainder, then A is the Sunday Letter: But if any number remaineth, then the Letter standing against that number in the small annexed Table is the Sunday Letter.”
Did you get that?
Another column has numbers from 1 to 19. These are called the golden numbers and they help you find the date of Easter in any given year, because Easter wandered in from a lunar calendar and isn’t a fixed date on the calendar we stole from Rome.
How can a list of numbers from 1 to 19 help you figure out when Easter falls? You really don’t want to know, but I’ll tell you anyway:
“For the determining of Easter . . . look for the Golden Number of the year in the first Column of the Table, against which stands the day of the Paschal Full Moon; then look in the third column for the Sunday Letter, next after the day of the Full Moon, and the day of the Month standing against that Sunday Letter is Easter Day. If the Full Moon happens upon a Sunday, then (according to the first rule) the next Sunday after is Easter Day.”
If I’d lived back then and if I’d needed to know, I’d have done what I suspect most people did and relied on someone else to tell me when Easter was due.
Many calendars also listed days when some kind of activity would be unlucky–bad days to start a journey or days that were unlucky for the limbs. What you were supposed to do with your limbs on unlucky days isn’t clear–at least not to me–but may have been perfectly clear to anyone living at the time. Keep them safe within your sleeves, possibly. Or avoid chain saws.
These unlucky days were called Egyptian days, and I haven’t been able to trace down the origin of the phrase. Let’s assume it grew out of a mix of ignorance and raw prejudice. There was a lot of both going around at the time. What a contrast to the enlightened times we live in.
*
My thanks to Cheryl, who ran around pinching and punching to greet the first day of August this year. She has an exceptionally gentle punch and a sharp sense of the absurd.
Gosh, I thought “white rabbits” came from the song of the same name by the Jefferson Airplane. Maybe not?
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Sorry, but I think it predates them. Of course, I’m old enough to think the Jefferson Airplane’s very recent history.
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Seems like just yesterday to me too.
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How did so much time go by?
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Maybe we should ask the white rabbit in Alice In Wonderland?
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We should. There’s no telling what we’d learn.
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Have you heard the version that’s just Grace Slick’s vocals?… almost orgasmic!!! :D … ye gods that woman had a voice! :D
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Sigh. I know just enough about singing to be envious. Very, very envious.
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Grace Slick and The Great Society….the original pre-Airplane. Indeed, her voice was powerful.🎼
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I’m going to have to go back and have a listen. It’s been a long time. Thanks.
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I have to confess that I’ve always thought ‘Pinch, punch, first of the month’ and ‘White rabbits’, are two entirely separate things. I also think they’re both daft, to say nothing of painful. Some of the girls at my school were vicious pinchers.
Recently I read Ovid’s Fasti, which is more or less a Roman liturgical calendar. It’s full of kalends and ides, so the medieval calendar must have inherited a lot of dating conventions from the Romans. Medieval calendars can be very beautiful. Each year the British Library chooses one and posts the relevant month on its blog on the first day of each month. That’s much nicer than a pinch or a punch, or even a white rabbit.
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I’m grateful that the pinch/punch tradition is one we–and I’m not sure if I mean Americans in general here or just the kids at my school–didn’t import.
Thanks for saying that about the Roman calendar. I didn’t think to look any further back than the medieval period.
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And in the 1950s, smart kids, if they went to a school with bigger, meaner kids, shortened the whole thing from “a pinch and a punch etc, etc” to ‘pinch, punch no returns”
It worked for me! I could never remember all the other relevant words and pronounce them correctly before some hefty front-row boy had got in a painful return.
Oh, at my school anyway, the assault was limited to the upper arm.
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I don’t think I’d have been bold enough, at that age, to take on one of the heftier, more popular kids, even using an approved formula like that. You were brave.
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Not really…just much smaller!
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To keep the person from doing it back to you…I think I need to do some shopping.
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A few white rabbits, maybe?
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But then, I’m a carnivore.
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I won’t say any of the things that are running through my vegetarian mind. Food is food.
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I just saw a mag called VEGETARIAN ALCOHOLIC PRESS.
Do you drink, Ellen?
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I don’t–haven’t in decades. It makes life simpler when you don’t have to control your intake, you simply don’t intake at all. Since I’m a regular at a local singers’ night that meets in a pub, it earns me a lot of teasing but if it weren’t that, they’d find something else so that’s okay.
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True.
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I too had the short version, we were too poor for white rabbits. Also thank heavens for Pope Gregory, who must’ve been as bad at maths as I was.
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Yeah, the white ones do sound upmarket. Did you do the pinch/punch thing? There seems to be an endless, no-charge, free-for-all supply of those in the world, unfortunately.
I’m not sure it was Pope Gregory who we should thank for changing the calendars. He reorganized the months and days, as I understand it, but I’m not sure when the whole kalends/ides/etc. thing ended. I’m guessing all those calculations about when Easter falls and when the week starts in any given month and year fell away as printing became cheaper.
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Enjoyed that, thank you very much. As a confirmed Brit, I’ve never heard the ‘white rabbit’ thing though – except the one in Alice and by the aforementioned Jefferson Airplane (they don’t sing like Grace Slick anymore). One irritating thought, however: does ‘luck’ use the Gregorian, Julian or some other calendar?
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Luck uses her own calendar and laughs at us for trying to predict when she’ll do what.
Interesting that you’ve never heard of the white rabbits or (I assume) the pinch/punch thing. I’ve always wondered how kids’ traditions make their way from one school to the next. It must not have gotten to yours. And yes, I’m assuming that it’s primarily a kids’ thing, although I don’t really know that.
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Oh – the ‘pinch/punch thing made regular appearances at my various schools – as you say, about 12 times a year and never after 12 noon. It’s the rabbit connection I’ve never come across.
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How does this stuff travel, given that kids’ lives are pretty parochial???
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I think, these days, ‘traditions’ spread very quickly :-)
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These days, yes, kids have an ability to connect that my generation never imagined. And still, our odd traditions and games moved from place to place in a way that we ourselves didn’t.
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Hate to sound didactic, but such traditions were, like nursery rhymes and traditional dances, a way to reinforce non-school knowledge, especially when peasants had no formal schooling. Often, traditions were modified over time, but vestiges linger, like dim memories. My mother thought that someone probably introduced the “white rabbits” as a gentler way of teaching the littlies their calendar.
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Good point. In fact, very good point. As for the white rabbits, it’s as likely an explanation as anything else–and much more likely than George Washington.
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I remember the pinching and punching at school, and always dreaded going into class on the first day of a month. That medieval calendar is sure complicated! Thanks Ellen for that information (I think!).
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I’d have dreaded it too. I’m grateful the tradition (like witches) didn’t cross the water.
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Didn’t you have some wtches in a place called Salem? They must have “crosed the water” – unless they appeared spontaneously.
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Um, yeah, allegedly. Given the powers people attributed to the devil–and therefore to witches–you have to wonder why they figured a witch couldn’t cross water. I mean, yeah, they can fly, but water stops them?
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I remember the pinch and a punch thing, but no white rabbits. The riposte was a nip and a kick for being so quick followed by tread on your toe for being so slow.
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Whew. She who strikes last strikes more effectively, from the sound of it.
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Beats having your plaits tied to the railings.
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Agreed. My hair was never that long, but someone did once tie my braid to the window shade cord.
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Fiendish!
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Believe it or not I learned this tradition from my mother! And, yes, it was practiced in both of my schools – gleefully by the bullies!
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The bullies always find something to work with.
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I knew pinch and punch, but not white rabbits. I would never have remembered people’s birthdays back then, but then I don’t now. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking – it’s nearly September and we haven’t sent ‘important person’ ‘s card across the Atlantic yet! I don’t think people made so much of birthdays, but if they were called by a saint’s name they would probably raise a cheer on the saint’s day – though they would have to rely on the priest to remind them.
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You’re probably right about all of that. A few saints’ days would’ve stood out–especially if your town or church was named after her or him. But other than that, there were so many I don’t know how anyone could’ve kept track. Especially if you were illiterate and the days of the year didn’t really matter to daily life.
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Thank you… I’m now completely confused and will never be able to look at a calendar again without shuddering.
😉
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Job done, then. I end the day with a real sense of satisfaction.
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I think we had a pinch and a kick riposte, but the treading on toes is a new to me innovation! Again no white rabbits. There could be a whole phD on regional variations of childrens’ traditions! We used to have a game with a chant that went ‘in and out the dusty bluebells’ which apparently comes from scots gaelic hiring fairs and nothing to do with flowers. Considering we were in Oxfordshire 900 miles south of gaelic speaking regions this strikes me as pretty impressive.
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That is impressive. Any idea what the connection to hiring fairs was? It’s not (to understate the case) at all obvious.
When I was a kid, in New York, we played a game called Captain May I? When I moved to Minnesota as an adult, I found out that the same game was called Mother May I? Adult or not, I still felt a wave of contempt for kids who needed their mothers’ permission. The captain’s, now–that was different.
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My Gaelic isn’t good enough to give the actual words, but there are words used at the hiring fairs that sounded a bit similar to ‘dusty bluebells’ I seem to remember it as a sort of dance.
Oh yes – we had Mother may I? (and Mr Crocodile (can I cross the river Nile?), Peep behind the curtain, what’s the time Mr Wolf? …) There was a special place at school that these sorts of games were played – we called it ‘the poles’ where (surprisingly enough) some metal poles held up a redundant piece of joinery between two parallel walls (the start and finish obviously). I was disappointed to find them gone when I revisited many years ago, although wonder whether it still is ‘the poles’ to the children, not knowing the origin of the name….
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It wouldn’t surprise me if they still called it that. And thanks for the explanation.
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Well, that was a thoroughly delightful read. Now I’m off to the British Library website to look at calendars. There goes my day….down the (white) rabbit hole.
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Thanks for making me laugh. And say hi to the rabbits for me when you find them.
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I think I’ll stick to the calenders we have now, thanks.
Is it bad I actually already knew how to work out when Easter will be?
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Bad? No. It’s an impressive (if, these days, pretty useless) skill.
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:)
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There was always a rush in our house to get in the first pinch and punch, which put me at a disadvantage as teenage years arrived, when the 1st fell on a weekend. It’s no fun being woken from a lie in by controlled violence! The White Rabbit is a character in Alice In Wonderland, and I wonder if Lewis Carroll borrowed him from folklore?
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Anything is possible–witness how George Washington got dragged into it.
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Maybe someone can punch Numpty Trumpty on Sunday 😉
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My computer tells me where in the week and month we are. My wife used to do this, but she retired. So it goes something like this:
Me: Are we supposed to go to church today.
Her: Ask your computer.
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Computer: I don’t go to church.
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I understand the church, in an attempt to raise money, would sell nuns gone wild calendars where actual toes were visible. England, not to be undone, sold knight of the month calendars, I understand Sir Lancelot’s was a big hit.
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Toes? Shocking.
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I learned about the “white rabbits” habit years ago – but no one else in my (admittedly) very small circle is familiar with the saying.
But pinching? Punching? I can see how the monthly ritual was abbreviated for the more delicate among us!
Thanks for fuller story!
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All credit goes to Cheryl.
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I am sure, I think, they had a reason for doing things the way they did. Have no real idea what it might of been. But thinking the sun and everything else revolves around the earth must have made things much more difficult.
Another excuse to pinch and punch in grade school. Thank would have been fun. Maybe.
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That kind of thing’s always fun, but only for the people doing the pinching and punching. (Said the spoilsport.)
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The Old Farmer’s Almanac (and maybe the other ones too) has an explanation of domenical days, and every year I try to wade through it and have no idea what it means. This explains it a bit better. Though thank goodness I don’t need to know this.
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They’re still loose in the world? I had no idea.
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Fascinating information! Made me smile. Thanks! Interesting too now that I received my DNA 🧬 ancestry results yesterday stating that I have 27% British roots in Greater London Greater Manchester & several other UK 🇬🇧 sites! Am thrilled about this especially since I began my EU travels in March 1985 by spending a cold 🥶 wet month in London & Windsor before crossing the Channel to France in April. More! SylviaSecrest@hotmail.com Cheerio
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I’ve got something on–well, it’s not a traditional tradition but a new British tradition scheduled for the end of September. Hope it’ll fill your demand. Before then, it’s smoke and sleeping arrangements in Tudor times and a few other things. Have a wonderful trip.
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Never hear the Pinch, Punch poem though we do day white rabbits on the first day of a month with the letter R in it. I always assumed that was because you could eat rabbit in those months (not that we did). Thank you for researching and sharing all these weird traditions that, as a native, I should know about – but don’t (or have forgotten – a distant memory in primary school of singing about ‘stalky bluebells’ and weaving under the upheld clasped hands of schoolmates has me traumatised because I don’t know if I made it up!).
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So the white rabbits got loose and went their own way. Clever them. I wonder if the stalky bluebells are related to the dusty bluebells that Skeent mentioned in her comment. Take a look at her comment and see if they match up, then you can be un-traumatized.
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Hmm, could be. However, by the power of Google – I found this skipping song which seems to originate in Ireland, which is much closer to North Wales:
In and out through stalky bluebells
In and out through stalky bluebells
In and out through stalky bluebells
I’ll be your master.
Pat, a pat a patter, on your shoulder
Pat, a pat a patter, on your shoulder
Pat, a pat a patter, on your shoulder
I’ll be your master.
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Whew. That says a lot about the structure of society in just a few words, doesn’t it?
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Indeed
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So what did I have to do to get my name in print at last? Easy! Just run around at midnight in the pub apinching and apunching all, including a bemused Ellen. She asked why and I said it was on olde Britishe traditione – hey presto – she was hooked and thus I get the credit for this post! Seriously though- I eagerly anticipate my regular fix of Ellenikipedia – I just so love your humour- sorry , I mean humor!
Cheers Cheryl.
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Yup, add an E to the end of a word (olde Britishe traditione) and I’m hooked. That’s all it takes. But I still can’t juggle those extra U’s.
Thanks again, Cheryl.
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very interesting information about the calendars, I had no idea it used to be so complicated. I never heard of the pinch-punch thing (in US), is this an old thing or it it still ongoing?
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It’s both old and ongoing. And I never heard of it in the US either. It’s one of the many British traditions that doesn’t seem to have crossed the water.
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I don’t want any part of pinching and punching as well as no witches or rabbits! Like on St Paddy’s Day wear green or get pinched! Better not pinch me. Thanks so much for linking up at the #UnlimitedMonthlyLinkParty 4. Shared.
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Where I went to school, no one got pinched for not wearing green on St. Paddy’s Day but I do remember noticing that kids with roughly as much Irish heritage as I can claim (which is to say, none) suddenly wore green. Somehow everyone wanted to get on the bandwagon, but only for one day.
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Very interesting!
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Thanks. And if your kids (I’m basing this on your screen name) don’t know about this, don’t tell them till they’re all 21.
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Wow! I hardly know where to start. Of course you wrote this last month, and I’m just getting around to reading it now. I was at an agricultural fair yesterday and I did see a white rabbit – goes that count? The only person close enough to pinch and punch is my wife. Pinching and punching, not advisable. I’m considering the sheer economic ruin of using perpetual calendars. I think that notion could send the markets spiraling south. I hope you’re having a good A or 6 or nones. See you again midway to the ides.
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I got dizzy toward the end of your comment–about the point where I’d have had to figure out if the was the nones or–well, you get the point–and had to stop reading for a while.
We actually do have a perpetual calendar, without all the bells and whistles and red-letter days. You write in people’s birthdays. They don’t change from year to year, they just move further into the past. It’s wonderful. But I’ve learned (a bit late for some) to write in the years the assorted kids were born, because they keep getting older and with the ones I don’t see it does make a difference.
But to your point: I really don’t recommend introducing the tradition to the States. We have enough problems with unchanneled aggression.
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Wery pertty those scany green leawes i hawe beadifull
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Apologies, I don’t understand all of that, but yes, I think they’re pretty too. They don’t stay in bloom long, but while they do they’re delicate and cheerful.
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Ellen, I always enjoy reading about never-heard-about-that-before British traditions. I really only “practice” the food and tea traditions myself. This week, shortbread and tea. https://www.delightfulrepast.com/2019/09/shortbread-petticoat-tails-masters-by.html Even though it’s too hot to run the oven, when I’m craving shortbread, it must be done. Loved your reply to the person who thought white rabbits originated with Jefferson Airplane! This is one blog where I always read all the comments!
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The comments are wonderful–including yours–and without them I don’t think I’d have kept going. If you keep the food and tea, I’d say you’ve got the heart of it.
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I’ve always wondered about the “pinch punch first of the month” thing, Ellen! It’s not a tradition I’ve adopted, and for the last 30 years living in the UK, it was one of those things I kept meaning to look up. Thank you for sharing the story behind it! I also had no idea about the medieval calendar being so very complex!
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I had no idea either until I dove down this rabbit hole. What a strange and complicated country this is.
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About the Egyptian Days, I read somewhere (may remember where, some time tomorrow) that they were first identified as unlucky by the ancient Egyptians. The source said the 28th of December was supposed to be the worst…I remember reading that shortly after the year a pet died, followed by the year we lost a major round of a major lawsuit, followed by the year another pet died, on that day, so I’ve gone through life thinking there may be something in the idea of 12.28 being especially unlucky. For everything. Even though, most years, nothing good or bad has happened on that day…
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That would burn it into your memory. I’d assumed that it had something to do with the belief at the time that the Gypsies were Egyptian, but it turns out that they didn’t arrive until the sixteenth century (I just looked that up).
I have no idea how the Egyptian calendar worked. I expect they’d have had a 28th day, but probably of a different-shaped month.
I’ll shut up now. I’ve gone far past the edge of anything I actually know.
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Fascinating. I had a friend many years ago – an attorney here in Columbia, SC – who said he and his sisters had this family game they played every month. They lived in different places as adults but on the first day of the month, each one tried to beat the other to a telephone call to say, “Rabbit.” (I don’t recall any color of the rabbit.) I asked him why they played the game, and he looked at me like I had two heads. I have no idea, he said, it’s just our game we’ve played since we were children.
Wouldn’t you be curious to know how the rabbit game made its way across the pond lo, those countless years later.
Makes me think there are really no unexplained mysteries after all.
Oh for heaven’s sake. Not really.
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I can imagine how they morph, but how they travel is beyond me. Maybe they bond to molecules in the air and travel on the winds.
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My grandmother Kathryn (in my adoptive family) was an Usher Pearson from Keswick. She used to say Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits three times on the last day of each month. One the first day she said Hare Hare Hare. How quaint. I still do it.
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The rabbits make sense now. The hares? No idea where they came from.
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I have no clue! But it’s for luck, I thought.
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The rabbits, certainly. The hares, since they seem to be part of the same tradition, I’m sure also are. Once you couple the tradition with the pinching and punching, though, it seems to have mixed luck with small-scale bullying–as in, “Hey, how can you object? I’m wishing you luck.”
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Hi! This is my first time visiting your blog. I thoroughly enjoyed your post and the delightful conversation following! I often wonder how sayings come to being, too! I didn’t know this one, but it was very interesting! Have a great day!
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Thanks for stopping by, and even more thanks for leaving a comment. The conversations that happen here are wonderful. They’re what keep me going.
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Guess you wouldn’t have to worry about missing your spouse’s birthday. No one would know when it was (or how old they were).
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I wonder if many people marked their birthdays in any way. You’re right–keeping track of them would be a nightmare. In Mexico, at least, people’s saint’s days are a big deal, and I wonder if that harks back to when you could rely on the church to keep track of that for you.
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