The Ides of March in the year 44 was a bummer, at least for one Senator.
Interestingly, the next day was probably the date set for Bacchanalia. Probably a somber one that year.

But today is the Ides of December and the year 44 is 2044 years in the past, or perhaps 2043.

Mithras’ birthday is now ten days away. A day now celebrated by his adversaries as that of their own divinity. Poor Mithras, most of his attributes appropriated by the once-almost-Hebrew-king.

Siddhartha’s birthday is not as easily defined although it’s said to fall in the late spring.

Mithras, now faded into myth, perhaps joining Isis, once his rival, there. And Rome? Rome is gone but still here, the village on the Tiber grown to Empire, shrunk to parish and now? Rome. Now what?

An idea and a city and a sheath for the Vatican. The Vatican, interestingly once Caligula’s playground.

The Ides of December. I wonder what Gaius did on that date during late 45 when years counted down instead of up, although those living then were not aware of that oddity.

Of course, neither were those who lived in the temporal vacuum at the turn of that millennium.

Yeshua ben Miriam (or ben Yosef, or ben Adonai) would have been about four then. He’d probably been told he’d been born in the spring with the other lambs.

I wonder if he’d have been surprised that his birth was to be transposed to coincide with Saturnalia.

But I guess Bacchanalia was not really more appropriate, although there was the connection with wine, and of course, with bodies.

Come to think of it, it’s almost Saturnalia now.

Time for masters and slaves to trade places and for chastity to be set aside. Interesting that Chanukah and Saturnalia sometimes coincide. And that Saturnalia ends just in time for Christmas to start.

Ides and Nones and Kalends, where are they now?

Perhaps somewhere in time with Mithras and Isis and sox and handkerchiefs that mysteriously disappear through that interdimensional, intertemporal portal we refer to as a washing machine (or is it the dryer).

Hmmm, Saturnalia. Is it possible we misinterpret what Santa is bellowing when he says “Ho ho ho?

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2020; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.