PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT is a cause of regret that we, who live for so many months under the pall of winter or in the harshness of a retarded spring, should possess no myth or ritual where- with to celebrate the coming of the vernal equinox. Is it that our climate is so unbalanced that, although we may count with confidence upon the fogs of Michaelmas and the darkness of the Christmas week, we can never be sure that the last days of March or the first days of April may not fling us back to January and thereby chill the festivals that we had planned? Or is the objection to a fixed and rhythmic Easter due to some unavowed apprehension lest the supreme feast of the Church might take upon itself a pagan atmosphere and recall too closely the legends of Osiris and the rest? Yet what lovely myths, what gentle ceremonies, could be associated with this week! There is the story of Tammuz, the stripling lover of the matron Ishtar, the whole Horus legend, the idyll of Persephone, the long mystery of Dionysus. Even to this day, in the gorge of the Lebanon, the river of Adonis turns to blood in the first days of April and the scarlet anemone (the anemone fulgens) scatters itself in and out of the ruins of Baalbek. Even today, in the first warm days of March, even in our English gardens, the almond blossom suggests the mystery of Attis. Yet all that we have done about it is to celebrate the occasion by All Fools day, the festival of the gowks.
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