Solar Hijri

The high symbol of this season of Lent is the commemoration of the “Triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem” on a donkey, a sandaled carpenter of the House of David riding. Loud Hosanna is the order of the day, more so as the leaders of the Synagogue expected a rebel to liberate them from the clutches of Rome.

It was a bitter disappointment that the elder rebel from Galilee (life expectancy then averaged 34) hung at 33 on a cross on Friday. Whether the accounts of the Gospels were accurate (there were many literary accounts, 56 gospels was the academic count when I was at Seminary), authoritative by Church Councils’ decisions in the fourth century, the religious drama was well crafted and impressive in scope, from the waving of the palm leaves to the empty tomb, and later, the ascension into heaven.

This is first day of the year in the Solar Hijri, aka Shamal Hijri, the calendar of Iran and Afghanistan and the Islamic world that always begins with the vernal equinox. Pope Gregory decided that the birth of the Infant Jesus started the Christian calendar, which dominated Europe. Imperials sailed across the Mediterranean to the open seas in search of spice and colonized the world, but now we ask for relevance as the seasons of the northern hemisphere was imposed on the rest of the planet including the tropics.

We snicker at Aussies starting their summer in December, dreaming of physiological White Christmas; when snow falls in Tazmania, it happens in July, and the white fluff in Kiwi’s Dunedin is so rare that it gets memorialized when it happens. Nevertheless, the Aussies’ calendar is just as valid as the commercial one imposed on the tropics; we recognize the European four seasons though the only cold that 99 percent of the population encounter are at the corner grocery store freezers where the meat and seafood are stored, and the refrigeration that keeps the beer cold.

I have a global map on my wall that looks at the world from the 23rd degree latitude N, a perspective common to those who use the Mercator North Pole projection dominating the West until the ’70s when the Africans pointed out that the map made the USSR, when it was still intact, look bigger than the African continent. Area land mass was accounted for by the Peter’s projection but then, it also developed other distortions.

A good check on any map is whether Ecuador in South America is at the middle section of the map; if it is about two-thirds south, the map focused on the northern hemisphere like the old Mercator projection.

This is where perspective influenced behavior. The European racial superiority stems from the Aryans (Iranians) who came into Europe from the Caucasus that became the royals, and those who headed for India to became the Brahmin of the Asian Caste System.

The movie star Meryl Streep not too long ago got in trouble for saying that DNA-wise, we emerged from Africa, the variable being only 3 percent and mostly on the melanin that determines the color of the skin to adopt to the solar impact on any group headed in any given direction. The skin part is scientifically contested, but the DNA make-up is now standard Science: all of us came from Africa!

It is from the vernal equinox that Christians peg their Easter. The season of Lent since Augustine shivered with guilt over his wayward youth, created a lasting explanation of why that was the case. We are born defective by virtue of “original sin” infected by the transgressions of original parents in the Garden of Eden. We all needed to be restored from this victim’s story through the salvific act of the man on the cross, and that’s why we call Friday Good.

That is now enshrined in the Gregorian calendar. But without the dark perspective of the Monastics, the Solar Hijri celebrates 13 days of revelry before the stellar constellations in the West (Aries to Pisces). Animals inhabit the Zodiac in the East (the Monkey prances this year).

We will stick with the predominant Christian symbol system of the islands. Traditions who followed the Solar Hijri hold this day as a holiday but China in the later part of the Qing dynasty succumbed to the influence of the British and their allies that followed the Gregorian calendar. The influence of the Prophets Hijra in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Indochina come to mind but they followed their colonizer’s calendar. India, too. The Philippines? We make the sign of the cross. I kneejerk on that tradition, though I now journey on earthrise consciousness.

The medieval monastics fasted on Lent, downing their brew for the cellulose. At SMU’s School of Theology, we asked if Jesus at the Last Supper poured wine or just grape juice. Duh! Middle East folks get carbohydrates fermented or brewed, but the Temperance movement forbade wine in America, so ending this telling, I grabbed a San Mig but when I got to my third, it was time for a nap.

In the real solar calendar, today is the first day of your life. Live. Or, in my case, nap!