Why do your people have seasons?

[channlluv]

And by "your people," I mean regionally and ethnically. I'm working on a book proposal about why we have seasons and I'm looking for myths and legends about why the weather changes seasonally, like from Persephone eating those six pomegranate seeds.

I'm looking for any story about changing seasons. I am hopeful that because our members here are from all over the world, you all might have some really good stories. Norway? Australia? Singapore? Canada?

If you have an academic reference for the story, too, all the better.

And yes, I've got the scientific explanation okay.

Thank you!

Roxy

[zoom-zoom]

Hmm...because I live in the upper midwest where there really are 4 well-defined seasons. Winter is pretty much the longest (from measurable snow to measurable snow it's generally a solid 5 months...this past Winter was easily a 6 month season. I was about ready to start shooting) and very VERY gray, here (Lake MI gives us near constant lake-effect clouds). Spring is wet and cool, Summer is sunny, warm and humid, Fall is cool and colorful. Our temperature spread from coldest to warmest is easily 100º.

I think if I lived in an area without snowfall or months of cloud cover (FL and the Southwest come to mind) that seasons might seem a bit less dramatically defined.

[tangentgirl]

Cool, Roxy! I don't have any season stories from you, but your post got me thinking...are there any Native American season stories from California, where we don't have seasons to the degree that other places do? Is the perception of four seasons the same around the world?

[KnottedYet]

"My people" haven't had myths nor legends about what causes seasons for hundreds of years.

The earth has a tilt, the sun shines more directly or less depending on orientation = seasons.

[Trek420]

...are there any Native American season stories from California, where we don't have seasons to the degree that other places do? Is the perception of four seasons the same around the world?

My people don't have stories either.

But of course there are stories from the CA Native Americans Not just stories but a lot of knowledge.

I'm reading "The Ohlone Way" and "The Way We Lived" for an drawing I'm working on. We don't have seasons in terms of extreme weather in the coastal part of sunny CA but we sure have seasons of differences in weather, when plants bloom and seed. If you do some research you will find the Ohlone (who are not one tribe but a group of them more or less) lived in such great harmony with the earth and each other in abundance that they knew exactly when to harvest this or that.

There's a lot of variation through the year, not just if it snows or not. Seasons also meant knowing exactly when to harvest wild grains, acorns, a host of plants and food.

An incredible culture until certain people (us ahem) arrived and just ruined it all.

[Crankin]

I would tend to answer like Knotted Yet... we have seasons here in New England because of the tilt of the sun. It has nothing to do with myths or legends. I'm pretty un-myth like when it comes to thinking about these things, so...
I know some cultures have traditions that have to do with the change of seasons, but I have never heard of anything about something that causes the seasons.

[lph]

Hmm, I'd be hard put to give you any good stories that a book on norse mythology wouldn't give you. But I'll bet the Sami people have some interesting myths, they are the native people of Scandinavia.

But we most certainly have seasons, and very distinct ones. I live near the Gulf Stream and far south in Norway, so winters aren't by far as harsh as some of you might imagine, but further inland they have truly brutal winter cold. Likewise the inland areas can have very hot summers, they just don't last very long. Oslo has snaps of hot weather (which we define as around 30 deg C) but they last at most for two weeks at a time. We have lots and lots of water, though. Not really that it rains that much, but when I travel abroad it always strikes me how dry so many other places are. The landscape here just about never runs out of water, so vegetation is soft, not spiky, and almost always green. We get loads of snow in winter, and it can last until May.

That was a digression. Only myth I can think of connected to the weather at the moment is "kakelinna", the "cake mildness". (Mild weather here means temperate winter weather, like just below or around freezing). Kakelinna denotes the mild, foggy weather we often get between Christmas and New Year's, and supposed to be caused by all the housewives baking the traditional 7 types of Christmas cookies.

We have a gazillion words for snow, though.

[lph]

Not regular seasons, but still: in Norse mythology the world will end (the gods will die, the earth will burn, the sun will be swallowed, the Fenris wolf and Midgard serpent will run around being obnoxious) with Ragnarok, the final great battle. Ragnarok is heralded by the fimbul winter (or great winter), three harsh winters in a row with no summer between.

But then it all starts over again.

[channlluv]

Cool, Roxy! I don't have any season stories from you, but your post got me thinking...are there any Native American season stories from California, where we don't have seasons to the degree that other places do? Is the perception of four seasons the same around the world?

Exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about and why I'm writing this book proposal. I think it would be interesting to juxtapose the actual science against the regional mythology about seasons.



Roxy

[channlluv]

Only myth I can think of connected to the weather at the moment is "kakelinna", the "cake mildness". (Mild weather here means temperate winter weather, like just below or around freezing). Kakelinna denotes the mild, foggy weather we often get between Christmas and New Year's, and supposed to be caused by all the housewives baking the traditional 7 types of Christmas cookies.

We have a gazillion words for snow, though.

This is the exact kind of thing I'm looking for, lph, thank you! And your story about the "cake mildness" -- that's excellent. Thank you!

Trek, are there any stories in that book about what or who the Ohlone thought caused the different harvesting seasons, and what did they call the seasons?

My purpose here is to explore the cultural narrative behind a scientific phenomena everyone on the planet experiences to one degree or another. The science will be explained, too. No worries.

I got this idea when the science teacher at the elementary school walked into the library one day continuing a conversation she'd just been having with someone else about the seasons and asked me, "You know why we have seasons, right?" And without missing a beat, I said, "Because Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds in Hades." It threw her off for a moment and we all had a laugh, but it made me wonder about the season myths from around the world. (And yes, I knew it was because the earth tilts. I didn't know it was at 23.5 degrees, though.)

I write children's books. I don't know if you all knew that. To make a book of weather myths, though, I need a lot of them, which is why I turned to you all. TE is a part of my personal narrative.

Thank you for sharing your stories!

Roxy

[Trek420]

Trek, are there any stories in that book about what or who the Ohlone thought caused the different harvesting seasons, and what did they call the seasons?

Both books are here, find them at your local indy book store

http://heydaybooks.com/book/the-ohlo...ndian-life-in/

[tytbody]

i'm not sure about your title. Kinda bothers me. I think because I worked in a place where there was this woman that would always say *your people*. I'm like, *what is... Your People.*. You may not have intended this to cause riffling of feathers, but I'm just saying. I don't like it. I'm not of the main races and when I see words like that, it doesn't feel so good.

So, I believe we all have seasons. I believe people have seasons also even if they don't live where the seasons change. We as women, have seasons, every month.

[redrhodie]

I wish I could remember some related Russian Folklore.

Baba Yaga would eat small children. I remember that! I feel like there was a story where someone's tears became rain or snow, but it's so vague. It could also be something from Grimm or Aesop, if I'm not just making it up.

Oh, and I think Roxy is referring to your culture or heritage in an anthropological way. We all have people.

[alexis_the_tiny]

Interesting. In Singapore, we have seasons because...well, there are the monsoons and then our neighboring countries burn forests and give us hot weather and the haze or its the other way around, I'm never sure.

Nonsense aside, we have two seasons: blazingly hot or storms. I remember my grandmother singing a song in our dialect to me, it was about the rain and someone's grandparents running into the house and somehow, the rain, thunder and lightning were all the work of some gods. I can remember two lines of it, but no one else seems to remember the song. It'll be really interesting to ask some of the older folks here and see if there are any good stories, though.

[Trek420]

I see words like that, it doesn't feel so good.

+1. I hope that's not the title of the book I've learned in my work that any conversation that begins "You people ...." is going to get real bad real fast It hints some huge generalization is going to follow.

Plus who are "my people"? Many of us are blended somehow. I'm Jewish and that is very important to me. Also I'm both Russian and Polish. My sister's Norwegian, one niece lives in Wales now, another lives here with her partner and two amazing beautiful "toddlers of color"

So when I'm in the supermarket "ethnic food" aisle exactly what is the food of "my people" ? For many of us it's a mix.