Sementivae

January always seems endless. It seems to last much longer than its 31 days. In ancient times, on 25 and 26 January, the festival called sementivae, the end of sowing, was celebrated. The end of hard work outside, in the cold, at the deepest point of winter. Then we had to wait. Stand still, hoping that the previous harvest would last until the end of winter.

Until new ears emerged from the ground. Now it’s not like that anymore, we have supermarkets, you work all the time and January might seem like another month. So why does it feel like a long one?

Maybe we still carry something behind the sementivae. After the Christmas holidays you reach the heart of winter and overcome it can be tiring.

I confess that in fact January is a month that I always liked. Maybe because it is my birthday but also because of its characteristic length. It encourages you to wait, to stand still and let go of the thoughts, the deepest ones, those that you show to few. Cold outside, warm inside waiting for the February buoy. It may seem like a tough moment, but in the days that begin to lengthen, hope is found.

In a time when I was writing on my birthday card, a friend wrote: “Resist, spring always comes”. Those words stuck in my mind. I like both: the resistance and the spring. Weather resistance whether they are called snow or whether they are called Trump. Spring, whether it is the scent of flowers or a new way of thinking about the world. So we wait, think, look at the fire in the fireplace and the days that get longer because spring always comes back to tell us that the new comes anyway.

Gioia Piazzi