IF YOU lose your shirt at Leopardstown or Limerick tomorrow, there may be something to blame other than the horses, writes Frank McNally
December 28th is, or at least it used to be, the unluckiest day of the year, bar none. Any undertaking begun on the date was sure either not be finished or to go horribly wrong. Weddings were especially to be avoided. But so were most activities.
Fishermen did not leave port; fields were not tilled; farm animals were given a day off. Even housework was abandoned for 24 hours, with washing and scrubbing of any kind considered particularly dangerous.
An illustration of both the age and extent of the custom occurs in the writings of one Sir John Melton, who in 1620 noted "that it is not good to put on a new sute, pare ones nailes, or begin any thing on a Childermas day".
And there was the reason. Because Childermas is one of several names applied to the "Day of the Holy Innocents" when, alarmed by the visit of the Three Wise Men, King Herod is said to have ordered the slaughter of every male child under two in Bethlehem and the surrounding lands.
This supposed event was the source of December 28th's long infamy and, as such, the inspiration of many great works of art. But even allowing that the dates given to the Christmas festival are anything other than arbitrary, it almost certainly didn't happen.
The historical King Herod was by all accounts cruel. He murdered at least one of his 10 wives, her teenage brother, and three of his own sons, for real or imagined conspiracies against him. And his cruelty vied with vanity. Advance arrangements to mark his own death included an order (subsequently disobeyed) for the arrest and massacre of leading Judaeans as part of the obsequies.
Popular hatred of Herod probably coloured the account of his final illness - which, according to the biographer Josephus, included convulsions, an uncontrollable appetite, internal burning, an ulcerated colon, swelling of the feet, putrefied genitals, and horrendously bad breath.
Not all this may have happened either. An article in the latest issue of National Geographic (mainly about his outstanding legacy as an architect) notes that generations of scholars have struggled to identify Herod's actual medical condition from these symptoms, with possibilities ranging from syphilis to chronic kidney disease complicated by "Fournier's gangrene". But it concludes that, probably, his most serious problem was a hostile biographer.
In any case, while it may not have been beyond him to massacre innocents, historians have found no record of the event except in Matthew's Gospel and so consider it apocryphal.
Nevertheless, the tradition has spawned some bizarre rituals - none more bizarre than ceremonial whipping. According to Brewer's Dictionary, it used to be the custom on Childermas to whip children (and even adults), "that the memory of Herod's murder of the Innocents might stick the closer". The practice features widely in the Decameron, Boccaccio's collection of 100 stories set in Florence during the Black Death.
But, not surprisingly, the custom of thrashing children has not survived into the modern celebration of Christmas. A more pleasant vestige has done, at least in Spain and Latin America. There, December 28th substitutes for our April 1st, with the Day of the Innocents giving people licence to play practical jokes, or inocentadas, on each other.
Newspapers get in on the act too, making up stories to gull readers - which of course also happens here on April Fool's Day. But news editors who draw the short straw of working the first weekend after Christmas will appreciate the superior timing of the Spanish custom.
As journalists know well, other people's bad luck is a staple of the profession. If December 28th really were as ill-starred as folklore suggests, newspapers published around this time would be a lot fatter than they usually are. Instead, with everything from the Government to the stock markets on holiday, the day has a much higher than average chance of passing without incident.
There have been a few notable exceptions, chief among them December 28th, 1879, when a railway bridge in Scotland collapsed as a train passed over. The Tay Bridge Disaster was a human tragedy in its own right. But if anything, the misfortune was added to when it inspired a poem by the notorious William McGonigall, a man whose talent was obvious to him alone. Of the many works of art given to us directly or indirectly by the Day of the Innocents, this is surely the worst.
Here is its final flourish, a piece of useless advice to the engineers: "I must now conclude my lay/ By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,/ That your central girders would not have given way,/ At least many sensible men do say,/ Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,/ At least many sensible men confesses,/ For the stronger we our houses do build,/ The less chance we have of being killed."
As the verse implies, this poem is one December 28th enterprise (in a manner of speaking) that was at least seen through to a conclusion. But by the common consent of poetry lovers everywhere, it did go horribly wrong.
fmcnally@irishtimes.com