On Tuesday

*insert famous quotation about Tuesday*: I got nuthin'....

Happy Tuesday!

Feliz Martes!

Tuesday has always been a particularly interesting day to me.  For one thing, it follows Monday, directly.  All that hatred and angst you see poured out toward the first official workday of the workweek makes Tuesday seem silent, staid, and almost happy by comparison.  It's like people are saying, "It's still a long time till Friday, but at least it's not Monday," or the shorter version of that, "Meh."

Meh, indeed.

It's interesting to put the origins of the names of the days of the week up alongside the origins of the names of the months of the year.  At least, it's as interesting as stuff tends to get on a Tuesday.  Monday, of course, is the Moon's day.  Tuesday is Tyr's day.  Wednesday, of course, belongs to Odin.  Thursday is named after Thor, and as I've already discussed, Friday is named for Freya or Frigga, depending upon whether you ask the Germanics or the Britons.  Finishing out the wonderful time with the awesome weekend, you have the days belonging to Saturn, the chief of the pantheon, and the Sun.

As months go, well, I'll spare you the long list.  Suffice it to say that there isn't a month named after the Sun, the Moon, Odin, Thor, Freya, Frigga, or Saturn.  They're all named after other deities, emperors, or things.

Except, of course, for March.  Which is, incidentally, named after Mars, the God of War.  And yes, the God of War in the northern pantheons is Tyr, after whom Tyr's day (or Tuesday) is named in English.  Note the Mars root in the Latin-family language names for Tuesday, incidentally.  So there--one god gets both a month and a day named after him, and of course he's the ole' war god.

So that's why elections in the U.S. being held on Tuesday seems so fitting, honestly.  It's not why they're held that day, of course.  In olden days, it sometimes took people an entire day to travel to their polling locations (and yet, they still voted) and nobody wanted to require people to start a long journey on the Lord's Day.  If they waited till Monday, though, they could be there by Tuesday to vote.  The God of War's day, it was, then.

Ah, Tuesday.

- TOSK