February 1, 2019. Today’s date.

          Your first instinct is to say, “So? What significance is there in February 1, 2019?” And that is the point. There is no significance to February 1 of any year, mostly because there is no significance to February.

          Of course, I know that some of you were born during this month, so that denotes significance. I suppose someone out there was married in February, although of the couple of hundred marriages I have performed, only one was ever in February. They wanted to get married on the anniversary of their first date. There was about two feet of snow on the ground but it was 50 degrees with a southerly wind. Quite nice until the beaming couple stepped outside into the crowd expecting to get pelted with bird seed and instead got snowballed. I caught them by the arms and pulled them back inside the church and we stood at the door looking out the window as a full fledged snowball fight ensued among the guests.

          But except for a few things like that, February has really nothing much going for it. There are some contrived things. Super Bowl, but that used to be on the last Sunday in January until the NFL realized that by having a week off from the last playoff game and the Bowl, they could make more money. Presidents’ Day falls in February, but that started because both Washington and Lincoln were born in the month and February is such a crummy month, they decided to make a party. Boy, yeah, Presidents’ Day is a non-stop party at my house. Then there is the big one. Valentine’s Day. Here is a ‘holiday’ about love that is celebrated on the day St. Valentine was executed in 269 AD. And what was the scoundrel’s crime? He was performing marriages for Roman soldiers. See, Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry. Valentine was performing the marriages. So, they killed him. Unlike 21^st century America, they took their laws seriously. All the mushy stuff on Valentine’s Day is in remembrance of an execution. Then, in February, is Ground Hog Day. If the ground hog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania sees his shadow on the morning of February 2, there will be six more weeks of winter. If not, there will be an early Spring. The people in Pennsylvania, and especially the people in Punxsutawney, take this seriously, as do the people in the surrounding states. It is a huge event in Punxsutawney, where they have a keeper of the ground hog. The ground hog in question, Punxsutawney Phil, is a huge critter who gets pampered year round. They claim he is over 100 years old, but he looks like all he does is sit on the couch in his underwear all day, eating chips, drinking beer and watching TV. BIG ground hog. I think they probably get a new one every 5 years or so. Once you get away from Pennsylvania or New York or West Virginia or Ohio, though, Ground Hog Day isn’t much of a deal. In fact, I don’t think anyone else has noticed it, but as an Ohio boy, I picked up on it right away. Our church’s sausage and pancake breakfast is February 2 this year. And what is sausage? Ground up pig. So, we are having ground hog on Ground Hog Day. Maybe it was intended that way, but it is always the first Saturday of February, so it would only fall every once in a while on Ground Hog Day. Anyway, come and eat!

          Except for basketball enthusiasts, February is a downer month. (I know. I live in Indiana now. For the rest of the country, except for Kentucky and Kansas, basketball is a sport designed to bridge the gap between football and baseball seasons. In Indiana, Kentucky and Kansas, the other sports are just there to soothe the pain of not having basketball.) In the rest of the world, hockey holds center stage in February. And it is hockey, at least in part, that provides my worst memories of February.

          As I said, back in the olden days, the Super Bowl was played in January, so that was the end of football season. Baseball’s Spring Training started in February in the warm climates, but jumping jacks and wind sprints made boring reading in the newspapers. High school baseball and track training started in February, but fielding hot grounders off the gym floor or running through heavy snow was not fun. February was a bummer. None of our sports were February friendly. Even basketball was hard because you often took your life into your own hands just getting to the games. That just left one sport.

          Hockey.

          No one liked hockey. Across the horizon to the north, on the other side of Lake Erie, was Canada There, hockey was, and is, king. Where I grew up, however, it was hardly loved. Near by Cleveland had a minor league hockey team. The Barons. Nobody I knew went to watch them. I took my son to see the minor league team play a few times. He liked hockey. But, honestly, he was the only person I ever knew who grew up in Northeast Ohio who liked the sport. And he hasn’t gone in over twenty years.

          So, no one really liked hockey.

          But every year, the call would go out the first Saturday in February. “The game is at 2. See you there.” Nothing to do in February. Even the farms are pretty quiet. So, the brave male teens would begin to gather at Call Pond and at 2 o'clock the puck would be dropped.

          Why Call Pond? I don’t know. It was a mostly stagnant little pond. There was so much scum and debris in it that it took forever to freeze. By February there was ice over the whole thing, but no one ever knew how thick the ice was. I remember once about eight of us going down as we struggled for the puck, and the ice cracked and water started oozing through. We all scrambled off and went home. After all. No one wanted to be there anyway. Why were we playing hockey, a sport we didn’t like, on unsafe ice in the cold? Nothing else to do. There was none of the laughter or fooling around that teenaged boys typically engage in when they are involved in competition. It was more like when we were all in a hay field loading up the bales of hay. Didn’t want to be there, let’s wrap this up, I want to go home. But it was February and Call Pond was sort of frozen and we always played hockey.

          February is the shortest month for a reason. They could have made January and March with 30 days each instead of 31 and made February with 30 days, and it all would have worked out. But, no, as the Catholic Cardinals met way back when to design a new calendar, they decided to shorten February. After all, there is nothing much to do and hockey wasn't a thing in Rome. It is just a nasty month and deserved to be shortened.

          But we have to live through it. Psalm 118:23-24--- This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.  This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Obviously, the Lord isn’t really referencing February here, but it still fits. Make each day special and before you know it, those 28 days will be gone.

           Blessings!