Book of Days

Most all of these Convivio Book of Days chapters come to you from a small wooden cottage built in 1949 in Lake Worth, Florida. Lake Worth has had numerous slogans over the years, but one of the earliest was this one: Where summer spends winter. This is a town that knows summer. Even our coldest months of the year are filled with days that will remind any northerner of a beautiful summer’s day back home. It’s a tough life, I know. But we pay for it dearly each summer with heat and humidity like you wouldn’t believe. It’s not unbearable, but it does take some getting used to. A Florida summer is not for the faint of heart.

There was one summer many years ago that found a car with Alaska plates parked on North Palmway, one of the neighborhood roads. I drove by that car every day after work, and each time I did, I thought of the person who drove it here from Alaska, and I wondered how they were faring. Was it the poor soul’s first summer here? Were they drinking enough water? Were they languishing in bed each morning as the thick, almost liquid summer air poured into their lungs? Did they dream of moose and white pine?

Yesterday, as I began writing this, it was a hot one. It is mid May and summer is gaining its foothold here in this strange green land. And yet we come now to a few days devoted to a group of saints who are known as the Ice Saints, or in German (for this is a legend of Northern Europe) as die Eisheiligen. They are Saints Mamertus, Pancras, Servatius, Boniface, and Sophia, their ringleader. Their feast days begin about now: on May 11th for St. Mamertus, and they continue on this week, each saint to his or her day, through to St. Sophia on the 15th. She is known in Germany as Kalte Sophie: Cold Sophie. In Central Europe, particularly Slovenia, you might hear her called Poscana Zofka… Pissing Sophie, for there, she is associated with rain. The days of Cold Sophie and the Ice Saints are traditional weather markers, and it is a fool indeed who would plant crops before Cold Sophie had time enough to wend her way through the land. She represents winter’s last hurrah, and even if it’s been warm and summery, tradition warns of a blast of cold air from the North at this time of May.

And there seems to be some truth to this. It may have been a hot one here in Lake Worth yesterday (and probably will be today), but we have just come out of a spell of amazingly beautiful weather. It rained cats and dogs last Thursday, and on Friday, we awoke to an azure sky, not a cloud to be seen, with temperatures in that absolutely perfect range where the sun is warm but the air is cool and dry. It was downright chilly at night. This lasted for days, up until just the day before yesterday. It was, I’d say, an early brush with Cold Sophie and the Ice Saints. It’s not very likely they’ll be back, not until our Lake Worth summer has played out. But it was lovely while it lasted.

Image: “Very Cold at Paris,” a hand-colored etching by an anonymous engraver, published by R. Ackermann, March 1, 1806. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

If you’ve been following the Convivio Book of Days for any length of time, you know how much we love a good old obscure holiday. Well, it’s mid May and here comes another one: it’s the feast day of St. Sophia. Chances are good you’ve never heard of her. She was an early Christian martyr in Rome, other than dying for her faith, not much else, after all these centuries, is known about her life. Her feast day, however, is known to bring the last of winter’s cold breath to Northern Europe, and the day there, especially in Germany, is known as Kalte Sophie, Cold Sophie.

Sophia is one of the Ice Saints, die eisheiligen. They arrive in May, a troupe of them, one for each day beginning on the 11th: Saints Mamertus, Pancras, Servatius, Boniface, and finally Sophia, today on the 15th. She is the last of them, but she is the grand dame of them, and no wise farmer or gardener will plant cold sensitive crops until after Cold Sophie has passed.

So if you should wake on this mid May morning and find a chill in the air, now you know why. It is the work of Cold Sophie and her Ice Saints, offering winter’s last hurrah before the gentler months of summer firmly stand their ground. Until of course the planet’s constant rearrange allows their return once again. The only thing that stays the same is change.

Image: Windy Night by Reene. Scratchboard, 2005, [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

If you need that heavy sweater once more, blame it on Sophie. May 15 is the day of Cold Sophie, a bit of old weather folklore from Northern Europe and especially Germany. Cold Sophie is usually winter’s last hurrah, sending a blast of cold icy air down from the North. Summer may be a-comin’ in, but Cold Sophie will remind you of winter’s power as she says farewell for a while with a kindly reminder: “I’ll be back. Don’t get too comfortable.”

Cold Sophie is Saint Sophia, and she is but one of a group of saints known in Germany as die Eisheiligen, or the Ice Saints. The Ice Saints are Saints Mamertus, Pancras, Servatius, Boniface, and Sophia, and their feast days begin on the 11th of May with St. Mamertus and continue on to St. Sophia on the 15th. It is a time of traditionally colder weather in Northern Europe, and anyone who planted their gardens ahead of Cold Sophie was thought to be a fool indeed, for Cold Sophie’s cold damp days would quickly do in all efforts of any and all overly-ambitious gardeners with a solid reminder of who is in charge. Cold Sophie returns each mid May to gently keep us in our place and help us keep in mind that all we do is in partnership with the planet and its elements.

So, considering saints all begin as everyday joes like you and me, who were these folks? St. Mamertus (May 11) was a fifth century bishop in France. His diocese was much afflicted by catastrophes, ranging from fires to earthquakes, and his regimen of fasting and prayer is thought to have delivered the region from its ill fate. St. Pancras (May 12) was a fourth century martyr of Rome, beheaded at the very young age of only 14 and so he is a patron saint of children. St. Servatius (May 13) is the patron saint of the city of Maastricht in the Netherlands, where he died as bishop in 384. His relics are kept there in the Basilica of St. Servatius in a gilded chest that is processed through the city once every seven years. St. Boniface of Tarsus (May 14) was a fourth century Roman martyr, a slave tossed into a cauldron of boiling tar. Boniface, however, was dropped from the calendar of saints for possibly not having actually existed. But it’s tough to keep a good legend down.

And finally we have St. Sophia herself (May 15), the ring leader of all the Ice Saints. Little is known of her life, but she, too, was a martyr of the early Christian movement in Rome. One of her attributes is a book, which, as a book artist myself, I rather like. She goes by many names: Cold Sophie in Germany and Poland, but amongst the Czechs she is known as Sophia the Ice Woman, and in Slovenia, Pissing Sophie. (I have no explanation, sorry. Any Slovenians care to chime in?)

The Ice Saints do not hold much sway here in Lake Worth. Once summer makes its presence known here, it tends to stay put and that is pretty much that, and we won’t be counting on another blast of cold weather until autumn returns, which is quite all right; this is as it should be. But if we should wake up on the 15th of May and find the temperature even just a few degrees cooler than normal, we can nod to the breeze and thank Cold Sophie.

Image: Four ice crystals photographed by William “Snowflake” Bentley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bentley was a Vermont photographer who captured thousands of snowflakes on film. Still, he lamented missing the billions of snowflakes he never got to photograph.