For a government proclaiming liberté and égalité, the calendar was a glaring insult to fellow citizens scattered among France’s holdings as far afield as Haiti and Mauritius. Nivôse may have drawn light-hearted mockery in the French Mediterranean, but in the overseas territories, the calendar was downright chauvinistic. Even more problematic was a glaring bias toward the region in and around Paris. The new names didn't evoke positive images for everyone. When the rival British wrote their own translation of Fabre’s new names-“Messrs. Slippy, Drippy, Nippy, Showery, Flowery, Bowery, Hoppy, Croppy, Poppy, Wheezy, Sneezy, and Freezy”-they were unmistakably poking fun at his creations. The months of the other seasons were given names like Messidor (from the Latin messis, meaning grain harvest), Vendémiaire (from an old Occitan word associated with the vineyard harvest), and Nivôse (drawing on the Latin nivosus, meaning snowy). Spring arrived with Germinal, a name that calls to mind sprouts, buds, and the germination of plant life. Painter Louis Lafitte was commissioned to provide illustrations for each month, and they beautifully display the pastoral symbols and themes. Each season was subdivided into three months, and Fabre played on French and Latin roots to coin new names that evoked each month’s moment in the natural cycle. The 12 months were re-aligned to the year's natural intervals-the solstices and equinoxes (hence the arrival of spring ushering in a new month). the truth of nature.”Ī self-professed nature-lover, Fabre longed to bring France back to her agricultural roots, and he drew inspiration from natural and rural life for the new calendar.
Revealing his revisions to the French National Convention that year, the poet presented the new calendar as “substituting for visions of ignorance the realities of reason, and for the sacred. In 1793, after the revolutionaries rejiggered the calendar into 36 décades, or 10-day weeks (and 5 or 6 Sansculottides to keep the calendar in line with the sun), poet Philippe Fabre d’Eglantine was tasked with revising the names and designations of the Gregorian calendar for the French Republic. During this era, the metric system and a decimal clock were introduced as more rational, symmetrical measures befitting a new era of progress.
Those newly in power methodically stripped away the relics of France’s ancien régime and sought ways to modernize. If you happened to live during the heady days of the French revolution, today would also mark the start of a spring month: Happy first day of Germinal!įollowing the unseating of the French monarchy and the institution of the French Republic in 1792, cultural revisionism was all the rage. As snows begin to trickle away and green slowly reappears, spring brings with it the perennial promise of longer, warmer days.
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