Today is Candlemas.
Forty days after Christmas. It’s rare that it comes on a Sunday, the last one was in- 2003? I think?
Anyway, candlemas, groundhog day, stupor bowl, feast of St Blaise. That’s a messed up combination.
The forty day thing has always been a sort of a mystery to me, the Creator keeps putting us to tests that last 40 days. Why? That’s one of the questions I will ask if I ever get to meet the big guy in person.
Limits of survival with out assistance. Or at least that is my take on it. You mileage might vary, lol.
The Hebrew letter mem has a value of 40. It is the first letter of the word mayim, water. 40 days/nights of rain.
Otherwise I got nuthin’.
More than I got! And interesting information, indeed!
It is a cross quarter day.
There are the quarter days (first day of winter, first day of summer, the equinoxes fall and spring).
The cross quarter days are halfway between the quarters–Groundhog day, May day, and Halloween. There is one in August too but I am too lazy to look it up.
Back before clocks and calendars it was a way to have a party every six weeks.
Oh, my Lord. Dylan did a Chrysler commercial.
That sound you hear is the clip clopping of the hooves if four horses.
Personally I think the use of 40 in the Noah story was nothing more than a mnemonic for the storyteller. If he remembered that the letter mem equalled 40, he would never forget how many days and nights the flood lasted.
40 years in the desert was probably just a riff on that. In addition, a man was a full adult in the prime of his faculties and abilities at 40, he was probably at the end of his (normal) lifespan at ~80, and 120 was considered the “perfect” lifespan (Moses). All multiples of 40.
Remember that all this stuff was originally oral history. It didn’t get written down and codified until Ezra, during the Babylonian Exile. They needed this kind of crap to remember all that junk that was stuffed into their heads to tell around the campfires at night. :) The mystical bullshit we call gematria and kabbalah didn’t come along until a very long time after and were nothing more than a con when they were thunk up. IMHOYMMV.