Morule [Undecimber] – the 13th Month

Morule [Undecimber] – the 13th Month

Traditionally, Batswana used “leap years” to retain alignment of their months to seasonal markers. These leap years were somewhat different from what we use today, because they involved the addition of an entire intercalary month, rather than the intercalary day (February 29) that we are all so familiar with. Morule is the 13th (intercalary) month of the Tswana calendar.

Batswana, like most of the peoples of Southern Africa traditionally used the moon cycle to determine their months, together with the seasonal rotation of the sun as a guide for the identification of years. Some people then therefore say that this means our people originally used lunar calendars, while others argue that these were in fact lunisolar. However, one would note that purely lunar calendars (like the Islamic Calendar) totally ignore seasonal markers.

Whatever the case, since there is a disparity between the period of the rotation of the moon and that of the Earth around the sun, it is therefore not possible to have a year period that can easily be defined using both the moon and the sun. This is because the moon rotation is between 29 and 30 days, while the Earth’s rotation around the sun is just over 365 days. As such, if you divide the year into 12 lunar months, you get about 5 to 10 days left over.

The problem with these remaining 5-10 days is that cumulatively, they cause disalignment of the months with seasonal markers, as this means that effectively about one week every year goes unaccounted for. This means that every 6 to 12 years, the seasons would be in total reverse (based on the months); e.g. the start of the summer season (Lwetse), which occurs around September, would have moved all the way to March. This is the case with the Islamic Calendar – which is why Ramadan, for instance can be in mid-summer, but years later, occurs in colder months.

This was a common problem in many human societies, and different peoples introduced different ways of handling it.  In some cultures, these five days are just added at the end of the year, as what they call an intercalary month. Ancient Egyptians were known for such as approach, where the remaining five “epagomenal days” were associated with mystical powers (and there are some people who still hold these beliefs even today).

One of the more modern approaches, which is particularly similar to the “13th month” approach, is the use of the seemingly proverbial “blue moon”. The blue moon idiom actually owes its existence to 16th century publication by English friars, William Roy and Jerome Barlow, but has somehow gotten intertwined with the concept of the intercalary month, and got to be used to mean just that.

The intercalary month, although assigned differently in different cultures, is basically the introduction of a 13th month after several years, to help realign seasons with months that supposedly belong within them. Societies with a more robust and advanced penchant for astronomy were able to deduce what is known as the Metonic cycle – basically that the moon cycle just about repeats every 19 years – and have used this to guide their placements of their intercalary months.
The Jewish Calendar uses this approach, and this ensures that the date for Passover (Christian Easter holidays) remains at the same time of the year, every year. Although the exact date changes every year, the holiday always occurs within the same 29-day (moon cycle) period.

In the old Julian Calendar (which was the predecessor of the Gregorian Calendar that we use now), the 13th, or intercalary, month was known in Latin as Undecimber. The name Undecimber is still used for this purpose (although it has often been misspelt as Undecember – which seems to mean “the opposite of December”). Morule is Undecimber in Setswana.

The placement of Morule in the year was even further complicated by the fact that the Gregorian calendar that Batswana later adopted, places what was their first month of the year (Lwetse/September) as the ninth. This then therefore means that although Morule is technically the 13th month, and is supposed to come after Phatwe/August (which is only the 8th month in the Gregorian rendering), it has no other place except to be placed after December. However, there is no slot for Morule, as the Gregorian Calendar only accommodates 12 months, and as such the name is then used interchangeably with Sedimonthole for December.

Sedimonthole is the “12th month”, while Morule is “the last month”, and since these two statements appear to mean the same thing, logically Sedimonthole is therefore Morule.

One other thing, Morule gets its name from “morula” (which is Botswana’s national tree), because of the abundance of the morula [marula in English] fruits at the time.

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