h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Over here there's a saying that it will be a good rain year if the first rains of the seasons arrive after Uncle Paul's Birthday ... if the rains start too soon the idea is they will peter out soon and the rest of the season will be disappointing.

Well ... Uncle Paul's birthday was yesterday, and today we had the first rains of the season! It was just light rain today, but that's actually ideal for me because I planted the last of this season's seeds I got from Silverhill Seeds today. So now my seeds are just lightly moist rather than soggy, and if we get a bit of hot weather (the forecasts are promising) over the next few days I'm sure the germinations will start in a week or so.

Some of you may not know who Uncle Paul is. Well, he would be 189 today. It's Paul Kruger, the president of the South African Republic during the second war between the Boers and the British. He's held in esteem among the Afrikaners over here similar to George Washington in the USA. Of course, like any politician, in reality he had his faults.

I'd guessed you menat Oom Kruger, but I didn't know his birthday was a holiday.

We have a FAR more troublesome holiday here on Monday: Columbus Day. Fortunately, people either don't celebrate it, or, in some places, rename it.

Here's hoping your weather holds good.

Hi Dmitri! Naw, it's not a holiday, just a day to watch the sky for rainclouds. Anyways the next holiday coming up is controversial indeed ... 16 December, wich was always 'Geloftedag' ('Day of the Vow'). See there was this battle at Blood River, round about the time the Zulu folks decided they'd had enough of the Boers. So a small group of Boers were camped out by the river and some thousands of Zulu warriors attacked them. The Boers won. But the thing is they prayed before the attack and vowed that if they won they would dedicate the day to God, that they and their children and their children would celebrate it as a holy day. So anyways for a long time all Afrikaners saw it as a duty to keep this vow. It got politicized. The idea became that this victory was a sign that God was on the side of the Afrikaners and not on the side of the indigenous peoples. It became a day of political speeches. After Apartheid, the day kept being celebrated and made a huge fuss of especially by right-wing and conservative groups.

I stopped caring for the 'Day of the Vow' for the political reasons and also there was something fishy about the idea itself considered from a religious perspective. First Jesus himself said we shouldn't make vows. Secondly even if vows are permitted I don't see how one person can make a vow that becomes binding on another person who did not make the vow. I can't swear a vow that's binding on *you*, now can I? So how could those few Boers who had been in the battle swear a vow that becomes binding on all the other Boers and also on their children and their children and generations into perpetuity?

But of course post-apartheid the idea was a hot potato. So many Afrikaners saw the celebration as a religious duty that it was impossible to abolish, and at the same time the thing being celebrated was offensive to especially the Zulu people. So in the end the holiday was kept, but the name changed, it is now called the Day of Reconciliation. But many Afrikaners still celebrate it in the traditional way.

I suspect you and I would be in agreement with Abe Lincoln, who once remarked that it was not a question of whether God was on your side - but whether you were on God's side.