Spring, a season for love?

Spring is my favorite season; the world around us comes back to life. Today, I walked in the neighborhood where shrubs and trees still have that lifeless winter look. But look closer, and you see all kinds of details, like the buds on trees. Most of all, I enjoyed the flowers that are popping up everywhere. And each day shows more color than the day before. Combine this with the blue skies and bright sunlight that warms your skin, and I know what my favorite season is.

I am not alone. Gallup, constantly feeling the Americans' pulse, found in 2005 that spring is the most popular season. 36% of Americans prefer spring, followed by 27% that named fall as their favorite season, 25% summer, and 11% winter. And it is consistent; spring was also the winner in 1947 and 1960. 

Will summer become less popular?

I wonder what will happen in the decades to come. Will more and more people associate summer with climate-related disasters like heat waves and wildfires? And will winter become more popular as the time to cool off? The poll results in a place like Phoenix, Arizona, might be interesting in this aspect, but I don't have those data for you. 

Like any Gallup poll, it is always fun to read and compare the findings with your own opinions. This study is 16 years old, but still, it is interesting to see which days of the week are the most popular (you guessed that one right: Friday and the weekend) and that Monday is the least popular. It also splits the findings out per age group. 

I remember years ago having read a somewhat related study that had found out that, if I remember correctly, the best moment to ask your boss for a wage rise is Tuesday afternoon. And you should wait until Wednesday afternoon if you want to discuss your holiday plans. But this was all in pre-covid times when you had to walk into your boss's office at the right moment.

These are crocuses I found in Ottawa. It was where I found my tiny first flower of the year.

Hebban olla uogala

It is not just in the modern time that we enjoy spring so much and get inspired by nature coming back to life. One of the oldest poems in Old Dutch is an 11th-century text fragment discovered in 1932 on the flyleaf of a manuscript kept in Oxford. The text was probably just scribbled down by the writer, testing his sharpened quill. It may have been a monk from Flanders who wrote something that just came to mind. 

Experts have transcribed the text as:

Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu uuat unbidan uue nu. 

We know what it means since it is a translation from a Latin sentence written above it:

"Have all birds begun nests, except me and you - what are we waiting for?" 

Imagine springtime, nearly a thousand years ago, when the first flowers bloomed and birds sang. Looking through an open window, a monk admired the beauty of that moment. He got distracted by his work and scribbled words about building a family. Was he in love? Who was in his mind? Or could it have been 'her' mind? Perhaps that was unlikely at the time, but who am I to judge. A professor at Utrecht University has concluded that the fragment was probably written by a woman or from a female perspective. We will never know. But if a late 11th-century Gallup poll would have asked the writer to name his -or her- favorite season, it would have been spring. 

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