Ante Diem IV Kalendas March

Modern Date : February 26th

Ante Diem IV Kalendas March
Fourth Day to the Kalends of March

This is one of then endotercisus on which mornings could be for voting and afternoons not, or vice-versa.

Being at the end of the original Roman year, and preceding New Year's Day on March 1st, made this and the following days especially representative of rebirth, renewal and full of the promise of the coming Spring.

On this day in 364 AD Valentinian became the new emperor in Constantinople.

February is a month sacred to the gods Mars (as Quirinus, or Romulus) and Juno, the wife of Jupiter. Juno (Hera, was the mother of Mars. Mars was known to the Greeks as Ares, the god of war. The war god was wild and ungovernable, a god who glorified in strife for its own sake and revelled in slaughter. He was thought to gloat over the death and destruction he caused.


Mahashivaratri
Mahashivaratri, the great annual Hindu festival in honor of Lord Shiva in his most beneficent aspect as the universal creator whose drum and dance bring the visible world into being. Shiva and his consort Shakti are honored with music, dance and other works of beauty, and with prayers for abundant vitality.


Carnival Sunday
In Italy, the most recently married couple of the neighborhood scoops out the first trowel of earth and plant scarli, poles big as trees, twined with garlands of heather and juniper. At the end of Carnival, the banner at the top is burned.


Transfiguration Sunday
In the Roman Catholic calendar, this is Transfiguration Sunday, commemorating the occasion on which, just prior to the time of his own purification that is now observed as Lent, Jesus manifested to his closest disciples as a being of light.