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From: dpz@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (David P. Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Origin of the season's names
Message-ID: <4601@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Thu, 20-Mar-86 21:12:26 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.4601
Posted: Thu Mar 20 21:12:26 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Mar-86 22:35:52 EST
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 111
Keywords: foo bar


** Click your heels three times and hope the line-ea

I found this on a BBS in New Jersey (CFONJ - (201)486-2956) and
thought youse guys might find it, well, historically clarifying
(huh?):

--- delete this line and all your dreams will come true ---

The Seasons and Other Things
(A Quasi-Myth for Modern Readers)
Written by Andy Kaye

Zeus sat on his throne on High Olympus.  The Earth below, in all her
glory, was...well...sort of boring.  Zeus eventually got tired of
uniform lighting and instructed the sun god, Apollo, to fly his
chariot over the Earth once each day.  That wasn't enough.  In fact
Zeus became so unenthused with watching Earth all the time, that he
once tried to invent movies.  He was actually quite successful with
the movies themselves: technicolor, brilliant direction, interesting
story lines, great acting, but he neglected to invent projectors,
screens or even film.  He decided to scrap the movie idea and send the
partialy completed work down to Man and called them Dreams.

So, Zeus was back where he started from.  Nothing to do after a rough
day of throwing thunderbolts, but come home and stare at a plain
looking planet, which he sometimes couldn't even see because Apollo
was around the other side feeding his horses or who-knows-what.  Zeus
named this period of time "night", which was the name of a second
cousin by marriage who he never did like too much.  Zeus thought about
inventing television, but then he would have to invent SitComs and
Soap Operas and no man on Earth deserved that kind of punishment.
Zeus was getting so bored with the Earth, that he was about to create
a cosmic version of the Olympic Games with the very first event being
Atlas shot-putting Earth into Infinity.  Suddenly Zeus saw the
problem: everywhere on the planet, flowers and trees grew and bloomed.
After a time, the gods would grow tired of them, and in some godlike
way, would cause them to die.  When this happened, the people in
society who were responsible for keeping an ample supply of flora
around would plant new flowers and trees and they would grow--they'd
always grow, year round--and it would start all over again.  Zeus
felt, and rightfully so, that if a god bothered to take time out to
vanquish a rose garden, it should stay vanquished for a hardy amount
of time.  He felt that there should be a period of time where nothing
grew.  Maybe even a strech where growth was possible, but a bit
sluggish.  Hey, maybe even some time where somethings grew and
somethings didn't.  "Yes," thought Zeus, "That would really give
Mother Earth some variety! Some spice! Some SEASONING!"

That's what Zeus would do.  He'd create seasons!  He commanded the
titan Atlas to tilt the Earth, causing the heat from Apollo's chariot
to be distributed unevenly.  Now things were really jumping down
there.  Four different conditions each year, but even better than
that, they happened at different times and to different extremes all
over the place.  "Wow!"  said Zeus, "This is really neat."  Zeus was
obviously in 7th Heaven (Well, actually, Zeus was on Olympus which is
a completely different plane of existance from 7th Heaven, but saying
'Zeus was on Olympus' wouldn't really get the point across.  Also, it
would be redundant since in the first line of this story we stated
that Zeus was in fact on Olympus and not, as some may have been lead
to believe, in 7th Heaven.--ed.)  (Stay out of my story.--author).

So, the Earth got a facelift, Zeus got some decent entertainment, the
Universe was at peace, and everyone was happy.

That's not quite true.  Atlas was terribly anxious to shot-put the the
whole heavy thing off into space and now that Zeus made Seasons, he
was stuck with it until Zeus got bored again.

Okay, so everyone was happy except for Atlas, who really wished that
Zeus would at least create Done's Pills.

That's not quite true.  Down in the material world, Man had managed to
get used to the idea of having to store food and rough it for a few
months before he could plant again, but he found it intolerable to
have to refer to these seasons as "Season #1", "Season #2", "Season
#3", and "Season #W" (their number system was not quite developed
yet).  Man sent his priests to the temples of Zeus and prayed for some
creative and meaningful names.

Zeus was a bit at a loss here as he had no more second cousins by
marriage to get names from.  Zeus gave the task of assigning names to
the seasons to Madys: God of Advertising, Patron of Public Relations.
When posed with the problem, Madys immediatly suggested the names
"Season #1", "Season #2", "Season #3", and "Season #4".  Zeus told him
to take a few days and really think about it.  Eventually, after using
logic like "the leaves are falling off the trees, so I'll call this
one Fall" and "Gee, the flowers just sort of spring up.  Let's call
this one Spring", Madys came up with acceptable names for all four
seasons.

The Earth got a facelift, Zeus got some decent entertainment, Atlas
signed a very lucrative contract with a chiropractor for a "So You
Think YOU'VE Got Problems?" poster, and Mankind got four exciting new
words in his language. So now the Universe was at peace and everyone
was happy.

That's not quite true.  Madys, although a dedicated Olympian, didn't
want to be forgotten.  He asked Zeus to make a constellation in his
memory, so whenever Man looked into the Summer sky, he'd remember that
if not for Madys, he'd be looking into the Season #1 sky.  Zeus said
that constellations were reserved for mortals, but Madys's work, or at
least his line of work, would not be forgotten.  "Sometime in the
future, Madys," said Zeus as he faded off into his sacred retreat,"
I'll do something for you.  I'll think it over...Maybe a street
somewhere...Madyson Avenue or...well...I'll think about it........"
-- 
Name: David P. Zimmerman	Nickname: "Davidann" (don't ask)
Cute quote: " (well, *I* think it's cute!)
Arpa: dpz@blue
Uucp: ...{harvard, allegra, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4}!topaz!dpz