March marks a turning point for many people each year. Perhaps because winter winds down and officially ends in mid-March, the month is easy to characterize as a turning point toward spring and all that entails, including warmer weather and additional hours of daylight. The vernal equinox is one of many interesting facts about the third month of the year.
March might mark the official return of spring, but the inspiration for its name is far less serene. According to Almanac.com, March is named for Mars, the Roman god of war. That might not jibe with modern impressions of March, but it makes sense from a historical perspective. That’s because military campaigns were once routinely suspended during the cold winter months. Upon the return of spring and the more favorable conditions it produced, military campaigns would start up again, thus making March an aptly named month.
Though presidential inaugurations in the United States are now held in January, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, March 4 was the official Inauguration Day until 1933, when the Twentieth Amendment was ratified and inaugurations were officially moved to January. Even George Washington, the first man to serve as President of the United States of America, was initially slated to be inaugurated on March 4. However, the Library of Congress notes that electoral ballots could not be counted as quickly as Congress anticipated, so the first inauguration was delayed until April 30, 1789. President Franklin D. Roosevelt holds the distinction of being the first American president to be inaugurated in January after he was sworn in on January 20, 1937.
March hosts one of the most beloved holidays across the globe, even though the day commemorates the patron saint of a small country in western Europe. St. Patrick is the primary patron saint of Ireland, a small island nation in the North Atlantic Ocean with a population of roughly seven million people. Despite that, World Population Review reports that St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in more than 200 countries each year on March 17. The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade is world-renowned, but the holiday is celebrated in other countries one might not immediately associate with Ireland and St. Patrick, such as Singapore, Russia and Japan.
College sports fans anxiously anticipate the arrival of March each year. That’s because the month marks the return of March Madness, a college basketball tradition that annually draws millions of fans to watch and/or attend games in the weeks long single-elimination NCAA Tournament that culminates with the national championship game. The origins of the phrase “March Madness” are not precisely known, though many historians trace the phrase to high school basketball in Indiana in the 1930s. Legendary broadcaster Brent Musburger is credited with associating the term with the NCAA Tournament in the 1980s.
