Today is the first day of March, so it seems fitting to examine that old saying “March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” I suppose, if I’m honest (and I like to think I am), ‘fitting’ is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s my website, and I say it’s fitting, or at the very least ‘interesting.’
I first heard the phrase as a boy growing up in Southern California where we have a weather event known as the Santa Ana Winds.
According to the National Weather Service, Santa Anas result when air from high pressure areas over the deserts of the southwestern United States flows westward toward the low pressure areas of Southern California’s coast. They obviously don’t know what they’re talking about, as I lived around Los Angeles for most of my life and the last thing I’d call it is “low pressure!” And it doesn’t get more coastal Southern California than that!
Be that as it may, when I was growing up, for some inexplicable reason our next-door neighbor had a giant Sequoia tree in their front yard (it has since been removed) and when the Santa Anas were blowing (usually this time of year) it meant one thing: I knew how I was going to be spending my Saturday – my whole Saturday. You see, this Sequoia tree was massive (Sequoia trees are the largest trees in the world), and over the preceding months it had amassed lots of debris in the form of dead branches and foliage, which it would drop all over the house on Cleveland Road where I grew up when the Santa Anas blew. The Sequoia’s discards formed a carpet which completely obscured our front yard – you couldn’t even see the green of the lawn.
So March meant yardwork for me, which I love now but hated then. I’d remind my dad that this country has very strict child labor laws, but he was unmoved by my precociousness. And my mom would say, “you know someone has a birthday coming up next month, and March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb just in time!” Like the promise of cake was supposed to make me feel better about my indentured servitude.
That’s all well and good and fine, but where did she come up with that phrase? My mom grew up on a farm in Minnesota, so I consulted the Farmers’ Almanac which told me this weather “truism” came from ancestral beliefs in balance, meaning if the weather at the start of March was bad (roaring, like a lion), the month should end with good weather (gentle, like a lamb).
There are other explanations. At the start of March, the rising sign is Leo (represented by a lion), but by the end of the month, it’s Aries (the ram – male sheep are called rams, females are called ewes, and when both are young they are called lambs). Or, as The Guardian points out:
According to another theory the saying is biblical. Jesus’s first appearance was as the sacrificial lamb, but he will return as the Lion of Judah, hence those symbolic animals.
In light of this, one could draw the conclusion that the phrase is associated with Easter, which lands sometime between late March and early April.
The Paris Review notes that the phrase is found as early as 1732 in Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, a book which, according to them, “has several excellent March proverbs.” My favorite has to be…
A Peck of March-Dust, and a Shower in May / Makes the Corn green, and the Fields gay.
…because, who doesn’t like a gay field?