In South Texas, “Las Canículas” Can Mean January Forecasts Rather Than “Dog Days”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you? This is John Reber from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome to the show. What can we do for you, John?

There is a phrase or a term used down in South Texas that is called Las Canibulas in Spanish.

And basically, from what my grandmother and my aunt told me, it is a period of the month in January into February, where all 12 months of the year, basically, rotate through the 12 days right there.

The year starts on the 31st and goes to about the 11th or 12th of February.

So let’s just say this term so everyone hears it clearly.

It’s Las Caniculas, right?

That’s correct.

C-A-N-I-C-U-L-A-S?

I believe that is correct.

They taught you that in January there were 12 days which kind of recapitulated the weather and the seasons of the year in those 12 days, right?

The whole year kind of condensed.

For the coming year.

Yeah, that’s really interesting.

There’s so much to say about this.

Las Caniculas has this strange etymological history, and I’m sitting across from somebody who’s probably just dying to talk about it.

So the Canicula is related to the word for dog for a really important reason, right?

A little dog.

A little dog, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That’s correct.

It’s actually related to our term in English, dog days, which is a period of the year where it’s super, super hot.

And we get that from the Latin term canicula, which means little dog, which refers to the star Sirius, S-I-R-I-U-S, which at a certain time of the year kind of rises with the sun or follows the sun.

And so it’s like the sun’s little dog.

And so in the time of the Hippocrates, say roughly 400 BC or so, they believed that the rising of Sirius to a certain point meant that the weather would change.

Now, in the centuries since, the stars rise differently throughout the year.

And as people have moved to different latitudes throughout the world, Las Caniculas has started to mean something different.

And at the time of Hippocrates, who was a doctor, as you may remember, he believed and others believed that a variety of vapors and humors would cause illness.

The heat or the steam or the rain or whatever was happening could make you sick.

And the Las Caniculas was a bad time of year.

But here in the New World, depending where you are in the Spanish-speaking countries, including most of Central America and Mexico and parts of South Texas, it’s either the first 12 days in January or any 12 days in January or 40 days starting at the middle of July or some days involve September.

They have different days on the calendar where they all use the same term, Las Caniculas, and they’re looking for particular weather patterns that happen season after season, year after year, so they know it’s time to reap or to plant or to do nothing.

So it’s a crazy, interesting mix of folklore and superstition, all going back thousands of years to the Romans.

I believe that.

Yeah.

I love that idea of the first 12 days of January kind of setting out the pattern for the whole rest of the year.

Kind of like an almanac.

Running the gamut, yeah.

An almanac condensed in these few days.

Well, cool.

That’s everything that we know about Las Caniculas.

But it’s actually, I haven’t found a real definitive source on it.

But if you come across one, by all means, send it to us.

I’m just interested really in the myths and folklore of Latin America and what the different traditions.

Because the Mexican tradition is different than the Guatemalan tradition, which is different than the Costa Rican tradition, which is different than the South Texas tradition.

They all have their own different patterns and kind of understanding of Las Caniculas.

Thank you, Brent, and also Martha.

All right.

Take care now.

Glad to have you.

Take care, John.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So here, just to kind of summarize a little bit of this, if I may.

In parts of Mexico, it’s 30 or 40 days.

And they’re said to start on the 14th or the 18th of July.

And the first day is said to predict how the weather will be for the whole rest of the season.

And if it starts with rain, then you’ll have 40 days of rain.

If it starts with heat, you’ll have 40 days of heat.

And the temperatures in parts of Mexico are going to be as high as 115 degrees for days on end.

So some people really take this very seriously, and they know what they have to do if that first day is really hot.

They’re going to prepare for the next 39 days.

But again, it’s very different about where you are.

One state of Mexico, it starts on the 14th, another on the 18th.

And some people approximate it.

It’s all really cool.

Yeah.

So it goes back to the dog star Sirius, which is in Canis Major.

Canis like canine.

Which is where we get the word canicula, which means little dog.

Canicula, yeah.

And here we are in this country doing something that the Romans did.

Yeah, crazy.

Looking at the stars to calculate the weather.

Yes.

And it’s connected to Sirius satellite radio.

It’s got a little dog.

Oh, there we go.

Nice.

You know, in its logo.

And Sirius was one of the…

Minds blown.

I know, right?

And Sirius Black could transform himself into a dog in the Harry Potter books.

Is that right?

Yeah.

See, I read him in Spanish, so I missed some of that.

Well, he was still a dog in Spanish.

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