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Today is the feast of Corpus Christi, which is rather a unique holiday, as it does not mark a specific event but rather a thanksgiving for the sacrament of communion. In Germany, recognized as a national holiday, it is called Fronleichnam--which does not mean "happy corpse," like the German words sound but rather it comes from Middle German vrône lîcham--des Herren Leib (The Lord's body)--and that sounds to me reflective of the origins of the holiday with a nunnery in Belgium that rallied the Pope to add this singular feast to the liturgical calendar. Fronleichnam, with the village streets paved with petals and a last sunny day off after a long and quick succession of them, also makes me think of Robert Schumann's "Happy Farmer" (Der Fröhlicher Landmann) which is probably most recognizable as the leitmotif from the opening scenes of the Wizard of Oz on Aunt Em's farm--a little jaunty but relaxed and diligent, like the churches using their best monstrance (Monstranz) and silver on this day.

Also, not being a day meant to commemorate a specific event, the holiday does not roll with the cycle of forty (like the forty days of Noah's Flood, the forty days of Lent corresponding to Jesus' time in the wilderness, the Ascension forty days after Resurrection, forty days of mourning, etc). Corpus Christi is fifty days after Easter. No one is quite sure why the number forty is a recurring value or a seemingly significant digit--perhaps, some theorize, it represents a generation (in years), the term of human pregnancy (in weeks), or the apparent motion of Venus in the skies, transcribing a pentagram and returning to its original position after that same generation.