Summer of Pi

Today, March 14, is Pi Day in the United States. As many people know, I am a big fan of Pi Day. I'm a big fan of pi. I'm sure many people would say they too are big fans of pie, but they mean pie, the delectable dessert. I mean pi, the irrational number.

I like the dessert too.

But Pi Day is not celebrated anywhere else. I suppose it isn't even universally celebrated in the USA. But it's pretty widespread. However, the reason Pi Day is when it is only makes sense in the United States. The date in the USA is 3-14, which corresponds to the first digits of pi, 3.14. But in the rest of the world the date is 14-3. Or 14.3. Or 14.03. My point is that it doesn't give you the first few digits of pi, so there isn't any reason to celebrate Pi Day, except that America does it.

Still, I'm just thrilled that we have any holidays that celebrate mathematics. And so I am sad to miss it.

Luckily, I don't have to feel like I'm entirely missing out. While Albania does not celebrate Pi Day, they do have a national holiday on 14 March. It's called Dita e Verës, which in English translates as Summer Day. Summer Day has been a national holiday in Albania for a few decades, but its roots go back thousands of years, to the early Illyrian settlers. We're talking around the time before the Ancient Greeks colonized this land.

Hot air balloons in Skanderbeg Square!

It involves a goddess named Muse, a huntress and goddess of the forests and the animals. Muse corresponds to Artemis in the Greek Pantheon or Diana in the Roman Pantheon. She had a temple on Mountain Muse in a place called Shkumbin. Today, Shkumbin is in the modern region of Elbasan, Albania. According to legend, Muse came out of her temple once a year, to transition the world from the winter season to the summer season. (Back in ancient times, there were only two seasons, winter and summer. It's not that the world got warmer faster, it's just that humans only made the distinction between two seasons.) And that once a year event, on the modern calendar, is March 14.

A view from the other side

Today it is a very festive party. It retains that pagan element of the change of seasons. But it is also emblematic of the renewal of Albanian spirit. The Earth is reborn in the spring, and Albania is reborn along with it.

There are some traditional elements to Summer Day. One is wearing a verore. This is a red and white woolen bracelet. You wear it in early March and after Summer Day (or traditionally when you see the first sparrow of spring) you remove it from your wrist and you tie it to a tree branch. The belief is that birds will take the woolen threads and use them to build their nests.

Verore for Sale

Another tradition is the ballokume. This is a type of sugar cookie made with Albanian cornflour. It's generally only sold this time of year, and you eat them on Summer Day. (I think you're allowed to bake them and eat them other days too. But you probably won't find them in bakeries at other times of the year.)

Alrica and a ballokume

Here in Tirana, there are concerts in the street, lots of children's activities, vendors selling verore, ballokume, and hot dogs. Skanderbeg Square is filled with hot air balloon. And the streets south of the square are closed to traffic and filled with stages, sport courts for basketball, soccer, volleyball, and tennis, and craft vendors.

There's a hot dog in there somewhere under the fries, under the sauces

So even though no one else was celebrating pi, nor eating pie, we still got to have a celebration on the date of the greatest mathematical holiday of the year. You go, summer! You go, pi!