April 19, just four short days away, is the festival of Cerealia, a celebration in reverence to Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.

I plan to eat cereal for breakfast that day in celebration. Lissa notes that I eat cereal every day. This is true, and a good thing, for I'm somewhat absent-minded and am likely to forget the holiday.

This comes to mind because it's the season of spring festivals, rooted in a time when our religious celebrations served as practical markers of stuff we needed to do, like planting. Today is the Fordicia. We're apparently supposed to sacrifice two dozen pregnant cows in the temples in honor of Tellus, Roman god of the Earth. This seems impractical, so I ate cereal this morning as well.