FATHER TIME

Father Time is an old guy who usually shows up about this time of year, and sometimes you see him hanging out with Baby New Year.  Father Time always has a really long beard, and he likes to carry around a scythe or an hourglass or maybe a pocket watch.  The idea is that he represents the end of the old year, and Baby New Year represents the start of the new year.  The amazing thing is that after only 12 months, Baby New Year will turn into Father Time, and he will look old and worn-out and will have a very long beard.

The image of Father Time is a combination of two characters.  One is the Grim Reaper, or Death, who usually wears a black, hooded robe and carries a scythe.  The other one is Chronos, who was one of the Titans in Greek mythology, and who ruled over Time.

I don't know why people say Time is a Father.  To me it seems like maybe we should have Mother Time instead.  The reason I think this is because it takes lots of time to nurture and grow things, which is what a mother does.  My mom says that Time is a man because we live in a patriarchal society, which means that the tradition has been for fathers to rule their families, and for men to run businesses and government.  This does not really seem fair, but nobody asked me, unfortunately.

Anyway, I went looking for pictures of Father Time and Baby New Year, and I found a whole bunch of them, which I am now going to show you because they are pretty interesting.


Sometimes Baby New Year is a young child instead of being a baby in diapers, like for instance in this picture.

And in this 1897 picture, Baby New Year is actually a girl!

The same thing is true in this photo from 1900.  But even if Baby New Year is a girl, she never seems to grow up to be Mother Time.  There are only Father Times.

An artist named Edmund Dulac made this painting of Father Time in 1906.  I don't know who that beautiful woman in the glass ornament is, but Father Time seems to be very interested in her.  Also you will see that the hourglass has wings, which probably means that "Time flies when you're getting old."

Here's a very old painting of Queen Elizabeth I from about 1610.  No one knows who painted it because people didn't always sign their work in those days.  Anyway, this painting is kind of sad and creepy because it shows Father Time behind the queen's right shoulder, and Death looking over her left shoulder.  Meanwhile, some cherubs are taking the crown off of her head.  Maybe this means that she is old and about to die, and the burden of being the queen is being lifted off of her.  Or maybe it doesn't mean that at all.  I am better at being a literary critic than at being an art critic.

Here's an old greeting card design that shows Father Time with an angel following him around.  I think he got startled by the angel, and that's why he dropped his hourglass.

I was kind of worried because I only saw white men playing the role of Father Time.  But then I thought maybe this meant that people of African descent never got old and died.  Which would be a good thing, because as a basenji, I am of African descent myself.  But after that, I found a Father Time of color.  I didn't find any Baby New Years of color, though, so I'm not sure what's up with that.

Here's a picture I like a lot that was painted by an artist named Akeem, and it shows Father Time dancing with Mother Earth.

In this picture, Father Time looks kind of upset, like he can't believe the whole year will be over in just twenty more minutes.  A cartoonist named Michael J. Ruocco made this drawing.

Here's a painting by someone named missmanda11, and it shows Father Time in some kind of weird, psychedelic dream.  Mom says this picture looks like it might have been done by Salvador Dalí in about 1968, but it wasn't.

Scarlet Ibis Designs painted Father Time on an ostrich egg and put a satin lining in the egg.  You can own this egg yourself for only $950.

Or another artistic thing you can do is get Father Time tattooed on an intimate part of your body.  Actually, I kind of like this design, except for Father Time's strange eyes.

And finally, here's Tom Ruegger's picture of a happy Father Time with a crying, egghead Baby New Year.

Which brings me to my wish for all my faithful blog readers to have a very good 2012, with lots of smiling and laughing, and very little whining and crying!