Holy shivers

Extract

Judging from the common idea of the church calendar, a witty French meteorologist remarked, the saints of paradise are not above busying themselves in interfering with the weather and, sometimes, with each other's influence. The idea of associating weather with times and season is an old one, and, in Europe, goes back probably to the Middle Ages. It arose, no doubt, through the observation of more or less regular recurrences of certain kinds of weather and by the attribution of such recurrences, first to the gods, then, as Christianity spread, to the saints of the church.